Realms Beyond Balance Mod for Civ6

[pindicator]

Another big consideration I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread: is this for Vanilla or Rise & Fall?

[TheArchduke]

Rise & Fall, no?

[Sullla]

Everything that I wrote is intended for the base game. As far as I'm concerned, the expansion adds nothing to the gameplay and takes a lot of steps backwards.

It's certainly possible to disagree on how much of an advantage being ahead in techs/civics should provide. One thing that I would point out is that it is very difficult to attack a human opponent in Civ6 successfully. Unless the attacker has an era advantage in tech or overwhelming numerical superiority, the defender can usually come out on top. My long list of suggested RB Mod changes was not specifically designed to snowball tech/civic advantages further ahead, more so to address cost scaling as an issue. I feel that we've moved the conversation into a different direction here instead of considering what changes to make on their own merit. I won't be creating this mod myself, so my posts are only intended as a starting point for discussion. At the same time, it appears as though I've spent a lot longer working on this at the moment than anyone else. Before knocking my ideas too much, you might want to sit down and try to do the work of serious mod planning for yourselves.

[haphazard1]

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.

Maybe because this is a low-key game with friends, I am missing the point? But shouldn't a significant tech/civic lead be decisive? If one player has through whatever combination of skill and luck played a notably better game than the other players, then I would expect that at some point the game would effectively be decided. It is a competition, someone is going to win, and that someone should be the player who has performed better.

Unless Civ is going to become one of those racing games with the rubber band effect, artificially giving everyone a shot right at the end and making the first 90% of the game meaningless, I do not see how you prevent superior play from deciding the game at some point. If the outcome is that clearly decided, perhaps you declare a winner and start a new game?

Some games have mechanisms for declaring victory once a player has gained a significant edge over all others. (MoO's galactic council often works in this role). But Civ has not always been very good about that, and a game can be clearly decided a long time before anyone is going to see an official victory screen.

[BRickAstley]

So to start with actually implementing any of this to try it out and see...... Anyone want to help try and figure out how to change the District Cost Progression Model? All that's in the SQL/XML is the model for all normal districts is "COST_PROGRESSION_NUM_UNDER_AVG_PLUS_TECH", and an allowance to designate one Param for each (set by the base game at 40). If the district math is to be changed, that model has to be found & changed, or overridden by Lua code in some way. Anyone up to the challenge?

(I'm getting this info from the "Districts" table in the DebugGameplay database. See link in my first post for how to view that).

[Cheater Hater]

Well, I've downloaded all the stuff and am starting to look at things--no promises but I'll try to help.

Overall, it feels like we should figure out what the goals are for the mod--so far here's what there appears to be a consensus on:

• Venetian Arsenal needs to be nerfed (one of the few things that's actually been coded so far
  
• City improvements and tile improvements need to matter (there's a consensus on some kind of scaling changes to make chopping/harvesting less important assuming we can easily fix that, though the extent of cost decreases is something that will probably be in flux for a while
  
• Food should be more important (probably from a decrease in the growth formula--this could also be stated as a "cities should be bigger" goal)
  

Things that aren't as certain:

• Units should be cheaper, at least compared to upgrading (how strong a minor tech edge should be is an open question we probably won't solve here, as well as the use of upgrading--maybe upgrading could become a more-defensive tool, something like "upgrades are X% cheaper for Y turns if a (surprise?) war is declared on you" either baked in or as a policy?)
  
• Decouple policies from unit-building, at least partially (Is it a problem that you should always be in policy X if you want to build Y?  As long as these policies exist that'll probably be the case, and is that a good design?)
  
• Make late-game things cheaper (part of this is solved by scaling changes, so this is where I'd move slowly)
  

Right now it feels like we should try to make a bare-bones mod without many changes (say, VA nerf and the food/production scaling changes only) and see if that's moving in the right direction based on some test game (ideally something faster-paced than a PBEM) and iterate based on that.

Edit: This mod messes with the scaling and shows you can put something complicated in the CostProgressionParam1 slot (or any slot). Still looking for the Cost Params at this point (especially since the formulas we have don't have a "40" in them, which is the param for most of the districts).

[Japper007]

I love the suggestions so far

I would add one other balance I'd like to see implemented:

getting rid of the dumb flat-fee buildings.

