RtR 4.1.1.6 Discussion and Download Thread

[Krill]

I'd certainly think twice before invading China with UU available.

Yes, it can definitely go both ways and the unit is stronger for the attacker too, but the issue as I see it is how quickly and easily the defender can switch from defense to offence. If you caught someone unawares they would usually struggle to assemble defenders and catapults. With the implementation you're suggesting the defender, who has far superior movement, could quickly use those defensive crossbows to wipe out attacking forces with greater ease than before. You're removing the need for catapults to punish the attacker.

Given that Xbows need Construction and hit fewer units, and cost more, I'm not sure about the "removing the need" bit.

If the defender is scrambling to build units because they lack them in any number in the relevant areas, then I think all the other factors (geography, unit disposition of the attacking force, available production, tech position etc) make it extremely difficult to have anything more than a rough idea of what would happen. Xbows might be the best thing to build, but until the defender has enough units to attack the invading force and then kill the units damaged by collateral, then I'm not sure how much difference thee Xbows make. I do agree that they can change the fundamental response to an attack though: I agree that it has got to be better to build an Xbow to sit in a city, rather than a catapult. I agree with the broad stroke that simply having that unit will allow a player to move back onto the offensive if they can neutralise the invading force.

What I'm not sure about is the gap between an invasion starting and reaching that point. If the attacks are into an area that an attacker can take, hold, get necessary culture in and hold, in terms of a limited war, then an Xbow with collateral probably won't make significant difference. If the attack is an SoD straight to the heart then I agree with the point you are making.

But all this is by-the-by: It starts from the question "Is China too strong because of the versatility of the ChoKoNu?" And the CKN is stronger as a unit, hits a greater number of units with collateral to a lower hp, and is available earlier in the tech tree than the changes proposed for a test Xbow. Because if the view is that China has a level of versatility from the UU that isn't really matched from other civs then that's the "problem". Buffing the base unit isn't the only "solution" there.

[Krill]

* Is there a world where some of these aren't the one right choice?  For example, imagine a more-extreme version of old Protective that gave a promotion that was like +50% on defense, -20% on attack--that would discourage wars in both directions.  Or how about a version of Charismatic that was +5 happy but Settlers cost 50% more, thus letting you expand tall early instead of having to expand wide.  Each of these could be interesting in certain scenarios (neo-PRO would be good on maps with large amounts of land per player, neo-CHM would be better if the land was crap), and they have lower variance (higher floor, lower ceiling) and are easier to play.  Obviously this is a fundamental change (and probably not for this mod at this point), and the numbers are extremely hard to tune (I went extreme in these examples, since the problem of "why not both" is difficult to solve), and the play patterns might not be desirable (IIRC one of the reasons you removed City Defense I from PRO was because defensive play isn't fun).

There could well be scenarios (specific maps and specific mods for those maps) where any variety of trait, civ, unit, tile improvement, tech paths, whatever, work together to provide meaningful choice.

This is a mod designed to be played on different map types, with different number of players at varying skill levels (although I'm probably splitting the atom comparing the level of skill on this forum compared to the skill range of the general CIV4 playing population). Robustness is important.

* Another big problem is that there aren't enough diminishing returns overall, since you never get to the point where you don't need more of a specific yield (theoretically there's an upper limit on beakers/production per city, but it isn't practical)--it's difficult to say "Industrious gets early free hammers so it doesn't have to tunnel on Mines/Slavery" since there's not much that uses them with mines/Slavery.  One thing that could be interesting is giving Industrious a really cheap Forge that doesn't affect chops/whips to give them a benefit for raw hammer production.

Well, you do reach diminishing returns. You don't need more culture in your first two cities if you are waiting on the third to get to 50K. You don't need more science once you have all the space techs. You don't need more of anything once you get enough units to wipe out every other player at the same time. We just never reach those points because concessions happen (PB18 excepted, but that was a monster of a game). These points are an accumulation over an entire game though, they don't apply to a single city on a single turn.

Again, I have no clue on the specific numbers, but the problem is that everything stacks, so you have to balance the best case scenario version of everything, or remove the stacking--you've done that with some UBs, but that's more difficult to do with everything.  I'm just throwing out thoughts and ideas.

I like it when people throw out ideas, but what I appreciate on top of that is the reasoning why people think those ideas are good.

[Krill]

Now, there is one route to add a ceiling and floor effect: ie +1 hammer on tiles that produce 1 to 3 hammers, because this route takes out the late game problem, but it increases the balance problem from variability: If the terrain does not match what is needed to trigger the effects, then the power level is reduced. I've been toying with this recently as another interpretation for FIN, so it could revert to it's original effect but with a ceiling at 4 or 5 commerce: this way putting cottages on rivers gives you all the commerce, but late game the river commerce is lost as river towns give 6 commerce at PP. This can help us avoid the issue with traits variability in the power level, due to restrictions in the early game terrain.

