Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[novice]

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.

I don't know if Commodore was referring to the BUFFY solution as the fix or the bug. In the latest build of RB Mod there is such a "fix", but it has the unfortunate side effect that the player landing Oracle/Liberalism needs to be logged in when the turn rolls to get a tech at all. It had never been tested in a pitboss before, apparently.

So the fix needs to be fixed or removed. It's not like anybody would grab two techs from Oracle/Lib anyway even if there's an exploit allowing it.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Certainly not in a pitboss game with people watching score via civstats.

[T-hawk]

I backed out the Oracle/Liberalism fix after that Pitboss problem. The latest code on the Github is after that backout. I think we decided we can trust players not to abuse it, since nobody really wanted to spend time hacking on the code to fix it for Pitboss too.

[flugauto]

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.

a) A big civilization can benefit from this multibuild too. Having more cities, it can benefit more.
b) A big civilization can build/conquere those strong wonders too.
c) A big civilization can use those new infra builds too. Having more cities it can benefit more again.

In other words, if you give something to a small civilization and you give it to a big civilization too, this usually makes a big civilization even stronger. Unless what you give is extra costs.

[Qgqqqqq]

His point is that the small empire would be able to build vertically so that its few cities are able to benefit from new infrastructure options and wonders because it has not had to invest as much in expansion. Multi-build inherently favors only cities with large production capacity, which means large cities and/or cities with production multipliers, which again come about in more vertically focussed empires.
The idea is not to gain benefits simply by virtue of being small, as RefSteel said, as then expansion at all is discouraged leading to a very unnatural game. The idea is to be able to gain benefits in spite of being small, gaining from new infrastructure and wonders in a way that a larger empire COULD do, but would delay expansion and favor vertical growth, in other words, it is adding a trade off between early investment in expansion and investment in infrastructure. And the larger empire should still, eventually, catch them as they grow their cities sufficiently and catch up in infrastructure, but it gives the small empire a period in which they might gain an advantage and exploit it. (I would also add more growing improvements which function like cottages so there is another investment available.)
But this is all conjecture, and I agree has no part in RBmod.

[NobleHelium]

I backed out the Oracle/Liberalism fix after that Pitboss problem. The latest code on the Github is after that backout. I think we decided we can trust players not to abuse it, since nobody really wanted to spend time hacking on the code to fix it for Pitboss too.

I don't even know how to abuse it...

[Dhalphir]

There's an Oracle (and presumably Liberalism) bug with PBEMs. I'm playing a duel with Whosit using RBMod 2.0.3.5, and I built the Oracle. When I loaded the save of the turn where I got to pick my tech, I got the tech selection window, but no tech was added, and I got the console debug line "TXT_key_cheaters_never_prosper"

Did some googling - it seems that the Oracle doesn't like it when you load a savegame on the turn that you get the Oracle and breaks. Since PBEMs load a savegame twice a turn, it happens every time.

You can't fix this with worldbuildering since you can't do that in a PBEM, so I think this ought to be looked at.

[NobleHelium]

You do realize the last ten posts of this thread are talking about this very item, right?

[Dhalphir]

I know they were talking about the issue in Pitbosses, but I didn't see any PBEM mentions. They also seemed a bit unclear on whether it was present in 2.0.3.5, so I'm confirming that it is.

[Bigger]

well thats dissappointing. we found a work around for PB but it doesn't seem like it would work for pbem's. I had hoped to play an rbmod pbem eventually, but that kind of makes it unplayable, unless you ban oracle and liberalism, heh.