Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

Clearly if WBs cost 1 hammer, you wouldn't say there's no reason to start with fishing, and that seafood capital starts were weak. What's wrong with finding the sweet spot between 1 and 30 where you'd be hard pressed to decide whether you'd prefer to have fish or wet corn in your capital?

Because that valuation would still vary depending on the food resources available at the capital; there is a big difference between fresh water fish and ocean crabs. For example the hallowed 6 hammer start can hook up 2 fresh water fish by T10 and be size 2 with 10 food in the food box and be size 2, if you start with EXP/Fishing in this mod. You try that with a shitty 2 hammer start and ocean crab and everyone will laugh scornfully at you.

[regoarrarr]

Odd thought but is it possible that netting seafood doesn't consume the workboat?

[SevenSpirits]

The other point is something that has been pissing me off for ages, and that is work boats. I gave an example of how they could be redesigned but really, I'm not doing that. ToW used the idea of increasing the cost of Fishing, and making work boat available without any tech as a potential solution, but I disagree with that solution for the following reason:

There is now no reason to want to start with Fishing because everyone can go work boat first and you only research Fishing if you have to, and if you have to research it to hook up a food resource that puts you further behind on getting to BW, to AH, to Pottery. Increasing the cost just makes it more of a punishment if you actually have to get Fishing; you either spend longer researching it, or you have a restricted amount of civs that you can choose from because you have to start with Fishing. On top of that, you have to invest 30 hammers into improving a single tile whereas the first worker you complete on T15 will over the course of the next 235 turns improve something along thee lines of 25 roads, 20 farms, 10 mines and 10 cottages give or take some wasted movement. They just don't compare. the problem with seafood isn't so much that it exists, just that at a capital there is too much pressure on resources to improve seafood.

The time that seafood works best is if the additional tile yield from improving seafood first (due to the lower cost of the work boat) is enough to make up the time on building the worker, and makes up the remainder of the cost whilst the worker improves the first resource tile. There aren't that many times where this works, because the capital needs to have high hammer output to get the work boat finished quickly (as opposed to high food output, either works in building a worker, but the work boat MUST have a high hammer start), and THEN the tile that is improved has to be at least 5 food in output to make up the lost ground. So a plains hill capital with plains hill forest with dry rice and freshwater fish: work boat first is great, better than worker first. flat capital with wet corn and ocean crab and only grass/plains forests = worker first every time.

This is no different from base BtS or this mod. So far I haven't seen or found any good solution that isn't a variant on modding the map generator to remove all seafood from the capital.

I think there are three problems related to seafood resources. Problem A is that when you have fishing but have no seafood, fishing is kind of a dead weight, and you get screwed by variance. Problem B is that when you have (good) seafood but no fishing, it can significantly hurt your opening if going WB first would have been ideal. Again you're screwed by variance. Problem C is about the relative expected value of Fishing vs other starting techs, i.e. if you could choose, would you take fishing or something else? (And in BTS, the answer is you should not take fishing.)

Now, talking about possible changes that can be made.

* Raising the cost of fishing seems like it helps with problem A, but really it just increases the average value of starting with fishing and doesn't reduce the variance. So actually it's helping with problem C, and not A. But raising the cost of fishing also exacerbates problem B. Now if you have a strong seafood resource and don't start with fishing it will take you even longer to research it.

* Making WBs not require fishing doesn't affect problem A at all, but it does a lot to help with problem B. If you have seafood but no fishing, now you are not screwed, but merely inconvenienced because you have to research fishing now. The effect on problem C is mildly detrimental - we're removing the a big downside of not-fishing, which is that you can get screwed by needing it at the start.

If you make both changes, then IMO you've pretty much solved B, but left A and C approximately as they were. To solve A, you need to reduce the variance in value of fishing as a starting tech (and depending on how you do it, this could solve C, too). Maybe this means giving it some extra utility that's unrelated to whether you have a seafood start. (It does already have some: it lets you work water tiles which is occasionally useful, and it lets you research pottery. But that's not much.) For example if you withhold the +1c from riverside tiles until the player has researched fishing, that would give the tech some value that's totally independent of seafood and is likely to affect a lot of starts. Then you could leave the cost low and make WBs not require the tech, and maybe you're good.

[Krill]

Way too drunk to comment productively, but pretty much. The main problems being that any changes to Fishing such as giving it riverside commerce is a pretty big change...though a fun though experiment is what happens if Fishing gives cottages...

But really, that's a problem with Fishing as a technology, whereas the problem is specifically with the tile output from seafood and the cost to improve it. Yes it's linked, but changing the cost of Fishing doesn't help make work boats more or less expensive, and improving seafood more or less economically viable. I actually think that Fishing at 40 is reasonable, but here is one concept.