Just wanted to say that this is doable from what I've seen in the code, but you probably guessed that. With some more time investment stuff like bonus yields on fields neighboring city tiles or stuff like +1 hammer and -1 commerce on a tile should also be possible. Doesn't mean that I want to propose those, more to show what would be technically possible from yields.

Not for RtR, because this is just so out there but: Are you saying that adjacency bonuses vis a vis civ 6 are implementable in a mod?

That would be so cool.

[Charriu]

I'm not that familiar with civ6, but there should be a way to do some adjacency bonuses in civ4. I know that some mods do it for example this submod to Fall from Heaven has bonuses like adjancecy to quarries. See the second post here.

I also love how improvements have been reworked. You no longer spam improvements on every tile, cities can only support a certain number of them (based on culture and population levels). They also provide synergy with each other. A quarry adjacent to a cottage gives the cottage 1 hammer. Windmills near farms improve food output. Lumbermills/camps get bonuses to Resources based on how many unimproved forest tiles are within the city boundaries.

[Cheater Hater]

I feel like I have more to say (mostly on what the ultimate goal of the mod is, and if a variety of outcomes might be preferable at this stage of Civ4's life, even at the possible expense of balance), but am not really sure how to say it. Part of that is that users are good at finding problems but not good at finding solutions, as it's difficult to know all the constraints. Also that's what I meant with the lack of diminishing returns--if there were diminishing returns early it could mean there can be different alternatives (but it's extremely difficult to do this well without being too blunt and warping gameplay *cough*Civ5*cough*).

[Krill]

I'm not that familiar with civ6, but there should be a way to do some adjacency bonuses in civ4. I know that some mods do it for example this submod to Fall from Heaven has bonuses like adjancecy to quarries. See the second post here.

I also love how improvements have been reworked. You no longer spam improvements on every tile, cities can only support a certain number of them (based on culture and population levels). They also provide synergy with each other. A quarry adjacent to a cottage gives the cottage 1 hammer. Windmills near farms improve food output. Lumbermills/camps get bonuses to Resources based on how many unimproved forest tiles are within the city boundaries.

I'm sure that over the next year I'll have a few ideas to bounce off you for the next crazy SMEG mod...if you are up for that?

I feel like I have more to say (mostly on what the ultimate goal of the mod is, and if a variety of outcomes might be preferable at this stage of Civ4's life, even at the possible expense of balance), but am not really sure how to say it.  Part of that is that users are good at finding problems but not good at finding solutions, as it's difficult to know all the constraints.  Also that's what I meant with the lack of diminishing returns--if there were diminishing returns early it could mean there can be different alternatives (but it's extremely difficult to do this well without being too blunt and warping gameplay *cough*Civ5*cough*).

This is why it took me so long to reply. Not that I needed to think about what to say, but rather how to say it. Communication is often the limiting factor for some groups, not the ability to understand abstract concepts.

CIV will always be about growth and hitting people. Warfare is how players interact. Diminishing returns of economic gains is just another (complex) part of the balance between growth and hitting people. Ultimately, SS and culture victories are teh ceiling on diminishing returns, and I don't see any point in adding new ceilings for no real reason.

[Charriu]

I'm not that familiar with civ6, but there should be a way to do some adjacency bonuses in civ4. I know that some mods do it for example this submod to Fall from Heaven has bonuses like adjancecy to quarries. See the second post here.

I also love how improvements have been reworked. You no longer spam improvements on every tile, cities can only support a certain number of them (based on culture and population levels). They also provide synergy with each other. A quarry adjacent to a cottage gives the cottage 1 hammer. Windmills near farms improve food output. Lumbermills/camps get bonuses to Resources based on how many unimproved forest tiles are within the city boundaries.

I'm sure that over the next year I'll have a few ideas to bounce off you for the next crazy SMEG mod...if you are up for that?

Well ideas never hurt, but so far I can't say how much time I will have. I first want to finish up on the stuff for RtR and the BUG implementation. Then I'm up for anything else.

[Cheater Hater]

I feel like I have more to say (mostly on what the ultimate goal of the mod is, and if a variety of outcomes might be preferable at this stage of Civ4's life, even at the possible expense of balance), but am not really sure how to say it.  Part of that is that users are good at finding problems but not good at finding solutions, as it's difficult to know all the constraints.  Also that's what I meant with the lack of diminishing returns--if there were diminishing returns early it could mean there can be different alternatives (but it's extremely difficult to do this well without being too blunt and warping gameplay *cough*Civ5*cough*).

