Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[T-hawk]

Would this mean that a 2-pop whip is 2 anger for 20t and 1 anger for 10t, or 1 anger for 20t? I'm assuming the former is what you mean.

Yeah, the former. Same as two 1-pop whips does now. This changes Slavery from being able to whip as big as you can every 10 turns, to whipping just one population every 10 turns. That seems reasonable to me and worked fine for Civ 3; I'm curious as to what problem you see in it? Slavery is then still perfectly useful for emergency units, but not so much for whipping out an entire attacking army. Along the way we get rid of the silly micromanagement in trying to whip your axemen at 4/35 but not 5/35, and minimize the problem that whipping produces hammers more efficiently than actual hammer tiles.

Players will then only whip units, and overflow into their granaries and such. It's like whipping into wonders

Good point. This is fixable in theory, along with overflow-into-Moai. The game would need to store how many of the overflow hammers came from hurry, and re-apply the hurry cost modifier to them on the next item. It doesn't currently do this, so that would require adding it into the savegame format, which is a bit too ambitious for me.

My guess is that disabling the EP-only buildings should be easy: Intelligence Agencies and Security Bureaus are the only ones that I can think of, and they should go in a no-EP game.

Question is whether that's easily doable in the DLL code or not, but I'll have a go. Might not get to it before the weekend. Got Adventure 47 to play too, don't ya know.

I'm not convinced the Jail needs adjusting. It existed with only the WW effect in pre-BTS Civ 4. But if you're toning down WW in general, yeah it probably should be cheaper, with or without espionage on.

[Shoot the Moon]

A random idea that just popped into my head: would it be possible to code for a slavery whip to empty the granary's food box? It would be an interesting idea, as it would fundamentally change the food to hammer ratio on 1 and 2 pop whips, but change it less so on larger whips which would, in a roundabout way, accomplish something similar to giving more hammers for whipped buildings than units, but without the overflow weirdness. I think to implement it, you would actually have to code to empty the granary's box, then decrease pop, then empty the city's food box (otherwise, people would simply whip 1t after growth when the granary's food box has already been applied.)

[SevenSpirits]

Is there such a big problem with the details of slavery that just reducing the hammers it produces isn't perfectly adequate? I actually quite like the dynamics of it, even though I'm bothered by how powerful it is.

[T-hawk]

A random idea that just popped into my head: would it be possible to code for a slavery whip to empty the granary's food box? It would be an interesting idea, as it would fundamentally change the food to hammer ratio on 1 and 2 pop whips, but change it less so on larger whips which would, in a roundabout way, accomplish something similar to giving more hammers for whipped buildings than units

Easily codeable. More simple is to just subtract half of the city's food box (half of max not half of current), then the timing doesn't matter at all. If the city doesn't have half a food box, then it doesn't have a granary, so the whip efficiency is already bad enough.

But that's the opposite of my suggestion. Slavery should work better for units and worse for buildings. Emergency defense makes sense both as game mechanics and as flavor. But it feels wrong that the best way to build a marketplace is to overgrow population with food and then slave it, rather than actually working hammer tiles.

[Cyneheard]

Oh, quick comment on the civics:
Labor civics (mostly) produce hammers.
Economy civics (mostly) produce commerce. Just something to keep in mind when organizing the civics.
Religious civics do everything, Government civics are mostly about happiness, and the Legal civics are also a bit of a grab-bag. It says a lot about this game, though, that we're only really worried about the balance of one set of civics.

So, here are my thoughts on the traits. Note: When in doubt, don't buff or nerf. The traits aren't going to be perfect, partially because game types have a lot of diversity.

Financial: I'm worried about the easy relative power of Colossus + Fin @ 3 commerce on a water map, but I think this is probably a necessary nerf. Fin should get a double-speed building to compensate, though. Banks? Or Markets?

Expansive: +35% (5% makes for happy rounding with chops and whips) to workers could work (it would also mean that Expansive will always get that first worker out 3t sooner). I think a more interesting plan is to make Expansive get 2x speed Grocers or Grocers + Aqueducts instead. +50% to worker production was crazy in Warlords (although it combined with the granary buff, which made it even more so).

Creative: The Theater bonus is mild, but key for getting the Globe Theater in good time. And we're not making production that much easier, making buildings more expensive probably isn't the wisest course. What do people think about having Creative only give 1 free culture? It slows down the first border pop, makes Creative somewhat less useful in border wars (but, there, the cheap lib and theater are often more critical).

