Tides of War, a balance mod

[Commodore]

You could also try some of the old and broke; Pacal or Willem. See how they feel in the new nerfed world.

[Lord Parkin]

Fin/Pro + Colossus + Wharf + Moai + Golden Age. Nice coast.



(Semi-OCC Always Peace culture war game, for the record. Just a shame I can never build that Frontier Post. )

[SevenSpirits]

OK, I fixed it. It was either a comma, or one of three miscapitalized letters, or a mysterious difference in files of the exact same size. Or more than one of those, I guess. I have no idea.

I uploaded a new version - this is going to be called 1.21. It's the same as 1.2 except for the bugfix.

Updated links in first post. Thanks for the bug report, Lord Parkin.

[Lord Parkin]

No worries, thanks for the quick fix.

[SevenSpirits]

PB20, the current ToW test game, is still in its early stages, but I've heard some opinions that PRO and/or AGR are too strong. I can't speak to this myself and wouldn't pass judgment yet, but I can easily believe it. If we do indeed conclude this, what do we do? Here are my thoughts about it, and I'd love to hear your opinions.

PRO is easy. We can just reduce the worker/WB bonus. My thinking is that if we believe PRO is too strong, the bonuses are reduced from 50% to 35%.

AGR however is hard. The obvious way to nerf it, from affecting 4f+ tiles to only affecting 5f+ tiles, has three issues: First, it can be kind of random in how it affects starting positions. Most maps these days are not made with too much thought going into the specific thresholds of food resources. It's less capricious if you are getting a bonus from all 4f+ tiles because that's how most mapmakers internally think of food resources. The second issue is that at 5+ it's just kind of bland. You get more food but it doesn't change how you play very much. I prefer traits that really affect your playstyle - for example, CRE players can ignore early religion and place cities farther apart, FIN players will build more cottages, etc. At 4+, AGR makes you think twice about cottaging FP tiles when you could farm them instead. Later on, it also makes Biology quite special for you, in the same way that Electricity is a bigger deal for FIN players. The third issue is maybe just my preference, but I would really like this trait to have significant late-game value and not just early game benefits. And if it only affects food resources it will be almost 100% early game.

So if we need to lower the power level of AGR, it's not so simple. I want to retain some unique playstyle to it. The most fully-fleshed-out and similar idea I have is to have AGR be "Tiles with 4f+ gain +1f after 10 turns of being worked". (The 10 would be a 6 on quick speed, like cottage growth. And of course, 10t is an adjustable parameter in case it's not balanced like that.) So it's like before except the extra food on each tile only starts coming 10t later.

From there, the ideas I have get farther away from the original one. Here are some partial ideas: "+1f from all farms." "+1c from all farms." "+1c from tiles with 4+ food." "Coast provides irrigation." [To help the farm-focused trait components be viable on sea-heavy maps.] "Each city's food bar starts half full." "+1 food per 4 population in a city" "Food costs for new citizens increase half as quickly" [So second citizen is 21, third is 22, fourth is 23 instead of 22/24/26 etc.]

By the way, I'm also thinking to reinstate the harbor bonus on EXP. Not because I think it needs it but because it just doesn't feel appealing in its stripped-down state. In terms of balance, double speed harbors is not very significant.

[NobleHelium]

Reinstating the harbor bonus sounds fine to me, if only because the primary benefit is to make it closer to Vanilla.

[GermanJoey]

Part of the problem with Agricultural is that sort of acts like a not-so-mini version of Productive and Imperialistic in that it accelerates your first few workers and settlers about the same as those traits do because you're generally building them out of food in the early game. If Agricultural provides an extra, say, 120 food over the first 50 turns, that's an extra settler or 2 workers without even considering extra production due to faster growth time, etc.

I like your "Coast provides irrigation" and "Food costs for new citizens increase half as quickly" ideas. The first one gives you something cool and definitive along the lines of creative's easy early border pops, allowing you access to city sites that other civs would ignore early. A coastal rice with some nearby hills might be a desirable production site settled as one of one's first few cities rather than some forgotten filler settled in the AD years. Decreased bin costs is also pretty cool, because it effectively gives extra food without the side effect of mimicing productive's worker boost and imp's settler boost; its also definitive in that it would encourage growing ones cities more early. Would be extremely strong late-game too.

If that's not enough, Agricultural civs could also spread irrigation at, say, Pottery the way other civs do at Bureaucracy. At any rate, I think its cool to have more tactical options and flexibility rather than straight numbers increases.

[Lord Parkin]

I was one of the advocates of reducing the Productive Worker/Work Boat bonus, so going from 50% to 35% sounds good to me.

I also like reinstating Harbors to Expansive civs. Makes it a little less bland, doesn't really add much power, and makes it more similar to the original trait. All good in my books.

One possible simple nerf for Agricultural (if it's deemed necessary) would be to change it to "+1f on land tiles with 4f or more". Depending on the map, cutting seafood resources would remove perhaps a quarter of its power, which might be about right. It also fits with the theme of the trait name "Agricultural", which indicates working the land. This does still leave it a bit map/resource dependent, but then so are other traits - e.g. Charismatic. Whatever's done I think it should be kept simple.

[WilliamLP]

Productive at 35% still lets plains hills be (essentially) 7 food-hammer tiles when building workers or work boats. Since these tend to be very readily available this still feels like a pretty massive advantage over those who don't have it, particularly in a trait with a very large potential effect on the late game.

[Bacchus]

I'd rather go back to the original idea of giving the bonus per city, and if giving +1fpt straight out was too powerful, than perhaps make it unlockable at some basic building, like a Granary. If that's still too weak, have another +1fpt at, say, the Grocer. Or maybe go back to the original Agr/Pro and add the boni to the buildings which they make cheap -- Barracks, Walls, etc. Keeps the leader flavour too.

P.S. Generally, I think traits messing with tile yields are a poor idea, as they put the player on rails in terms of improvement choices. It's much more fun to be flexible in improvements depending on the goals, and use civics to boost the selected strategy. Any bonus to a specific yield necessarily restricts this flexibility.