This is why it took me so long to reply. Not that I needed to think about what to say, but rather how to say it. Communication is often the limiting factor for some groups, not the ability to understand abstract concepts.

CIV will always be about growth and hitting people. Warfare is how players interact. Diminishing returns of economic gains is just another (complex) part of the balance between growth and hitting people. Ultimately, SS and culture victories are teh ceiling on diminishing returns, and I don't see any point in adding new ceilings for no real reason.

The point is to stop every game from being the same. If there are multiple ways to get to Milestone A (or if you can choose from Milestone A1, A2, and A3), the game becomes more interesting (and maybe more players start playing). Again, you have to be very delicate with this, and maybe RTR isn't the place for it (and SMEG is for more "make this interesting" changes that might not ever go into the main line), but it's worth considering variety as a main goal at this stage of Civ4's life.

[Krill]

Possibly a totally crazy idea but how about 1 food per town for Emancipation while keeping feature growth bonus and removing stupid happiness penalty? Makes cottages an interesting alternative to workhops even in a lategame? Also will indirectly buff Free Speech and nerf State Property which is good.

Long story short: in the 3.X mod line the Industrial era tech path was rebuilt to bring all the civics back into the main tech path (ie Liberalism, Democracy, Communism were necessary to reach teh spaceship techs). That caused a lot of changes to happen. I would like to try something a bit simpler for a test game.

Basically, Democracy and Communism could be made necessary to reach Tanks. This is a completely arbitrary point, mind, they could feed in after Industrialism, but it is as good as any point. This change is all about the civic balance: the civics no longer have to overcome the cost of the tech to breakeven, which is another hurdle in the valuation comparison to other civics.

There are a lot of ways to implement this. We could just add Democracy and Communism to Industrialism as mandatroy prerequisites. That's a bit fugly though. I'd prefer to add Communism as an optional prerequisite, and Democracy as a mandatory prerequisite, to Fascism. Then remove Assembly Line as an optional prerequisite to Industrialism, and add Assembly Line as a mandatory prerequisite, and Fascism as an option prerequisite to Industrialism. Then I'd lower the cost slightly of Communism, Democracy and Fascism (probably by roughly 30% on each).

I'd probably move the Marine to Fascism, and add a requirement for Assembly Line though. Otherwise, the tech paths actually look OK (I say that knowing everyone probably hates this point).

Then we can focus on the issue of Emancipation. Free Speech might need adjusting as well, but State Property is the benchmark to compare the rest to.

To be brutal: if Emancipation can be put into a workable space, that allows Cottages to mature into Towns in a workable time frame, then the issue of Towns being pillaged, and there being no late game options except to workshop and watermill, can be managed in a much better way. We can look again at if Villages and Towns would need to be permanent features on the map. They probably wouldn't need to be.

Originally posted by TBS in 2015

Some civic thoughts, I haven't seen much discussion on the new changes but I haven't searched too hard either.

State Property column:

SP vs FM seems pretty reasonable at the minute as late game options.

I see the reasoning behind the Merc change to compete with those two but I feel it's likely to be too good. After corp, you have 3 trade routes per city. Unlimited 6g trade routes means FM takes your trade total from 18 -> 30, only breaking even with Merc commerce and losing on gpp. I still prefer the just 1 specialist, low cost, foreign trade allowed, enabled at Banking. Having an early game civic option is good IMO, so you have the choice of when to transition into the late game ones, rather than just 3 late game. Also more in line with the base game obviously.

Free Speech: I find it pretty hard to see how this can compete with the other options with only the bonus to cottages/towns. I think the current implementation is still likely to be too weak. There's nothing really wrong with leaving it as the culture civic IMO. Or perhaps something more creative could be done.

Right now were are pretty much still in this position, and I don't see a real need to change it except for a possible sprucing up of FS. I think it's best to look at the other changes, and then consider if there are necessary tweaks to FS that might help.

Slavery column:
Again Slavery vs Caste seems good to me, though I think old slavery would be fine too.

The problem with Serfdom is that by the time you have sufficient mills down for that bonus to be good, you don't need the worker bonus anymore. I think it's pretty clear Serfdom isn't getting much love in our current games. What about making it into a clear mid game civic, giving a bonus to one of mines/cottages/farms, perhaps dropping the mill bonus? Maybe the cottage bonus could even be to the growth rate. If I had to pick, I'd try +1g to mines/mills and then doublecheck their late game outputs.

