Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Commodore]

Ugh, so Krill, is there a fix in for the Oracle/Liberalism bug? That would be lovely if at all viable.

[Serdoa]

Probably already discussed and dismissed or simply crazy but could the workboat not simply be deleted from the game completely and instead the worker made amphibious and able to improve water-resources? You still need Fishing of course but that leads to Pottery as does Agri and Agri as well as Hunting lead to AH. And this way at least everyone can get his worker and isn't behind just because he has only 2 crabs as starting food.

[slowcheetah]

Probably already discussed and dismissed or simply crazy but could the workboat not simply be deleted from the game completely and instead the worker made amphibious and able to improve water-resources? You still need Fishing of course but that leads to Pottery as does Agri and Agri as well as Hunting lead to AH. And this way at least everyone can get his worker and isn't behind just because he has only 2 crabs as starting food.

Just as a counterpoint. It'd mean you could hide your workers on lakes with impunity. Not sure that's a huge deal, but it'd be important occasionally.

[Krill]

We interrupt this drinking session to answer player questions.

Ugh, so Krill, is there a fix in for the Oracle/Liberalism bug? That would be lovely if at all viable.

I'm looking at emails now. I think there was a solution found, but it has not as yet been implemented.

It will be before another PB starts (it shouldn't matter in a PBEM IIUC).

And we now return you to your drinking session.

[flugauto]

In BTS and RBmod small civilizations have little to no chance to win. To allow small civilizations to stay competitive, lets make +10% tech cost per city beyond ((the number of cities to build the forbidden palace) * (number of GovernmentCenter buildings /Palace, FP, Versailles/)).

[Krill]

Fuck no.

[Krill]

This is not civ 5.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Small empires shouldn't win. Unless the small empire somehow supports a massive army that is presently killing everyone and everything, small just means you're waiting to die.

[RefSteel]

In BTS and RBmod small civilizations have little to no chance to win.

I like the idea of making it possible for an empire to be strong in spite of being small, but I don't think that doing so is within the scope of RBMod, nor should it be. ("Balance" and "ideas I like" are not perfect synonyms.)

Moreover, in my opinion, the method suggested above (and the methods used in Civ5) do not accomplish this. In theory, they might cause an empire to be strong because of being small, but that is something entirely different, forcing every player down the same path, and leading to numerous unanticipated problems. Some better alternatives are out there, fortunately:

1) Play on a smaller map (both in nominal size and in tiles per civilization). No mod required. Relatively large empires will still have advantages, but each empire will have fewer cities and units to micromanage. (I believe a PBeM of this type is starting up right now, actually).

2) Make a different mod that's actually dedicated to the purpose. I would advise accomplishing this not by penalizing large civs but by increasing the theoretical potential of smaller ones. For starters: (Spoiled because these are suggestions for a totally different mod, not suggestions for RBMod!)

a) Rethink the build queue. Instead of being capped at the cost of whatever you were building, overflow could be applied (with multipliers divided back out as in the base game) on the same turn that the previous build is produced, to the next thing in the queue. If the overflow would complete that next thing, it is completed on the same turn, potentially with further overflow into whatever follows it in the build queue (and so on). Any overflow in excess of what is necessary to build everything queued for construction is lost (or turned into gold, at least post-Currency) at the end of the turn. Note that as a side-effect, this also makes it more difficult to (in effect) put hammers into something like a wonder before its tech and/or multiplier resource is ready. Some would argue this side-effect is a good thing, but I am actually ambivalent about it, as massive preparation for a key build is fun to arrange. This change would also strengthen slavery (and chops) as the only effective means of "banking" production in advance without overflow that lasts through the interturn. I suspect food should be turned into hammers only if a Worker/Settler is first in the build queue. (Note this strengthens Exp and Imp leaders however.)

b) Add (and/or modify existing) early-ish Wonders to provide strong benefits in the single city where each is built.

c) Add new infrastructure builds, including some that either raise size caps or are built with food as well as hammers, balancing them so that choosing between infra and workers/settlers is a meaningful and situational choice in the early-ish game.

Balancing a mod like this would be extremely difficult, and if successful, in order for the game to remain fun and varied, would still see larger empires usually win -- but in the right circumstances, with the right strategy and execution, an empire with just a few really amazing cities would carry the day. This would happen not because the smaller empire loftily refrained from expanding, but because it successfully followed a strategy, based on its terrain, leader, civ, and neighbors, that made infrastructure and wonders more valuable to it than expansion at a time when everyone else was filling up much of what would otherwise have been its land.

If smaller empires are as likely to win as larger ones, there is nothing to gain by expanding, and therefore no point in invading another empire outside of a duel (or a case of two front runners so far ahead of the pack that it might as well be a duel between them). The game becomes a sandbox competition, and we can have sandbox competitions without a special mod or MP game. Still, I do think a mod could be built that allowed a small-empire strategy -- if the game situation allowed it, and it was executed correctly, including landing one or more key early wonders -- to remain competitive, and that would be pretty neat.

[Ruff_Hi]

Ugh, so Krill, is there a fix in for the Oracle/Liberalism bug? That would be lovely if at all viable.

I'm looking at emails now. I think there was a solution found, but it has not as yet been implemented.

BUFFY included a fix that set a flag once you had selected a tech thus not letting you select a second. I think it is in the latest build. Obviously requires the dll route.