Another idea for making nukes a bit more balanced is to SIGNIFICANTLY increase the cost of Manhattan Project. It would force the player for whom it is advantageous to introduce nukes into the game to pay a steeper price for this and give his opponents a better free-riding opportunity.
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A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"
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(Yesterday, 11:55)Gavagai Wrote: I would advise against increasing the cost of nukes. Nukes are supposed to be powerful and against intelligent opponents it is tricky to make them pay for themselves already, especially with submarine changes (which I fully support btw). Of course, against players who are stacking units in the nuclear age nukes are OP but this mod should be balanced for MP, not for playing against AIs (and AI-like humans). I'm also mostly in this camp. However they are still really good at busting cities or at least making it so you can't put stacks in them to defend them in situation where two movers can hit them. Making them a bit more expensive should help even that out (while still allowing it to be possible) while still punishing people who just stack their entire army in one spot. I do like the idea of increasing manhattan project cost (how much is significantly?). If nothing else it gives players another couple of turns to catch up tech wise.
I do agree that Nukes are already expensive and it's difficult to get value out of them.
There was a reason I only would increase to factor 4 in comparison to BtS instead of 5 like the first idea. I do agree, Manhattan coast increase is a good idea. At first "only" factor 2 from 1500p to 3000p ? And towards the XP situation. This are two different things. 1. Pentagon is "worse" than in cIV Vanilla, because you can't get the third promotion in CtH in all cities. I wouldn't say that the pentagon is bad, but it's a bit worse in a specific situation. As such, I really would like to get the lost barrack XP point back. I do agree, that the easy access to 3 promotion land units for CHA could be to strong (I think that was the reason for the barrack nerf in the first place). As such, the easy option would be to buff the Pentagon XP to 3 XP. But the point is, the pentagon is good enough. It doesn't need a direct buff. In that way, that the best way seems to be to increase the XP available for all by 1 (and allow other players to settle one general for the 10 XP). Which option are available for that ? Revert the barracks nerf ? Add 1 XP to the colosseum like RtR ? Both have the problem that we get the easy (and early) 3rd promotion for CHA. - And the colosseum already got the war wariness. As such, I searched for a rarely constructed building near the Pentagon in the tech tree. First idea was the otherwise more or less useless hospital at the rarely researched medicine tech. Other idea are the Security Bureau at Democracy or the Intelligence Agency at Communism. Both a bit earlier in the tech tree and more often researched, but still not often build. If the easy access for the third promotion for CHA is a non problem, I have no problem to mirror RtR and use the colosseum for that. 2. Dry dock to 3 XP is more or less to align the dry dock with the barrack and the airport. Add the fact, that one of the most discusses promotions are the navigation line and 4 XP dry dock allows CHA player easy access to Navigation 1 and 2. - Okay, dry docks are that late that this changes not that much, but still, I think a nerf is not a bad idea. And if the other change would be implemented, this would change that much.
I honestly don't see a need for another exp building late game or to adjust. I'm curious why you think its needed. Yes I didn't like losing the pentagon, but the main beneficiary is actually fighter strength. Most ground units you can get to two promos already pretty easily. And with stack combat being what it is the difference between two and three isn't that great at that stage. The drydock exp has always seemed to line up well to me as well. Its true that eventually I like being in one of the two civics that boosts exp for this exact reason, but I have fought wars without and down promos. Its a cost to decisions made, which is a good thing.
Edit: fine with manhattan prod increase suggested.
The proposed changes are not necessary.
As such, maybe over the scope of CtH, but I do want them and I will propose them. The focus should be the third promotion, as such I did focus on later buildings. In general, I do think the (research) opportunity cost of Hospital could be too great to influence things. Even the (often) researched espionage buildings are not cheaply build either. Still, 200p to build are easier to find than 6.3k research (and 200p). I agree, that the influence on land is not great, but this would include a third promotion for fighters. And even on land a third promotion can influence things a bit. Barrage3 is as effective as Barrage1 and Barrage2 together. I will do push for that, but if I don't get approval from the community, I won't include it. And it is a lower priority than the sub change or the american UB nerf. And I modified the Changelog in #1455 to include the accepted Subchange and the manhattan nerf.
Hmm, when I proposed Manhattan nerf I proposed it as an alternative to nukes cost increase, not as an addition to it. With all these nerfs combined it almost seems worthwhile to just directly dump all these hammers into SDI beeline and do not bother with nukes at all. At the very least you should balance against that.
I agree that nukes are not supposed to whipped that trivially but this is more a problem with the power of late-game whips and I would really be looking into nerfing that (RtR-style maybe, 20 hammers for every whips except the first one). Food corps clearly have not been properly balanced against the use of slavery (a pattern in BTS features).
With ICBM costing 2000 hammers, a couple of proper barrages (you need at least two to actually wipe out a stack or damage a shelter-protected city) is almost equal to the cost of a late-game tech. This is a bit ridiculous, I think, given that in the late-game a loss of one stack or one city would rarely even have a strategic effect. If you do not want to play with nukes, just make it a game option to turn Manhattan Project off. And keep for others an opportunity to wage a proper nuclear war.
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