Realms Beyond Balance Mod for Civ6

[pindicator]

I would try +1 food, and make farms give a full point of housing rather than half.

Or maybe even just boost farms to give +2 food and +1 housing. After all, it's the mines on hills which are OP, not hills themselves.

Could you get farm triangles to boost housing at later civics like they boost food?

[Banzailizard]

Probably a less important issue than what has been covered, but at the moment spears are a bit too weak.  There was this thread on civ fanatics that laid it out a few weeks ago with plenty of graphs and tables. The specific post about spears is on the second page.  Pikes in particular need help - they are in a dead-end tech (military tactics) without much else going for it.  Personally I might just say cut the production cost of anti-cav a little, especially given Sullla's suggestion of earlier corps.  Make spears and pikes the cheaper units that you produce more of to combine into corps (which is thematically fitting as well).  The numbers would need to be played with though so that they do not render swords irrelevant.

[T-hawk]

Corps/fleets: unlock at Guilds civic, up from Nationalism civic
Armies/armadas: unlock at Nationalism civic, up from Mobilization civic

These changes shift the arrival of corps/armies forward by about one era in each case.

...

Several policies are moved up on the civics tree:

Levee en Masse: unit maintenance reduced by 2 gold/turn, unlocks at Nationalism civic (up from Mobilization civic)
International Waters: +50% production on Modern, Atomic, and Information era naval units, unlocks at Mobilization civic (up from Cold War civic)

I want to bring up a point, related to these and the general sensibility of some of the other changes.  What happens here is magnifying the leverage of a tech or culture differential.  Bringing any of these forward in time increases the possibility that it will become the decisive lever.  International Waters for example is still half of that infamous Venetian Arsenal, so it'd be quite possible that a player reaching that significantly sooner (say 10-15 turns) than others can turn it into a decisive advantage, and this brings that into a timeframe more likely to be reached in a game.

Many of your changes combine together to that effect.  Reducing the scaling cost formula across the board also favors the player who is ahead in tech/civics.  So does postponing the obsolescence of older policies.  Reducing war weariness favors a conqueror.  Reducing the cost escalation for builders and food also favors who is ahead.

It's a matter of opinion how much you want a tech advantage to convert into a decisive game advantage, but I wanted to point out that the cumulative effect of all these could significantly shift that balance.

[Singaboy]

Nice thread and good ideas.

To me, there has to be more to make big cities viable. The amenities restrictions are far too punitive. In SP games, where it is easy to take out an opponent, war weariness is less punishing . However, in prolonged MP wars, war weariness can be absolutely crippling. There should be some sort of simple city improvements (not those really expensive entertainment district things) to get more happiness.
How about tweaking the policy cards. A lot of them are plain useless and not strong enough. We could analyze what sort of civics cards are used, but it would evolve around similar cards, I am certain. Now, if there would be cards that reduce war weariness or boost amenities, it would be really nice.

[Old Harry]

I'd like housing to start penalizing you when you reach the limit, not the size before. So if the cap is 2 then the 50% penalty kicks in at size 2, not size 1. This would work well with Sullla's desire to up the housing limit.

If you can do something to get the tile use icons out of the way of the tile yield icons that would save me needing a graphics mod as well.

I can't find fault with any of the other suggestions here because I haven't played the game enough.

[TheArchduke]

Gonna comment on stuff when I find time.

On war weariness, I think the crippling effect is WAD.

The issue here is that the whole game around it does not support it.

Clearly someone at Firaxis wanted to take very Paradoxian concepts like Casus Bellis and War Exhaustion and integrate it, but poorly so.

The idea seems that 1-2 cities change hands and then War Exhaustion cripples them and they make peace, exhausted. The optimal MP way however is going for the juggular, total kill and someone who has lost 1-2 cities is most often out and better off to spoil the attacker by staying in the war indefinetly.

There are no "Stability Hits" and "Forced Peace" which is the enforcement system on top of the War Exhaustion system. So yeah, they took a system without understanding it. AT ALL.

