Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[scooter]

What, if anything, should be done about the Fast Worker? It needs to stay at a 3-move worker, but that doesn't mean there aren't other options)

We could potentially make it a tad more expensive... I'm not talking anything crazy, but enough to make it build 2 or 3 turns slower in the early game, which keeps India from blowing everyone away at the start. The 2-3 turns easily gets made up with the Fast Worker's 3 moves, it just reduces the snowball effect somewhat.

[scooter]

UU thoughts:

Jaguar - Give it strength 6 instead of 5, that way it's actually better than a sword (which is already a weak unit)

Praetorian - Instead of giving it a city attack penalty, how about giving it one that fits it a little better... My idea was reduce it to strength 7, but to compensate, give it back the city attack bonus and reduce it to the same price as a normal sword. It's still a very strong UU at this point, but it's easier to counter. The current solution is to keep it at strength 8 but give it a bunch of artificial nerfs (it's more expensive, and now we're talking -10% city attack rather than +10%).

Cossack - This UU already was lame when they reduced it back down to the strength of a normal cav, and then they nerfed cavs with the Cuirasser switch in BtS. Let's restore the Cossack with it's +3 strength it had in Vanilla. +3 is no longer brokenly overpowered, because Cavs come later... Also, the Russian UB sucks, so it needs an overall boost anyways.

Cataphracts - The change that was made was perfect.

Those are the ones that jump to mind, though there's probably more work that could be done. UU balancing is difficult since some (panzer) are nice but come so late that they're mostly irrelevant. Any other specific suggestions? Any thoughts on these four changes?

[plako]

I like most of the changes in v0.3. Below some comments. Scooter's idea of making Fast Worker a bit more expensive than normal sounds good to me. I'd also like to see at minimum Internet banned. I'm not big fan of nukes either so Manhattan Project could be removed. Cristo Redentor is borderline, but I don't mind keeping it.

5) Espionage
Switch Civic and Switch Religion now require Future Tech

Is there a plan to implement the 0 visibility spies?

7) Unit Changes:
Spears get +50% Attacking, +100% Defending against War Elephants
Pikemen get +25% versus WEs

These feel artificial, but I guess there isn't easy way to handle War Elephants. What about adjusting their prerequicite techs to include something from the bottom part of the tree e.g. Machinery or Feudalism? This way non ivory nations has more time to prepare.

9) Trait changes:
Financial: Require 3 commerce to receive the bonus commerce. Double-speed banks.

This feels a bit too much. What about giving the commerce bonus only to land tiles?

[scooter]

Oh yeah, the War Elephant thing. Rather than handing out several artificial bonuses to balance it, why not just lower the WE strength by 1? Then leave Ballistaphants at their original strength, making them a good UU.

My preference on Corporations would be to just totally remove them.

I think I'm in the vast minority who doesn't mind the Internet... It's so far down the tech tree, that really it's a gambit. If you're falling behind, beeline it and try to build it, and you can't engineer rush it either... I just don't see it as a huge deal when it comes so late, it's a strategic decision at that point.

[plako]

If corporations are removed and we consider the changes made to the watermills and workshops state property will become standard late game civic. In curreent format Corporations are too cheap so why not make them a bit more expensive and/or reduce their yield a bit. Changes of magnitude of 20-30% could be tried.

Edit. Actually after rethought it might be that the changes already suggested favor enough state property so that Corporations don't need much tweaking.

[Krill]

...Boni to workshops? the only change is that you get the boni earlier in the gam,e by the time SP comes around it is exactly the same as in the basic game.

[plako]

The value is same, but the amount of workshops and watermills should be higher because they become useful way earlier. Isn't this the main point of the adjustments i.e. Reducing the value of cottage spamming compared to alternatives.

[Cyneheard]

[The Financial nerf] feels a bit too much. What about giving the commerce bonus only to land tiles?

I don't think there's a good way to do this directly, at least under the XML. However, there is a possible solution:
Have Astronomy give +1 commerce to water tiles.

Good idea, or a bad idea? Water tiles become utter junk late-game, so it's not a terrible thing to have there. It does make Astro THE water-map tech, though, which may (or may not) be a problem; Lib to Astro isn't impossible.

We haven't had any No Tech Trading games go to the Internet. Under Full Tech Trading, the Internet IS broken, because then you can also distribute tech to your allies, but your opponents can't if they all want to be able to use a tech. Under No Tech Brokering, it's weird. PB1 players, comments on the Internet?
Under No Tech Trading, I'd assume that 90% of the time there are large gaps in tech levels between players by that point, so it's mostly irrelevant.

Question about elephants: What role in the combat system do we want them to have? Right now, they're anti-knight, anti-axe, even against macemen, anti-crossbows, anti-swords, have a fair shot at knocking out LB that are in cities, and anti-siege, because they can take some hits from catapults without becoming awful units. And Spears don't really worry them. Hence why they're broken under the status quo.

Should they be a primarily anti-knight (well, anti-mounted) unit? I don't think the fact that they crush swords, axes, and archers is a problem. That does lend itself to a 7str, +75% vs. Mounted (+50 isn't really enough to make them be better than Knights, because of imbalanced Combat promos) unit, without the spear and pike buffs.

[Liquidated]

Am a civ4 noob compared to you guys but....

To me, state property's removal of distance cost is overpowered, especially considering the insane cost of so called colony towns. If one isn't running corp spam (free market!), it's almost always better to run state property just on that effect alone. Add to that the tile changes for no real reason and ug.. over powered civic. If corps weren't so 'counter-overpowered', no other civic would compete.

Would love to see SP nerfed, maybe a flat minus to overall hammer production outside of capital. Would represent central planning's hamfisted approach to management.

As for sp's tile improvments, move them off the civic and just make them tech dependent.

Also, is there ever a good time to adopt environmentalism? I cannot honestly see a policy like that helping a world dominating empire, but the civic needs a gameplay boost regardless.

I definitely think oceans should be as good as coastlines after astronomy.

Cheers!
-Liq

[Cyneheard]

Less randomness is better for MP games, so we're not going to enable food resources to pop from water tiles. Also, MP games usually have vassal states off, so the colony maintenance isn't an issue.

State Property would need a nerf if and only if corporations are nerfed as well. Once we see what a corporation-less or less corporate world looks like, then we can try to think about what should be done with SP.