Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Cyneheard]

OP updated with new version. Now it's 20/33/46/60.

[Cyneheard]

War Elephants:
7 str/75% vs. Mounted seemed to be the consensus that most of us were looking for; it keeps WE as a knight counter, but weaker against everything else (and removes the clunky Spear/Pike bonuses). However, is the buff to Ballista Elephants about right? It's not been clear to me how much of the don't-take-the-Khmer is due to feeling that the Ballista Elephant is underpowered relative to regular War Elephants, or the expectation that War Elephants aren't going to be available at all. The Baray is a solid UB (although certainly not at the level of the Inca), so it's not like the Ballista Elephant needs to be all that strong to make the Khmer into a viable option (although they are Hunting/Mining, which is an ok-at-best starting pair).

Against Knights, they'll be significantly better, which is fine for a UU, but I'm wondering if they're too good against cuirs and even cav. I'm trying to avoid creating the new Cataphract. A Formation Ballista Elephant, under this scenario, will beat any Mounted unit that's less than a Formation Cav. And it's not like 10XP is all that unreasonable for a mounted UU. However, it's not like the Ballista Elephant can handle anything else at that point, and they have terrible mobility on offense. (HA and Chariots won't notice the difference, they already got slaughtered)

The Ballista Elephant probably needs more than just its current buff of "targets Mounteds first outside of a city". Making the Ballista Elephant 7 str/+100% vs. Mounted is actually worse for a purely anti-Mounted perspective: a Formation 7str, +100% vs. Mounted unit gets odds on a Formation Cav! At a minimum, a Ballista Elephant should get odds on an equally-promoted regular War Elephant. So, this leaves 3 options:
1) Leave the Ballista Elephant as it currently stands. 8str, +75% vs. Mounted units.
2) Marginally tone down the Ballista Elephant to 8str, +65% vs. Mounted units. Now, the Ballista Elephant gets odds on an equivalently-promoted War Elephant, but has no margin for error. A Combat II WE beats a Combat I Ballista (by "beats", I mean "gets 63-65% odds on them")
3) Turn the Ballista Elephants into a 7str/+80% (or 90%) vs. Mounted unit. At 90%, the Combat I Ballista wouldn't really care if its opponent is a Combat I WE (71% odds) or a Combat II WE (65% odds). And equal cav-and-Ballista promotions would favor the Cav, but the Cav would have no margin of error.

I'm planning on getting some more mechanics-testing of the new slavery system Friday, and have obligations Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps next weekend we could try to get some MP games in with the Mod? Hopefully Krill will have a functioning computer by then, I doubt he has much of an idea on when he'd have a reliable machine.

[T-hawk]

The XML supports unit abilities of a bonus-against-specific-unit, right? Can both elephants be given -10% against cuirassiers and against cavalry, or cuirs and cavs get +10% against the elephants? Blunt, but it would patch the problem.

A Formation Ballista Elephant, under this scenario, will beat any Mounted unit that's less than a Formation Cav.

Just to note, that's because the combat system generally applies situational modifiers (anything besides Combat) to the opposite unit. That 75% applies to the cav's big 15 base strength rather than to the elephant's modest 8. Formation is important for the cavalry because the 25% cancels against some of that 75% that's trying to subtract from the cav's strength.

[plako]

Just tried to play a SP game as Ramesses and there is something that AI can't handle properly in the mod. All nations warring have their population shrinking and only Hammurabi that is out of action is doing properly.

[Cyneheard]

That's not good. Didn't think to test how the AI would handle these changes.

I think it's my War Weariness fix.

Two ways to confirm, but I'm undoing half of that change until further notice.

Way 1 to confirm: Plako, try declaring a phony war on an AI that's falling apart, and see what happens to your war weariness?

Way 2: Check the War Weariness of the AIs that are at war. I think this is available through F4, "Relations"?



War Weariness will revert to its original wartime behavior for now. Peacetime should still decay at 10% per turn. Note to self: activating disabled XML values (such as the "WW_Decay_Rate", which I did), can easily lead to unintended consequences. Tweaking values that already existed (Peacetime WW already decayed at 1%)? Not nearly as easily.

Tweaked version (now called RB 0.41): http://db.tt/4xKdzMF
I only changed War Weariness.

[Cyneheard]

Note:

Other way to check:

Demographics, Approval Rating. If it's in the toilet for most of the AI civs (Very obvious through Rival Average), then it's got to be War Weariness.

[T-hawk]

Other other way to check: Worldbuilder yourself some Great Spies in AI cities and use them to infiltrate. With enough EP for Investigate City, you can directly click on each AI city and mouseover any info you want such as happiness.

[plako]

As you suspected war weariness is broken. It raises and really fast when warring.

[Cyneheard]

Well, that's the first case of the XML name being a lie that I've found. "WW_Decay_Rate" should, you know, be how quickly War Weariness DECAYS, not increases. Oh well. V0.41 (OP has been edited) should fix this problem. Thanks for letting me know.

Plako, how's your civ doing? How do you feel about the slavery and tile changes?

[plako]

Plako, how's your civ doing? How do you feel about the slavery and tile changes?

Even if I had plans to take advantage of new features I played quite normally. As always against AI I end up playing my B-game trying to land most of the wonders and beelining to Liberalism. Granted I slaved a bit less than normally and preferred farms and workshops over cottages, but the hammer bonuses really didn't have much effect yet.

This is probably good sign . You can still play as usual although it might not be optimal.