Remove Agriculture from leading to Pottery. Fishing then becomes the only way to reach it: not like anyone is going to complain about having Fishing at that point. That pretty much solves problem A straight up IMO. Make workboats buildable without Fishing. Solves problem B, as you said. Problem C solved to a variable degree depending on civ due to the desire to get to Pottery.

I'd actually do ancilliary nerfs such as lowering the cost of Hunting to ensure that Agriculture doesn't get nerfed too much.

But none of this really solves the problem that seafood is not really that desirable to start with because of the start up costs. Maybe it simply is best if work boat costs got dropped to 20 hammers.

[Krill]

Odd thought but is it possible that netting seafood doesn't consume the workboat?

Yes but at that point 2 work boats can hook up pretty much every seafood tile ever and there are new problems...

[The Black Sword]

I really like the way Tides of War has dealt with the Fishing problem.

I think, in general, you're under-valuing WBs Krill. Yes, the value does obviously depend on what resource you're hooking up, but then so does the worker. I think its fair to assume fishing start=5f water tile. If a map gives one side clams and another river corn, that's not the fault of fishing. I don't think I've seen any starts in recent games where everyone didn't have at least a 5f tile at their capital.

You keep talking about WBs as 30h down the drain, but via chopping a worker can change 4 worker turns into 20h. So, you can roughly equate a fish tile as taking 6 worker turns to improve. A farm costs 5 worker turns, so a 5/0/2 water tile is pretty competitive with a number of other resources, especially taking into account the flexibility of other sources of hammers.

Another example, suppose you only have a 1/2 tile in your capital's BFC, no plains hill, and consider the case of fish first ring vs a farm first ring. It takes 10t to build the first WB on that tile and then a further 10 turns to get out a worker. That's compared to a 15t worker and 5t farm. The fish start is up ~20c vs ~8f, depending on various yields obviously. And that's a reasonably weak fish start.

Assuming tech isn't an issue for that WB, it looks quite possible for mapmakers to balance a fishing start vs a land food based one. If you don't think so, then I definitely agree with William that it's a simple matter of decreasing WB cost until the equations match up.

Once you have a fair WB cost, you're just talking about the value of the tech and I think Tides of War balances them out well. Though, perhaps there is still an AH problem where you always want at least one of Hunting or Agriculture, but then at least if you don't pick either, you're up beakers. In general though, the techs with more immediate utility are cheaper, so it's always a trade-off between beakers and flexibility(exactly why I might choose Fishing over Agriculture).

[Krill]

I really like the way Tides of War has dealt with the Fishing problem.

I think, in general, you're under-valuing WBs Krill. Yes, the value does obviously depend on what resource you're hooking up, but then so does the worker. I think its fair to assume fishing start=5f water tile. If a map gives one side clams and another river corn, that's not the fault of fishing. I don't think I've seen any starts in recent games where everyone didn't have at least a 5f tile at their capital.

The value of the worker actually doesn't depend that much on what first tile it will improve, because the worker has value beyond that tile: it will continue to road, to chop, mine...the worker will constantly pay back by improving new tiles. A work boat doesn't so it inherently has lower value. That is part of the reason the work boat cost is lower than that of the worker.

You keep talking about WBs as 30h down the drain, but via chopping a worker can change 4 worker turns into 20h. So, you can roughly equate a fish tile as taking 6 worker turns to improve. A farm costs 5 worker turns, so a 5/0/2 water tile is pretty competitive with a number of other resources, especially taking into account the flexibility of other sources of hammers.

I don't think it's a fair comparison to state a worker can chop 20 hammers into a work boat and not consider that the worker could also be chopping 20 hammers into a worker which will improve more than a single tile. That's assuming you have BW, ignoring oppurtunity costs of improving different tiles to chopping, or even chopping different items such as workers and settlers...it's fair to state that 30 hammers will improve a single tile, because that's what work boats do.

Another example, suppose you only have a 1/2 tile in your capital's BFC, no plains hill, and consider the case of fish first ring vs a farm first ring. It takes 10t to build the first WB on that tile and then a further 10 turns to get out a worker. That's compared to a 15t worker and 5t farm. The fish start is up ~20c vs ~8f, depending on various yields obviously. And that's a reasonably weak fish start.

That's forgetting that worker first has a further 5 turns to build a warrior, so missing at least 5 hammers into that; warriors are drastically underrated IMO. It's also missing that the 20 commerce doesn't cover the cost of Fishing so still behind on research to BW/AH/Pottery/whatever; these extra variables make work boat starts consistently worse. I've already said that there are certain starts where work boat first is the best possible play; I agree there is a point at which work boat first is generally equivalent to worker first, but unfortunately seafood is balanced such that the value is greatly variable not just because of the resource tile but also because of hte other tiles within the capital BFC and starting 8 workable tiles.

Assuming tech isn't an issue for that WB, it looks quite possible for mapmakers to balance a fishing start vs a land food based one. If you don't think so, then I definitely agree with William that it's a simple matter of decreasing WB cost until the equations match up.