Charismatic: With the slavery nerf, another +1 happy would make a big difference for Cha. The game's rigged that Charismatic has a hard time getting a lot of leverage out of the -25% XP cost: 4XP and 5XP are about the same because the Barracks gives 3, and 8XP's obnoxious to get without late-game boosts or a settled GG.

Spiritual might become quite powerful. We've made a new column of civics much easier to play with. This one probably needs tested before we decide whether or not to remove the Temple bonus (and give it to Cha instead of adding +1 happy to Cha?)

Ind is fine IMO.

Philosophical: +100% GPP production needs to stay as-is, otherwise bad things happen with rounding. Will Phi really become so strong that it needs to lose the University bonus? If it wasn't for Oxford, the University would be a fairly weak building outside of 1-2 big commerce cities.

Imp and Org are very difficulty-level dependent, and both are viable. It depends a lot on large the map is for how Imp can be used. Look at Krill's PB1 game for an example. On Noble, Imp is quite solid. Org is getting hit with a nerf in EP-less games, but then again it's the only civic that is guaranteed to save you money.

Agg does not give double-speed stables. Maybe it could? Have to think about it, and see what other people say.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I don't have any real input, I just wanted to say that I enjoy following this thread to see how players who are better than I am dissect the game mechanics. In some ways, I've learned a lot from this thread, just by seeing what you guys think is over/underpowered, and what needs to be cleaned up.

[Cyneheard]

T-Hawk, I think we want to avoid messing with happiness mechanics. There's just too many things that can go wrong, particularly in the early game. It's an elegant idea, but I see it causing real headaches in the T40-60 era.

If unhappiness is per-population, then the happy cap becomes too hard of a cap. Once a city grows into unhappiness, your only options for getting rid of an unhappy face are starvation, getting a new source of happiness, or letting a city waste 2fpt for a very long time. Intentionally starving population should almost never be the right answer (food deficits are obviously part of the game, and work quite well). And new sources of happiness are not limitless. Unless we want to force every player to make sure that their maximum-size cities produce nothing but workers and settlers, I don't think that's a fair outcome.

Civ3 had the luxury slider and workers and settlers reduced your population naturally. Before Drama, neither of these exist.

EDIT: And, once a city hits maximum size, slavery becomes awful.
Size 6, happy cap 6:
2-pop whip down to 4 pop, finish my building. Build workers/settlers for the next 8 or 9t.
10t later, I can now regrow to size 5.
Oh, look, I need to spend another 8 or 9t building workers and settlers.
Not all that much better than constantly building settlers and workers.

So, for 60h, I lose 30f and 30 turns of working improved tiles, instead of losing about 10t under the status quo. That's too expensive. It's not just that slaving one pop is an inefficient use of happiness, but that I lose too many citizen-turns per whip.

[T-hawk]

Once a city grows into unhappiness, your only options for getting rid of an unhappy face are starvation, getting a new source of happiness, or letting a city waste 2fpt for a very long time. ... Unless we want to force every player to make sure that their maximum-size cities produce nothing but workers and settlers, I don't think that's a fair outcome.

Size 6, happy cap 6:
2-pop whip down to 4 pop, finish my building.

Well, then the right answer is to make your maximum-size cities stop growing. Work those hills and even workshops if you want hammers. That building should come from mines, not from slaves. Food tiles shouldn't be better hammer producers than hammer tiles. I still feel that Slavery wants some adjustment; a straight nerf to 25H whip yield doesn't feel like enough. (Also 25H gets rounded awkwardly on quick and epic speeds. 24H might work better.)

But I understand if that's not the direction you're trying to go. The missing piece for Civ 4 is the entertainer specialist. In Civ 3, a city of any size could always get happy enough by hiring entertainers (+1 happy face, and after the first, the entertainer would be converted from an unhappy citizen, for a net of +2 happy.)

[zakalwe]

Maybe imperialistic could get some slight late-game economic bonus, such as reduced inflation? Would sort of fit from a flavor point of view. Or maybe some kind of bonus related to corporations? What are you doing about corporations, anyway (if anything)?

I'm not saying imperialistic is necessarily a bad trait, but it's quite map-dependent, which is a bit of a problem if you want to play random setups.

Other ideas:
- Double speed harbors and/or custom houses.
- Double speed levees.
- Double speed industrial parks (does anyone ever build these?) and hospitals.

[Ilios]

Re the Slavery issue.


Slavery in FFH2 is not the broken feature it is in BTS, so it might be a good idea to have a look at it, to see if you can incorporate some of the features in the Mod:

- Maximum of 40% food stored with Granary (actually 20%, plus 20% with a Smokehouse)
- Slavery Civic comes later in game
- less hammers per pop