Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[SevenSpirits]

I agree granaries aren't always the right choice btw, if that wasn't clear from what I said.

Granaries are generally competing for builds with settlers, workers, pop growth onto resources, essential military units, and essential culture buildings. What these things have in common is that they can increase your number of worked resource tiles. Granaries are not generally competing with other buildings like libraries, barracks, or (except in rare cases) lighthouses; and certainly they are not competing with expensive buildings from later eras. The output of a granary is so high compared to later buildings that you may even finish the more expensive sooner by building the granary before it! In the rare case that you do not plan to grow a city, you might also skip building a granary entirely.

It's also worth mentioning that there is a time in the game before you can build granaries.

[Krill]

To add to what Seven has to say, there are times when it works out better to stagger granary builds in cities. Stagnate one city on hills to build the granary whilst a newer city uses shared food to grow a few pop points, then stagnate the new city to build the granary so the older city that just finished the granary grows on the food resource. There are enough micro tricks that exist to maximize output that there is no straight forward one right choice for most of those options without understanding the strategic context of the game.

I'm not going to do anything to the granary in this mod. Perhaps at some point in the future I spend some time on a complete redesign of the game economic, for a completely different mod for fun, but not for this. It doesn't fit the context of the aims of this mod.

As to the rivers, that's not a justification for why they should be changed, as Seven eloquently explains.

[WilliamLP]

I would side with those who want RBMod to be a rebalancing mod. And I agree that any significant change to granaries would change the game too much. (Thought question: how much would you build them if they stored 25% of the food box or some other value lower than 50%?)

RBMod seems to have two aspects to it:
1. A rebalance of BtS using minor numeric tweaks and removing blatantly broken things.
2. An experimental mod that tries to make a more balanced game by significantly altering gameplay, and the only such mod that many skilled players would agree to use for a long game.

This is nothing but subjective, but I would prefer it if it were only #1. This is perhaps because I haven't played the years of BtS to be jaded by it.

Fundamental changes in RBMod where I would prefer to have the BtS way reverted or a tweak of it:

- Barracks give culture. Mysticism is devalued more. This is not a balance change but a fundamental one that changes too much about early game decisions for my liking.

- Map trading at writing. This changes the metagame into one I don't enjoy as much. It diminishes the value of effective early land scouting. One of my favourite things about Civ is exploring and trying to use a better knowledge of the map to make long term decisions, which mostly goes away when everyone knows the map. And map trading is such a win-win that everyone will do it - you either are in the "know everything" crowd or know nothing. I like the game where everyone has a very incomplete picture of the map for a long time. (It also makes for a more fun lurker experience, if this is a factor. )

- Open borders at Alphabet. This is another change that clearly isn't just a balance tweak. And I don't like what it changes: there's no longer any incentive to try and get a peaceful trade relationship with someone very early. And there's no in-game downside to stupid tactics like scout chokes anymore - before it would devalue trade routes for a very long and significant time.

(Some of this is a rehash of posts I made in a private thread. I'm not trying to stamp my feet or something, but I'm just interested in the discussion from a wider audience.)

[suttree]

(Thought question: how much would you build them if they stored 25% of the food box or some other value lower than 50%?)

And how would it change the game if you increased the cost of a new pop by 50%?

[flugauto]

I would side with those who want RBMod to be a rebalancing mod. And I agree that any significant change to granaries would change the game too much. (Thought question: how much would you build them if they stored 25% of the food box or some other value lower than 50%?)

RBMod seems to have two aspects to it:
1. A rebalance of BtS using minor numeric tweaks and removing blatantly broken things.
2. An experimental mod that tries to make a more balanced game by significantly altering gameplay, and the only such mod that many skilled players would agree to use for a long game.

This is nothing but subjective, but I would prefer it if it were only #1. This is perhaps because I haven't played the years of BtS to be jaded by it.

Fundamental changes in RBMod where I would prefer to have the BtS way reverted or a tweak of it:

- Barracks give culture. Mysticism is devalued more. This is not a balance change but a fundamental one that changes too much about early game decisions for my liking.

- Map trading at writing. This changes the metagame into one I don't enjoy as much. It diminishes the value of effective early land scouting. One of my favourite things about Civ is exploring and trying to use a better knowledge of the map to make long term decisions, which mostly goes away when everyone knows the map. And map trading is such a win-win that everyone will do it - you either are in the "know everything" crowd or know nothing. I like the game where everyone has a very incomplete picture of the map for a long time. (It also makes for a more fun lurker experience, if this is a factor. )

- Open borders at Alphabet. This is another change that clearly isn't just a balance tweak. And I don't like what it changes: there's no longer any incentive to try and get a peaceful trade relationship with someone very early. And there's no in-game downside to stupid tactics like scout chokes anymore - before it would devalue trade routes for a very long and significant time.

(Some of this is a rehash of posts I made in a private thread. I'm not trying to stamp my feet or something, but I'm just interested in the discussion from a wider audience.)

I don't like the granary's magic food - 50%, 25% or even 5% - it is not good. How about making granary +1 happy, +1 trade route and the old health bonus?

I agree about the barracks' culture, it breaks the game, but Krill likes it, so it is the right thing to do.

Map trading and OB I am neutral about.

[WilliamLP]

I agree about the barracks' culture, it breaks the game, but Krill likes it, so it is the right thing to do.

That's not fair or valuable to the discussion to make it a personal attack. Some of Krill's core principles and goals are different from what you or I would want to achieve but he's clearly trying to achieve a strategically deep game with more varied viable starting and gameplay options.

