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

[Mjmd]

Traits are definitely valued differently based on map size (or should be). My instinct is that Financial is fine as is although data and all that would be good to confirm, so would trust Charriu there.

It is something you have to work towards vs organized where you kind of just get the benefits or most of the other traits for that matter.

IF IF IF it was really felt Financial needed a little boost to make it a little sexier something minor like 25% bonus production to banks is probably the direction I would go.

[Charriu]

As you may have guessed I'm thinking about FIN a lot more and how to make it less boring. I try to look at from a different angle and that is the angle of themes. Basically almost every trait has at least 2 major themes. These are the themes that I see right now:

Financial: Commerce
Expansive: Health and Growth
Creative: Early culture and Science (via library)
Charismatic: Happiness and Expierence
Protective: Defensive and Trade
Imperialistic: Expansion and Great Generals
Aggressive: Offensive and Unit Maintenance Reduction
Philosophical: Great Persons and Science (via university)
Industrious: Wonders and Hammer output
Organized: City Maintenance Reduction and Espionage or Water (Actually what exactly is the second theme here)
Spiritual: Religion and Civics

There are some minor issues like ORG not having a clearly defined second major theme or PHI and CRE sharing a theme. But overall there is always a second theme, which brings me to FIN. I think the issue with FIN being boring is that it lacks this second theme. The problem is what could this second theme be and which theme are still there anyway. Here are some themes and mechanics that are less explored in the game:

- build wealth, science, culture etc. (We use it but it's more of a crutch)
- Hurry units/buildings via gold (How often do people use it)
- Some civil unit actions like trade mission and hurry production (only on great persons, but one could make a trader unit out of it)
- We love the king day
- More diverse slider management
- Happiness via the culture slider
- Some units like explorer
- Some improvements like forts, forest preserve
- Exploration as a theme (this could be something, but how to)

The problem with all of these are either that it's hard to make something useful/interesting out of it or it quickly becomes too strong. Is there any mechanic in the game that I missed from that list?

[Mjmd]

Its not like financial is super sexy in base BTS. It is just the best trait there. If the data still shows its a top tier trait I would resist the urge to do anything. Its still getting picked every pitboss even if its not "lots of text for trait".

On a different note I do think Industrious should probably get the 100% to national wonders as a little boost.

[Charriu]

IND will get that

[BING_XI_LAO]

I have some thoughts, but I should first specify that I'm a noob and picked FIN in the one game I'm in currently. I agree that FIN is balanced but boring, but I wasn't expecting it to be otherwise. I don't mind if it's changed or not, but I find the topic interesting.

Sorry if the below post is a cursed combo of noob nonsense +being pretentious.

Personally I would say the fun from a trait doesn't come from theme, it comes from two things:
1) Getting a front-loaded bonus, like the +2 from Creative or a really fast Granary from EXP. It's fun to have immediate powerful effects even when they simplify your decisionmaking process (ie CRE means you don't have to figure out best way to get culture)
2) Getting rewarded for investing into a specific thing, even when it would otherwise be a really skewed playstyle. For example specialists with PHI or Wonders with IND.

Commerce's "front-loaded" fun, to the extent it ever existed, has been removed by the mod because you don't get immediate commerce from coastal starts / riverside cottages.
By the same token its "investment fun", to whatever extent it exists, is stronger now because you have to work a bit before you get either of its bonuses (growing your cottages more / building Lighthouses).

Having more commerce early isn't significantly fun because it's a generic boost to all of your researches, which still just occur sequentially, whereas the production boosts of other traits affect specific units.
Investing more into coastal/cottage eco than you would without FIN isn't fun (compared to investing in great people, wonders, or military with other traits) because "more money" is generic.

So maybe to make FIN more fun, it needs any of the following:
-A front-loaded bonus
-Something you can invest into in a skewed manner
-An income bonus that is more specific than cottages/coast

These specific examples (which would replace existing bonuses) are probably bad, but what about:
-building roads or cottages in 1 turn, as an "upfront" bonus
-Double production speed of Market/Bank/Grocer, as an "investment" bonus - skews the economic bonus towards expenditures in particular, such as lots of city maintenance, unit upgrades, unit upkeep - as opposed to just having more income and more research.
- +15% wealth production

[superdeath]

These specific examples (which would replace existing bonuses) are probably bad, but what about:
-building roads or cottages in 1 turn, as an "upfront" bonus

[Amicalola]

I have some thoughts, but I should first specify that I'm a noob and picked FIN in the one game I'm in currently. I agree that FIN is balanced but boring, but I wasn't expecting it to be otherwise. I don't mind if it's changed or not, but I find the topic interesting.

Sorry if the below post is a cursed combo of noob nonsense +being pretentious.

I just wanted to (hypocritically) say I would try not to worry about that. It's good to get opinions from a variety of skill levels, since we play games at a variety themselves. Also, more feedback is always good. The worst case is you get corrected and learn something, as I have done many times.

[Mjmd]

Again I dont like giving traits just because. However new ideas while maybe not being appropriate for one trait might be great for another. I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement, but we've been trying and failing to think of something to give expansive and the 1 turn reduction for roads (maybe just in own culture?) Seems perfect for expansive?

[Ramkhamhaeng]

Two more suggestions for CtH:

• Change unit beaming behavior to avoid sneak attacks: The beamed units cannot attack in the same turn.
Maybe this change needs to be restricted on beamings to non-neighbor plots to avoid some side-effects?!


• The "known tech research bonus" and its representation on F6 gives to much side information in my opinion. Maybe we could simply remove this bonus or replace it with an version without side information?!

E.g. a) The bonus is not displayed in F6, but will be respected during the turn.
b) The bonus will be replayed by an other bonus which just depends on the number of researched techs compared to its neighbors. This would also give advantage to skip dead end techs.

[Charriu]

• Change unit beaming behavior to avoid sneak attacks: The beamed units cannot attack in the same turn.
Maybe this change needs to be restricted on beamings to non-neighbor plots to avoid some side-effects?!

I understand the issue at hand. The problem with changing anything with the beaming is that there will be multiple unforeseen scenarios in which any solution no longer works. What exactly do you mean with cannot attack? Should they not be able to move or move to an enemy-occupied tile? I can only imagine that this can get complicated very fast.

• The "known tech research bonus" and its representation on F6 gives to much side information in my opinion. Maybe we could simply remove this bonus or replace it with an version without side information?!

E.g. a) The bonus is not displayed in F6, but will be respected during the turn.
b) The bonus will be replayed by an other bonus which just depends on the number of researched techs compared to its neighbors. This would also give advantage to skip dead end techs.

I know that the KTB display is revealing more information especially in the early turns. It's important to mention that this KTB display is a convenience feature. The way the science and KTB works in the game you can always determine how many people have a technology, which you can research. Now there is a bit of uncertainty in the early turns due to lower numbers and the KTB of 1 single player not increasing the science output. But as soon as we have higher costs and science output this is pretty reliable.


Coming down to the two options:
a) If I understand this correctly then this is the vanilla BtS behaviour. This gives an advantage to higher skilled players or players with more time at their hand, who invest that time into calculating all the KTB via spreadsheets. The only way to get rid of this spreadsheet calculation is either by removing the KTB at all or not displaying the increase by KTB on the science output, which is bad as then techs can get researched at an untimely fashion.
b) This is interesting and would be the way to go. Can you explain some more what you mean here. Especially with regards to dead end techs.