Realms Beyond Balance Mod for Civ6

[pindicator]

Oh yeah, invincible 4-mover scouts in general have to go. We are all adults here and know to take care of our stuff, there is no reason for great people to be invincible.

This is the best subtle criticism of Firaxis' design philosophy that I've read

[LKendter]

I've not played a lot of Civ6.
However, my I really didn't like the building effects.

Civ3 and Civ4 library, marketplace, etc give a nice % multiplier. Get a high income location, and building these really pay off.
Civ6 gives a fixed amount of science, money etc.
It might be my lack of game play, but I don't see how to build that super income city.

[Singaboy]

@LK high income comes from trade routes. And city states

[suboptimal]

I've been pondering some of the ideas in here and I had a thought regarding the various % production policies. I seem to remember that there is a category of bonuses that applies only to actual city yields and not to chops/harvests. I think the amenity bonus works that way, as do a couple of other bonuses which I can't think of right now (it'll come to me eventually). What if these policies were modified to operate off of city yields rather than all production going through the city? That would keep the production bonuses to unit classes intact but immediately remove all of the chop overflow craziness.

[Bacchus]

The easiest and minimal way to deal with overflow fuckery would be to make policies affect costs, rather than yields. It would open a different kind of fuckery, namely starting an item and then switching out of the policy, but that fuckery to me appears very minor in comparison to chop management.

[Bacchus]

So how about this for a small first pass mod:

* Venetian Arsenal applies to 1 city
* Great people are killable
* DotF bonus reduced to +5
* Remove district discounting mechanic (reduce district base cost 10%-15%?)
* Production policies provide cost discounts instead of yield bonuses (alternatively, production policies function amenity-like and don't apply to chops)
* Farms: +2 food (+1 food on marsh/floodplains), +1 housing
* Increase base housing by 1
* All first levels buildings: +25% appropriate yield in addition to the flat bonus, 2 citizen slots
* All second- and third-level buildings: +50% appropriate yield, no flat bonus, 2 citizen slots
* Building doubler policy: leave effect as is, i.e. +X flat bonus to all buildings
* All specialists: yield 1 GPP, increase yields by 50% (3 of each but gold, 6 gold)
* Industrial Zone: receive full adjacency bonus from districts
* Workshop: equalize cost with Market
* Zoo: move up to Colonialism
* Game-pace compensation rebalance: increase Ren civics/techs cost 10%, increase later costs 25%
* Equalize upgrade and purchase costs at 20 + 2 gold per cog
* Professional Army: Remove old effect. New effect: all units +4 strength in foreign lands, +1 maintenance (Alternatively, just remove, but then Exploration becomes too weak I think. Proposed effect mirrors Wars of Religion)
* Ilkum: -33% worker cost (equivalent to +50% production modifier)
* War weariness scaling: fix era points at 16
? Halve Settler cost increment (it seems to me warmongering is much favored to peaceful expansion at the moment, but not sure of consensus on this)
? Remove envoys from first-to discovering city-states, receive 2 envoys at Code of Laws (Krill's idea from some time ago)

Overall approach: give players means to meet the large later-game costs, whilst making buildings matter and making cities taller.

[Cornflakes]

What about the following ...

- For farm, what about scaling food and housing as the game progresses? Base +2f/1H, @ Feudalism +2f/+1.5H (+0.5 adjacency), at some renaissance or industrial civic increase adjacency to +1 and housing to 2H.
- I think river and coast base housing is OK in combination with the increased housing from farms, maybe just increase base housing for dry +1
- Professional army +1 support/flanking
- I like the first-to envoys because it rewards early scouting and makes Scout first viable, but maybe still add +1 envoy (and I think it can be set to add at game start instead of CoL)
- bring forward the worker ability to plant forest to Construction (as suggested by Sullla)
- is it possible in the current mod capabilities to reduce costs with policy cards? I’m skeptical based on my (admitedly brief) review of the existing modifiers.
- I think settler scaling is OK. Players should be able to adjust their strategy in response to aggressive neighbors. The issue I see is too easy capture of city states. I didn’t see an obvious way to make them start with city walls. Maybe increase their city strength an additional +5 and give their units a +5 combat bonus vs. players?

[Quagma Blast]

- One 'early envoy' thought I had was to have city states give 1 yield for simple peaceful contact and 1 yield for the first envoy. That keeps early scouting valuable while reducing the delta between lucky and unlucky people, but speeds up the early game.

- Would it be possible to cap overflow at, say, the value of a single unboosted forest chop? Chopping into the right cards would still be able to get you "free" production, but only into the thing you actually have the card slotted for.

I didn’t see an obvious way to make [city-states] start with city walls. Maybe increase their city strength an additional +5 and give their units a +5 combat bonus vs. players?

This mod does that.

[Bacchus]

Could we maybe award envoy points on first contact, as opposed to a full envoy? I do like the reward mechanism, but it's just too much. Alternatively yeah, we could just make envoys more plentiful.

[Ichabod]

If you give one envoy every time you meet a CS, you still give a bonus to the players that explore, while making it less luck and turn-order based. In this case, you need to get rid of that diplomatic police that gives the second envoy.