[Krill]

I would side with those who want RBMod to be a rebalancing mod. And I agree that any significant change to granaries would change the game too much. (Thought question: how much would you build them if they stored 25% of the food box or some other value lower than 50%?)

RBMod seems to have two aspects to it:
1. A rebalance of BtS using minor numeric tweaks and removing blatantly broken things.
2. An experimental mod that tries to make a more balanced game by significantly altering gameplay, and the only such mod that many skilled players would agree to use for a long game.

This is nothing but subjective, but I would prefer it if it were only #1. This is perhaps because I haven't played the years of BtS to be jaded by it.

Your second point is basically a subset of the first, and TBH an intended consequence of the changes. For example, changes to the hammer output in slavery affects a significant proportion of the game with a huge change to gameplay: value of specific tile improvements, relative value of food and hammers on a tile, value of worker turns (and MM), value of granaries (decreases them slightly), value of a standing army...

Fundamental changes in RBMod where I would prefer to have the BtS way reverted or a tweak of it:

- Barracks give culture. Mysticism is devalued more. This is not a balance change but a fundamental one that changes too much about early game decisions for my liking.

Mysticism is not really devalued as much as you'd think: Monuments are literally the worst possible way to pop borders, except none aggressive barracks that are double the cost and provide an additional bonus that is not relevant at that stage of the game. Henge, religion, CRE are all still better ways to pop borders, and the dotmapping to have the relevant tiles within the inner ring still exists. The change that exists is strictly better for AGG leaders alone; the option to ignore Myst does exist for the others but the additional cost of the city improvement has to be weighed against the tech cost, and frankly, that cost is just horrendously high.

Also, don't use PB15 as a way to judge the choice between barracks and monuments. That game has been setup with such abnormal parameters overall game balance isn't really comparable to PB13, which would be a good game to analyse.

- Map trading at writing. This changes the metagame into one I don't enjoy as much. It diminishes the value of effective early land scouting. One of my favourite things about Civ is exploring and trying to use a better knowledge of the map to make long term decisions, which mostly goes away when everyone knows the map. And map trading is such a win-win that everyone will do it - you either are in the "know everything" crowd or know nothing. I like the game where everyone has a very incomplete picture of the map for a long time. (It also makes for a more fun lurker experience, if this is a factor. )

As I've said before, what lurkers want doesn't matter, games are for the players, so basically screw lurker opinion. Now, when you say that early map trading diminishes the effects of early scouting...civ is a 4X game, and the first part is definitely to explore. Unfortunately, it's been shown enough times that worker first is the optimal way to play out a game, regardless of when map trading is available, that I don't think it's fair to say that early exploration has ever been a good idea, or even that it is highly valued, in BtS. The economic cost to exploring is just too high. So the most you get to scout with really is the starting unit (and fuck it, it's even a scout so you actually do get to scout more that in base BtS).

But early scouting is not just about figuring out the entire map, it's about figuring out the local layout for dot mapping, resources and early game strategy including any necessary military action. Even with Writing enabling map trading, that really gives you at absolute least 50 odd turns without map trading, and potentially up to about 75, map dependent. On top of that, you can't expect map trading to give you an understanding of you local needs, and players will be scouting out their own localities. Map trading is useful in understanding what your opponents are planning on doing, as you get maps of their locality.

You say that "Exploring and trying to use a better knowledge of the map to make long term decisions, which mostly goes away when everyone knows the map." But this doesn't really make sense. You gain information, and more information only improves decision making, it doesn't make decision making irrelevant (what might do is that you realize the game is already one or lost at this point however, which is more likely to be the case the longer the game has gone on). I think that you mean you try to make better decisions than your opponents, due to improved map knowledge. The only thing here I'd really think worth disputing is that I don't think that it's map trading you don't like, it's actually when you can map trade. The time frame of when map trading should occur is a decent question TBH.

- Open borders at Alphabet. This is another change that clearly isn't just a balance tweak. And I don't like what it changes: there's no longer any incentive to try and get a peaceful trade relationship with someone very early. And there's no in-game downside to stupid tactics like scout chokes anymore - before it would devalue trade routes for a very long and significant time.

(Some of this is a rehash of posts I made in a private thread. I'm not trying to stamp my feet or something, but I'm just interested in the discussion from a wider audience.)

There are many reasons that peace is generally useful, such as not pissing someone off so they militarize towards you, trading resources, and also, war causes the OB %age modifier to be reset. Even an early war means that the modifier doesn't rest by the time that Alphabet can be researched. OB is just not the only reason to not act like a jerk to someone.

On top of that OB contributes a significant amount of commerce to the tech rate (because costs are constant, OB can be considered as straight beaker generation), and affects it in an unequal fashion. Trade routes over coast, and over rivers require significantly less investment than via roads, so I'm sure it's understandable how much the map affects game balance through start locations and random geographical features. The commerce from river tiles I think is understandable, but it's the random trade routes that they enable that actually generates a significant proportion of the commerce. Routes via coast at least require Sailing and a hammer investment, as opposed to just the Sailing tech for routes via rivers.

[Commodore]

So I've said it before, suggested events changes:
Out with Slave Revolts (nerfed more reliably)
Quests fire for one person, then they fire for all players.
Maybe uprisings only with raging barbs?

[Krill]

Events?

Does that solve even a twentieth of the problems?

[Commodore]

Yep! Almost one tenth (most unfun removed, plus adds quests as more of a game thing like our current quests of "religion", "Liberalism", and "world wonders")