You can't assume that tech doesn't matter, and yes, it's possible for a map maker to go through and create a perfectly balanced map...but that's not what players want to play on. All changing the value of work boats accomplishes is to make some work boat first starts even better whilst dragging up some of hte worse starts to acceptability. It doesn't actually solve the variability in the value of those starts.

[The Black Sword]

I don't see the variability between seafood starts as a problem, there is variability(of similar size) in land based food starts also. And as I said, I don't see a coast crab/clam as a sea food start, unless you're given some other advantage or everyone else is given a similarly poor quality, I see it as being screwed over by the map-maker.

The value of the worker actually doesn't depend that much on what first tile it will improve, because the worker has value beyond that tile: it will continue to road, to chop, mine...the worker will constantly pay back by improving new tiles. A work boat doesn't so it inherently has lower value. That is part of the reason the work boat cost is lower than that of the worker.

The value of the worker is not solely in the first tile it will improve but it is dependent on it, particularly if you're making a choice between WB and worker.

I don't think it's a fair comparison to state a worker can chop 20 hammers into a work boat and not consider that the worker could also be chopping 20 hammers into a worker which will improve more than a single tile. That's assuming you have BW, ignoring oppurtunity costs of improving different tiles to chopping, or even chopping different items such as workers and settlers...it's fair to state that 30 hammers will improve a single tile, because that's what work boats do.

I don't see how it isn't a fair comparison. The first action a worker generally takes is to improve your best resource. If that resource is a fish tile, 'improving' that resource can be done by chopping a forest. It is assuming BW, but tbh all I am looking for is a rough equation between hammers and worker turns and you generally want BW fairly early anyway.

That's forgetting that worker first has a further 5 turns to build a warrior, so missing at least 5 hammers into that; warriors are drastically underrated IMO. It's also missing that the 20 commerce doesn't cover the cost of Fishing so still behind on research to BW/AH/Pottery/whatever; these extra variables make work boat starts consistently worse. I've already said that there are certain starts where work boat first is the best possible play; I agree there is a point at which work boat first is generally equivalent to worker first, but unfortunately seafood is balanced such that the value is greatly variable not just because of the resource tile but also because of hte other tiles within the capital BFC and starting 8 workable tiles.

Whoops, I did forget those warrior hammers, I agree that's non-trivial. Still, I did say that was a weak start and it is probably competitive with weaker land resources like dry corn.

I don't agree that you have to add in the cost of fishing though. Every food resource requires a tech to connect; fish, grains or animals. All of which will take you away from BW and fishing is a Pottery pre-req just like agriculture.

When I say tech doesn't matter for the WB I mean that you can start building it without fishing(as in ToW) and don't have the huge delay.

[T-hawk]

Don't forget the work boat improves the tile immediately rather than taking 4 turns of labor. That difference recovers 9 food that should be netted out against the cost of the work boat compared to the worker.

Seafood and land food are different and vive la difference. If balance matters, the map maker should give everyone the same type of food. If there isn't a map maker... Have you considered including balanced multiplayer-oriented map scripts in the mod?

[suttree]

tbh all I am looking for is a rough equation between hammers and worker turns and you generally want BW fairly early anyway.

I think you might be overvaluing the cost of worker turns by using the return on a forest chop.

A worker costs 60h on normal speed. Others have told me that a good model for the growth rate in civ4 is a doubling every 30T. The opportunity cost of building a worker, then, should be 120h, 30T from now. So a raw estimate of the cost of a worker turn is (120h-60h)/30T=2h/t. The return will vary, of course. Later in the game, when workers cost g/t maintenance, worker turns become more expensive.

We want to estimate the cost of a workboat netting fish in early-game worker turns. That is, in our model, a workboat will cost 30h, take N turns to net a fish tile, and we'll be no worse off than if we had invested those 30h in a worker that takes N turns to develop a similar tile.

Since, outside our model, the WB nets the fish immediately, we need to discount the cost of the workboat by 3(N-1) food. The hammer value of food depends on the size of the city and the presence of a granary, so let's restrict our attention to the case where the city is size 2 without a granary - we're modeling the early game, after all.

So 3(N-1) food is worth: (30/24)*3(N-1)=3.75(N-1) hammers.
In our model, then, we have 30h-3.75(N-1)=2N. Solving for N gives N=5.9 worker turns.

It speaks to the balance of civ4 that this number is close to the number TBS calculated based on the return on chopping, but please note that the argument is very different. Krill is right that the return on chopping is a poor approximation for the hammer cost of worker turns, but TBS is right that 30h is not "30h down the drain." Even as compared to a worker that goes on to build many other improvements, a workboat is not a bad investment. If we don't have riverside grain, and the micro works out, it could be the better investment. The continuous stream of improvements provided by the worker is paid for by the 30h extra up front cost that could be spent on something else.