[devolution]

Sulla,

I agree with almost every suggestion you make, but I still think that the workshop is still too weak, how about a small production multiplier (10% ?)
It strikes me as odd that the player is allowed to freely swap cards and thus gain a whopping 50% multiplier while expensive buildings only give a paltry +2 production, a mere pittance.

The overlapping factory bonus that we see in earlier version of civ6 at least simulated something like the industrial revolution, something that is sorely missing as of now...

I also think that the culture growth exponent could be set to be about equal to the food requirement, for symmetry reasons of course :D
Alternatively, we could boost the Land Surveyors (Reduces the cost to purchase a tile by 20%) card to actually be meaningful. How about something like -33%?

[shallow_thought]

Very small comment about upgrade costs: while things are too cheap once professional army is available, simply adding to the cost would have the effect of buffing offense in general and early game UUs in particularly. This is because the attacker generally has strategic initiative and can choose the time for his upgrades, while a defender has to respond, and may not be able to switch into PA quickly.

It's reasonable to argue that getting timely upgrades is a part of good gameplay, but rushing already seems a little too effective (some of that may change with the tweaks to production).

The other thing is that the non-PA upgrades slinger-archer and maybe archer-crossbow still need to be practical to allow someone with no early game UU or slightly badly placed resources a chance to defend.

[Bacchus]

If this going to be a large mod, I really like Brick's idea of approaching this as a community project, and it makes sense to be structured about it. We are already running into too many specific suggestions, which might have unobvious interactions, and are somewhat difficult to consider as a whole. That's not least because a long forum post is not the best way to present a collection of interrelated items.

It'd be nice to first collect a list of pain points, prioritize them, formulate some overarching goals on their basis, agree on design principles (minimal vs powerful changes, preferred vector of changes, e.g. improvements vs terrain), and then start coming up with specifics and thinking how to put them together.

[BRickAstley]

I want to bring up a point, related to these and the general sensibility of some of the other changes.  What happens here is magnifying the leverage of a tech or culture differential.  Bringing any of these forward in time increases the possibility that it will become the decisive lever.  International Waters for example is still half of that infamous Venetian Arsenal, so it'd be quite possible that a player reaching that significantly sooner (say 10-15 turns) than others can turn it into a decisive advantage, and this brings that into a timeframe more likely to be reached in a game.

Many of your changes combine together to that effect.  Reducing the scaling cost formula across the board also favors the player who is ahead in tech/civics.  So does postponing the obsolescence of older policies.  Reducing war weariness favors a conqueror.  Reducing the cost escalation for builders and food also favors who is ahead.

It's a matter of opinion how much you want a tech advantage to convert into a decisive game advantage, but I wanted to point out that the cumulative effect of all these could significantly shift that balance.

If this going to be a large mod, I really like Brick's idea of approaching this as a community project, and it makes sense to be structured about it. We are already running into too many specific suggestions, which might have unobvious interactions, and are somewhat difficult to consider as a whole. That's not least because a long forum post is not the best way to present a collection of interrelated items.

It'd be nice to first collect a list of pain points, prioritize them, formulate some overarching goals on their basis, agree on design principles (minimal vs powerful changes, preferred vector of changes, e.g. improvements vs terrain), and then start coming up with specifics and thinking how to put them together.

I think we're already coming up against one core design question: How decisive should a tech/civic advantage be? I don't think it's any secret if you've read any of Sullla's writings that a tech advantage should be quite decisive. But I know that's hard on those who haven't optimized the game to the utmost.

I am playing a low-key MP game with 7 friends where I've used my experience to get a comfortable tech/civic lead, and they are lamenting that doing so has basically decided the game. It definitely should give an advantage, but it seems hopeless for someone who's even a few techs behind to ever catch up to the leader.

I tend to fall on the side of wanting everyone to have a legitimate chance for as long as possible. I also don't know how to put that into effect... other than maybe severely wrenching up the known tech bonus. At least, not without dramatically changing the game structure.