The buildings do not scale of population and/or city output in any way and this makes population less useful. We all seem to agree with Sulla that city growth and development should matter and be made easier, so let's also add a reward for that growth:

In the current system a library yields a flat 2 science. This means that a bullcrap 1 population and stagnant desert town with a Campus and a library (probably stone-chopped in or some such nonsense, but that's a tangent) outputs 2 science (+0.5 from 1 population), no adjacency or population nessesary. Meanwhile another city has to hit 4 pop to even get the same output as Literally-Only-A-Library-City.

I'd suggest we make buildings work like the libraries in civ 5 (% multiplier buildings like in civ 4 wouldn't be worthwhile, they have nothing to multiply!). A library in civ 5 yields 1 science per 2 citizens, I suggest we apply this to all building types, so f.e Market 1 gold per 2 pop, workshop 1 hammer per 2 pop, etc. Then next tier you decrease the pop per yield requirement, so a university yields 1 science per pop, a research lab 2 science per pop and you apply that all around. Suddenly a 20 pop powerhouse isn't outshone by 2 mediocre 5 pop cities.

[Trasson]

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.

Part of this is because Civ6 has no catch-up mechanic.

For those who don't know, a catch-up mechanic is one in a competitive game where those in last are offered some sort of advantage so that their falling behind doesn't snowball into losing forever. It's all over the place, especially in board games, but they're in video games as well. Probably the most well known sort is the one in Mario Kart. The farther behind a player is, the better their pool of items is. A lot of board games opt for a system where player turn order is determined by the person in last, or by the relative rankings of players.

Done well, we get a game where you can be down but not out, and the leader has to continually fight for victory as opposed to winning on turn 25 and the game ending on turn 100.

Done not so well, we get Mario Kart. Unless you've got a ridiculously commanding lead, then the whims of the RNG could spell your doom at a moment's notice.

Civ4 has this sort of thing: it's the Known Tech Bonus. If you're researching a tech that other people you know have, then you get a bonus to your research. To a somewhat different extent, tech trading plays this role as well: if you're behind, you can make deals for what you're missing, but no diplomacy will let a tech leader obtain something no one has. Tech trading doesn't always work out this way, especially in multiplayer, but it's the role served. To a far, far lesser extent, Civ4 has the ability to diversify what you aim for in research. Being ahead on technology is all well and good, but having Democracy and Communism doesn't do much good if you haven't grabbed Industrialism and a hostile neighbor has.
That's not to say that Civ4 is perfect on this front, or even good! It's a 4X game, and the player who does those Xs earlier and better is going to be hard to stop.


Civ6, to my eye, doesn't have any catch-up mechanic. Additionally, the civic/tech trees allow for less research diversification. Simply put, if you fall behind in Civ6, you're going to lose unless you have a sharp eye for a weak point to exploit, and even then you need to be not very far behind to exploit that.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. For one, implementing a catch-up mechanic wrong causes second place to be the new first place. For two, it's kind of hard to fit into Civ6's structure. What are you going to do, give the player in last a free envoy every fifty turns? That's about the extent of what could be added simply into Civ6's structure. I suppose you could offer the defender more advantages than they already have, but that doesn't actually help them win, it just helps them stay in the game longer.

Most importantly, though, if a player is playing the best, researching the best, building the best, and fighting the best all throughout the game, they should win. Efforts should be spent on making players all equally capable of reaching that point, not on worrying about a winning player being in a good position to win.

[The Black Sword]

We generally play FFA games, so co-operating against the leader is a also a natural catch up mechanic.

[haphazard1]

Most importantly, though, if a player is playing the best, researching the best, building the best, and fighting the best all throughout the game, they should win. Efforts should be spent on making players all equally capable of reaching that point, not on worrying about a winning player being in a good position to win.

This. If superior performance does not lead to victory, then what is the point?

To me, the problem seems to be that it is possible to attain a clearly winning position without actually getting a victory unless another 100+ un-exciting, non-suspenseful turns are played out. If one player gets far enough ahead that victory is essentially certain (barring truly horrendous RNG or a sudden massive lapse in play quality), then there should be a way in game for that player to claim victory. In the MP example mentioned earlier, such a mechanism would prevent seven players, six of whom have no realistic chance of winning and are likely losing interest as a result, from needing to grind out another 100+ turns to bring the game to a conclusion.

Certainly the players could just decide to concede, or to informally change their objective to competing for second. That would be up to the group. But getting all involved to agree to do that is difficult when people have invested a lot of time over quite possibly months of play.

Without such a mechanism being designed into a game from the beginning, I don't see any good way to accomplish this. The Civ series has had issues for a long time with games reaching clear winning positions but still needing a lot of un-interesting, un-fun turns to grind out the official victory.