Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...sp=sharing

Read that. I got about a third of the way through then gave up.

[Krill]

OK, so if anyone really wants events fixed, then the best way to go about it IMO is to figure out what the end point should look like. Exactly what sort of events should still exist, and which ones have to be ripped out? And why? What are the design aims of that mechanic (because frankly this is the one mechanic that I really do think would justify a complete redesign).

[Old Harry]

I think events are useful for extra flavour. What if they just gave you C&D-lite clues about foreign civs? eg "Rumours abound that Babylonians have tamed wild beasts" if Babylon gets AH. Or perhaps hints that you haven't got enough workers/libraries/army etc. Get Commodore to write some impenetrable flavour text and they'll be arcane enough to confuse everyone.

Hopefully you get flavour without affecting balance. Otherwise just remove them.

[Qgqqqqq]

And then people will just look them up in the XML, and know exactly what it means. I don't like that idea.
I suppose I would suggest increasing the occurrence of events, and making them very small effects - for example muris clan goblins and the opposite, options to pay for getting +gpt/bpt/cpt on a building, lost improvements, barbarian events that are like one unit and receive no UnitAI (basically a held unit on a tile), pay for short-term happiness, pay for free building, receive a small bonus to research/gold and so on. Save the big things for quests.

[Commodore]

Well events (excepting quests...as mentioned before, quests should be game-wide and then its just another race like wonders/techs) are kind of contradictory to "fixed" in the balance sense of the word. They are for *more* randomness, which if you are looking at this as a competition vehicle to optimize...yeah, that's not something that works. But events are cool little random things that can increase the fun of playing, that give small choices at times, and that add some nice flavor to the world. I didn't purpose tossing out slave revolts because they're imbalanced, but because they are intensely unfun. Likewise, maybe, uprisings, although I could see Queeg's Held AI also working.

But if you would rather turn a cylindrical map into a toroid to increase balance I don't see how you would ever want events on.

[Krill]

Why not just expand the amount and type of quests available in each game then? I figure that is probably a better idea than doing stuff with ordinary events. Yes, that would mean creating new stuff, but I that's fine IMO.

[Commodore]

That would be fine too, but I guess events will just generally be a difference of opinions.

Pinging briefly on serfdom once again as I look lustfully at a ton of hills...would it be possible for it to enable building longbows with food? Another way of solving the military emergency issue as well as the "what do I do with all this food particularly when I need fewer workers?"

[Krill]

Events are pretty much going to be a difference of opinion regardless of how they are implemented; it's not like people don't have a difference of opinion on anything else in the game like combat.

As to Building stuff with food, simply put, why? I don't even see a military emergency problem.

[Thoth]

Pinging briefly on serfdom once again as I look lustfully at a ton of hills...would it be possible for it to enable building longbows with food? Another way of solving the military emergency issue as well as the "what do I do with all this food particularly when I need fewer workers?"

As to Building stuff with food, simply put, why? I don't even see a military emergency problem.

I'm not convinced that building LBs with food is the solution but I do see the military emergency problem.

Slavery lets you produce a lot of hammers very, very fast in an emergency. Serfdom or Caste might produce more hammers in the long haul (depending on terrain and improvement choices) but they have no way of producing "burst" hammers in the event of an emergency. So even with the nerf, it's tough to give up in favour of another civic no matter how good the other civic is.

How about adding the ability to cash rush to Caste and Serfdom? Cash rushing isn't what you want to be doing pre-Banks but would be handy in an emergency as a replacement for pop rushing.
This would reduce the value of Universal Sufferage as the cash rushing ability would be available via Labour civics. Perhaps a reduction in cost to Low for US? And an increase to Medium for Serfdom and Caste?

I'm not sold on this idea, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see if it sticks to the wall.

[Krill]

I'm not convinced that building LBs with food is the solution but I do see the military emergency problem.

Slavery lets you produce a lot of hammers very, very fast in an emergency. Serfdom or Caste might produce more hammers in the long haul (depending on terrain and improvement choices) but they have no way of producing "burst" hammers in the event of an emergency. So even with the nerf, it's tough to give up in favour of another civic no matter how good the other civic is.

That's a good thing though, because there is a decision to make between the three civics.

FWIW, I think one of the main problems with managing the switch between Slavery and other civics, in either base BtS or RB mod, is to do with how and when to build military units, how to position them effectively, and in good dot maps. Players need a larger standing army and more defenders in place before it makes sense to swap out of slavery, plus they need to constantly supplement the fastmover/siege stack. That's part of the calculation about whether it is a good idea to move out, which as you stated can be stated as: Are the increased per turn hammers, minus the proportion dedicated to military, enough to offset the loss of slaving.

How about adding the ability to cash rush to Caste and Serfdom? Cash rushing isn't what you want to be doing pre-Banks but would be handy in an emergency as a replacement for pop rushing.
This would reduce the value of Universal Sufferage as the cash rushing ability would be available via Labour civics. Perhaps a reduction in cost to Low for US? And an increase to Medium for Serfdom and Caste?

I'm not sold on this idea, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see if it sticks to the wall.

I'm fairly sure that giving cash rush to those civics would be bit...broken towards the end of the game.