Warlords Balance Discussion

[Blake]

Not getting whip overflow is worse. There is still a "perfect" turn on which to whip, which means nothing is fixed, but the casual player who isn't interested in min/maxing the yield would be penalized. At least this way, the casual player gets (or was supposed to get) a flat-rate shield yield per pop point expended.

Indeed, flat-rate shields per pop point expanded was the goal and is better than it was. The problem is the remaining idiosyncrasies.
I'd rather kill 2 pop for 60 hammers, than 1 pop for 37 hammers - production bonuses are a negative thing when whipping axemen.
In the case of axemen sans bonuses, it would be more balanced giving 35 hammers for 1 pop, than 60 hammers for 2 pop, even though the former is "higher" yield than it's supposed to be.

My ideal implementation (built on top of the existing growth model) would go something like this, take for arguments sake a longbow (50 hammers) with 5 hammers invested already (45 remaining), whipping it will add 45 hammers to the build (so the only overflow is that of the cities production for that turn - no ADDED overflow), the cost is 1.5 pop, 1 pop is killed, well we can't kill 0.5 pop so the fractional amount is stolen from food income (to deal with granary/starvation issues), lets say the city was size 6, it drops to size 5 (1 pop killed), the amount of food stolen is equal to 0.5 x food to grow to size 5 - in this case 0.5 x 14 = 7 food. The city then suffers -1 food for 7 turns, as "whip recovery" - it's like a form of illhealth from the mass deaths. It's not entirely perfect but it does effectively eliminate the step function of hammer yield/cost and it gives an extremely consistent exchange-rate of foods. Problem of course is it requires a variable to hold the food arrears and thus breaks save game compatability.

I realize that you are looking at it from your own perspective, a purist one, and that's fair. However, the designer(s) were often aiming at a more casual audience first. That bug shouldn't have been there, but bugs sometimes slip through.

I don't mind if a user-made whipping bugfix which is the same as Warlords ("developer endorsed game mechanics") is approved - I'm just not motivated to do it myself. I would be motivated to try and get an ideal fix approved - except it would deviate too far from "developer endorsed" to ever fly so I wouldn't bother even trying.

[uberfish]

Having to switch CDs to change between old civ4 and Warlords is annoying to say the least. An expansion pack really shouldn't do that.

Generally, I think the fixes to various issues in warlords probably make it worth migrating to, if we don't manage to break Vassal states. (Or some other feature. But I think vassal states are the most likely to be exploitable.)

[Iustus]

You can turn off vassel states in Warlords already. It is the one new feature which can be turned off.

-Iustus

[Jamby]

I'm actually really glad you can turn off that feature. As cool as it sounds, and as neat as it is to play around with, I find it very frustrating in gameplay more often than not. I really wish there were a forced period of time between dropping out of an agreement and signing another.

Its really annoying when you attack a neighbor, they offer to be a vassal to another AI pulling you into war. Granted, this is expected and can be prepared for. What isn't expected and really annoying, is when I declare war on a AI master/capitulated vassal combo I expect to fight both AI's. Annoyingly, if you take too many cities of the vassal, it then drops out of its Vassal agreement, immediately signs an agreement with someone else, pulling you into a war against a 3rd computer. Now you are at war with 3 AI's and cannot talk to atleast 2 of them, probably 3. Annoying.