A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[Charriu]

Wait, you *buffed* China? The already-best-civ-remaining-in-game?

Also, I'd rather have some garbage-tier trait like Agg over this Fin.

Ah I see my mistake. Should have reduced the max damage. I don't know where my brain made that error I blame the heat for it.

[Mjmd]

Thanks.


I'm ok with the financial change, but am a bit worried protective didn't get nerfed enough considering its an immediate benefit. However TBS comparing some of the other traits and their immediate benefits, I'll defer to people who know more than me.

[pindicator]

PRO now doesn't get 2c internal trade routes immediately but only after spending 25h on walls. However it doesn't change anything about foreign trade routes because the +150% for foreign will and +50% from PRO means the walls only will affect internal trade routes up until harbors come into play, so depending on how open borders go in the game they may not have to build walls at all and still get a similar midgame. (Honestly, who outside of Carthage builds harbors anyway? EDIT: I guess FIN leaders now.)

Not my preferred direction to take changes to PRO, but it will slow them down at the start. I fear it's just going to make people even less willing to sign open borders with PRO leaders than they are now.

[scooter]

Personally, I think this will stuff Financial in the dumpster. Protective may not be much better? The traits are admittedly kind of on a knife's edge with regards to balance.

[Charriu]

Personally, I think this will stuff Financial in the dumpster. Protective may not be much better? The traits are admittedly kind of on a knife's edge with regards to balance.

Would you say the same about FIN, if the water bonus is unlocked by a different earlier building?

[scooter]

If it was, say, Lighthouse instead I would upgrade it to "one of the weaker traits" maybe rather than worst in the game. I don't think it needed a nerf at all. I think the existing changes make it pretty map-dependent, which maybe is not a bad spot for FIN.


Put another way, if I were playing a new game on the existing 1.3, and you showed me my start, and I saw neither water nor a river, I'm not even considering Financial. If I saw only a little water or only a small slice of river, I likely am not taking it either. 1.4 as is presented, I don't think there's anything you could show me that could convince me to take it.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

The current (1.3) nerf to financial makes it truly powerful around T110 -> T70 is about when you start thinking about non-riverside grassland cottages, and you need 30 turns for them to grow. Before, it hit its "powerspike" pretty much after 10 turns of cottaging those tiles en masse, and gave more niche benefits, e.g. extra commerce on a riverside sheep or some other situations like that. I think if you're adamant about removing fin, get rid of the bonus to banks. Then, the changelog is smaller, the bonus is still there, and we're "close to home".

Edit: just noticed the hunting changes - I think this is better than the previous version. two thumbs up.

[Gaspar]

In the spirit of the previous conversation, I agree that this FIN change puts FIN pretty hard in a dumpster.

Look, FIN is a bad design decision in Civ4. Its the only trait that modifies all of a type of base yield passively. If you want to make it like everything else, you take that away and give something else. You probably modify gold income in some way so its similar to CRE. But if you want things to stay close to base BTS, then I think the current nerf is the best you're going to do without annihilating it or leaving it alone.

I'm of the opinion that I'd rather see more stuff brought up to be closer to FIN so theres not one right choice than to see FIN nerfed so it sucks.

[NobleHelium]

If the inflation change is supposed to be for Tech Trading games, then it should either be tied to that game option or be made into a separate game option. I didn't know people still played Tech Trading games. Changing something like inflation is very scary to me because it is a pervasive yet poorly understood mechanic because it is so subtle, so the danger of it throwing games completely out of whack is very high. And I don't think the game needs more anti-leader mechanisms (I previously thought the change applied to all players in the game equally as the base inflation does). Games where there is a clear leader and very likely winner should be brought to an end, not dragged on for longer which is often tiresome for most if not all of the players (as observed in some of the games I have played) and often leads to regrettable actions.

[T-hawk]

Inflation is counterintuitively a pro-leader mechanism, in unmodified BTS.

Civ A is making 100 commerce, with expenses of 40, modified by +50% inflation to 60, so 40 net beakers.
Civ B is making 90 commerce, with expenses of 40, modified by +50% inflation to 60, so 30 net beakers.

What happens if we double inflation?

Civ A is making 100 commerce, with expenses of 40, modified by +100% inflation to 80, so 20 net beakers.
Civ B is making 90 commerce, with expenses of 40, modified by +100% inflation to 80, so 10 net beakers.

Civ A's advantage relative to Civ B went from 6:5 before any inflation to 4:3 = 133% with medium inflation to 2:1 = 200% with doubled inflation.  More inflation works to help the leader because they have relatively more left over after eating an equal amount of both's headroom.

If you want inflation to retard the leader, then it has to be based on some civ-specific value rather than simply the global turn count.  That's what the change is doing here to take tech progress into account.