Emancipation then should be the late game competitor with Caste. The current version is too good IMO. You'll probably have a lot more farms/mines/cottages down than workshops by the time you hit Banking. I suspect we'd see people run caste for GAs and great people bursts and Emancipation the rest of the time. If you're continuing with the current implementation, it needs to be toned down IMO. I'd suggest moving the cottage vs workshop fight into this column, because it's so hard for Free Speech to beat State Property. Cottages +1g, Towns +2g and perhaps tinker with the cost and growth rate to compete against Caste's spec advantage. I'm not entirely sure where to put it on the tree(well Banking is fine, but in my ideal world Merc goes there).

I'll stick with what I've posted previously, that so long as the benefit in the early, mid and late game is the free tile improvements that Caste provides is so huge in controlling golden ages, there isn't really anything that any civic is going to do in comparison. But I've stopped caring so much and just accepted that there isn't anything that can be done about this other than duplicating the whom effect in Serfdom and Emancipation, which feels like 6 inch nails scrapped across the blackboard of my soul. But I'll ask the question anyway: Is this something that is worth considering?

Look at the advantages: Emancipation and Serfdom don't need significant changes if we do the above tech paths alterations. Serfdom is pretty much fine as is. Emancipation would likely only need to lose the happy cost to other civs, and possibly gain a bonus on cottages and villages (or we could just up the growth speed to +200%? 4 turns to hamlet (from 5), 7 turns to village (from 10), 14 turns to Town (from 20), which means each cottage would generate a further 19 commerce post PP compared to +100% growth). Emancipation would need a reason to stay in it, rather than swap back to Caste or Serfdom, but that's just experience and a bit of trial and error to get right. +1 hammer on towns is not unreasonable start for discussion, but I feel that probably stacks too high with US and FS (+2 hammers, +8 commerce on any none plains hill tile? Wow).

Emancipation has to have a trade off though: the purposes of such a civic is to allow a player to build or rebuild a commerce base to manage tech costs compared to other players. It has to leave a window of opportunity in terms of a weaker economy whilst it is in use.

So perhaps there is a better option? What about swapping Environmentalism and Emancipation? That way Emancipation has to compete with drafting free units, and vassalage for the XP in the late game, so that weakness, that trade off becomes very apparent. Environmentalism has the same problem as Serfdom and Emancipation, and any civic would against Caste System, but the issue with Emancipation essentially disappears.

So how about this for a point for discussion:

Tech: Industrialism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Assembly Line, Electricity. Optional Prerequisites: Fascism.

Fascism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Democracy. Optional Prerequisites: Communism. Base Cost 3300 (was 4800)

Democracy: Base cost 3500 (was 4900)

Communism: Base Cost 4000 (was 2600)


Civics: Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1h for Watermills and Windmills. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Feudalism. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Environmentalism: Provides +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Chemistry. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Emancipation: +100% Improvement Upgrade Rate Modifier. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Constitution. Low upkeep. Legal civic.

Universal Suffrage: Towns +1 hammer. Can spend gold to finish production in a city. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Democracy. Medium upkeep. Government Civic.

Free Speech: +100% Culture in all cities. +1 commerce from village. +3 commerce from Town. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Economics. Low upkeep. Economy Civic.


Tile improvements: Village: Pillageable, but only by land units [requires DLL mod]. Not Permanent (can be improved over).

Town: Pillageable, but only by land units [requires DLL mod]. Not Permanent (can be improved over).


Units: Marine: Requires Assembly Line, Fascism, Rifling

Thoughts?

[Charriu]

Tech: Industrialism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Assembly Line, Electricity. Optional Prerequisites: Fascism.

Fascism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Democracy. Optional Prerequisites: Communism. Base Cost 3300 (was 4800)

Democracy: Base cost 3500 (was 4900)

Communism: Base Cost 4000 (was 2600)


Civics: Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1h for Watermills and Windmills. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Feudalism. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Environmentalism: Provides +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Chemistry. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Emancipation: +100% Improvement Upgrade Rate Modifier. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Constitution. Low upkeep. Legal civic.

Universal Suffrage: Towns +1 hammer. Can spend gold to finish production in a city. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Democracy. Medium upkeep. Government Civic.

Free Speech: +100% Culture in all cities. +1 commerce from village. +3 commerce from Town. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Economics. Low upkeep. Economy Civic.


Tile improvements: Village: Pillageable, but only by land units [requires DLL mod]. Not Permanent (can be improved over).

Town: Pillageable, but only by land units [requires DLL mod]. Not Permanent (can be improved over).


Units: Marine: Requires Assembly Line, Fascism, Rifling

Thoughts?

Quick question about Caste. It still remains "Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots." and "+1 on workshops"?