(October 19th, 2012, 14:17)scooter Wrote: I'm not sure citing PBEM17 is a real good example - you're using the example of the least-experienced player in that game getting beat. I don't think that was economic choice, I think that was lack of experience. Mackoti did it just fine in that PBEM that had the barbarian subs I think - whatever one it was that Commodore nearly got a culture win.
Um, I can see what you mean with the PBEM17 example (though I'm not fully agreeing), but taking mackoti as counter-example in a game which he clearly and easily dominated and in which he was by far the best player (by a much larger margin than Krill in 17, taking all players of the games into account) doesn't seem to be better I think.
Okay, I know it's a bit late, but I figured I'd weigh in with my own impressions of RBmod, pro and con. In general, I love the balancing, and dislike the metagaming.
Pro:
-Spies aren't a maphack! If you'd like to maphack, please research Physics.
-Blockades made sense! This is wonderful
-War Elephants are now working as intended.
-Most of the trait balancing, makes this whole Random/Random nice. As the guy who rolled Toku...yeah, it's nice.
-Hunting being far less punitive.
-Some of the Civ balances: India slower now, cataphract nerf, Preatorian nerf, kanons, minutemen, terrace nerf.
-Civic buffs, in general.
Con:
-Some of the Civ things: My beautiful Numidians are changed, don't see the point of Old Immortals, I miss Old Cossacks. ;P
-Slavery nerf: As discussed, it's not really like avoiding BW is really viable even still. This just makes granaries weaker (sorry Pro), murders high-food sea empires vs. land empires, and hurts the fun whip overflow minigame.
-Drafting nerf: Probably needed, but I think went too far...either make rifles 1-pop OR bring back down the minimum drafting size. This is the other way Scooter got screwed.
-Coorperations. I know Krill broke the game in PBEM4 with corps, but let's be frank...if we're going to dismiss Mackoti's SP-economy dominance in 24 because of his overall dominance, we really ought to dismiss Krill's in 4. I like the mechanic, maybe they (Sid's and Mining, really) need nerfing, but this was the third reason Scooter couldn't keep up.
-Darius is ridiculous now.
-Tech Catch-22. In general, teching post-Democracy and Communism is too fast, so I like the cost increase, but I'd tone it down a bit. Maybe make the known-tech boosts 50% at Paper and let that be it?
In general, actually, I like the buffs strategy. Slavery unnerfed, but workshops and watermills buffed, would seem like a decent compromise to me. Coming out of 34s, where I won in part because I could literally lose twice the hammers Scooter did each turn for continual pressure, I'm still unconvinced the SE->SP route needs too much help.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
FWIW, I'm waiting for scooter read the threads before saying much else, but I suppose I can comment on the corps.
The problem with corps is that they are a positive feedback mechanism that BtS wasn't balanced around, and that every player will not have access to them. It's nigh impossible to balance units costs around the person that has MI and the player that doesn't, for instance. They are even more powerful in wider empires due to the amount of resources available to that empire: people already complain that wide empires have too much going for them and corps would actually make that even worse.
The counter point is that the faster techer should get there first, and I'll explain why that's a big problem later on...or you can just go reread the mod thread in the general forum, it's in there.
Yeah sorry, working on threads now. I started a little bit, but not much at all. The timing of this game ending and post-game discussion starting was bad. I mostly agree with Commodore's comments on the mod. I also do think tech trading exasperated things, and it wouldn't seem so bad to me if 1) TT was off and 2) I hadn't drawn a hand that would've been much more useful in vanilla civ.
(October 19th, 2012, 15:09)pindicator Wrote: With slavery in RBMod...
So could we do something like how Mathematics affects Chops? Have slavery start in its nerfed state but get enhanced to normal 30 per pop by a later civic? That way it isn't such a clear choice to pick caste workshops over slaving at a lesser amount and island cities have some chance at keeping up production wise.
Bump.
It's okay if the idea sucks. I'm a big boy. Got my big boy pants on and everything. I can take it.
(October 19th, 2012, 15:09)pindicator Wrote: With slavery in RBMod...
So could we do something like how Mathematics affects Chops? Have slavery start in its nerfed state but get enhanced to normal 30 per pop by a later civic? That way it isn't such a clear choice to pick caste workshops over slaving at a lesser amount and island cities have some chance at keeping up production wise.
Bump.
It's okay if the idea sucks. I'm a big boy. Got my big boy pants on and everything. I can take it.
I like it, but what tech would make the change? Math would make logical sense, but might become too overpowered as a tech. Iron Working would also make sense and isn't too strong with nerfed praets, I think...
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(October 19th, 2012, 15:09)pindicator Wrote: With slavery in RBMod...
So could we do something like how Mathematics affects Chops? Have slavery start in its nerfed state but get enhanced to normal 30 per pop by a later civic? That way it isn't such a clear choice to pick caste workshops over slaving at a lesser amount and island cities have some chance at keeping up production wise.
Bump.
It's okay if the idea sucks. I'm a big boy. Got my big boy pants on and everything. I can take it.
Arguably, there already is an effect like this in the game. Both granaries, and everything that gives happiness, make slavery better than its baseline, which is pretty bad.
We play on a lot of maps that have too much free happiness from resources, that make slavery better.
Regarding workshops, I don't see why they should be competitive with slavery. Mines should be competitive with slavery. I would rather just move workshops back to guilds or chemistry, if that would make people happier. But I think the reason they're at MC is because the four ways they can get boosted (guilds, chemistry, communism, code of laws) are all independent. You can get perfectly good workshops with any three of those four techs.
Quote:Arguably, there already is an effect like this in the game. Both granaries, and everything that gives happiness, make slavery better than its baseline, which is pretty bad.
We play on a lot of maps that have too much free happiness from resources, that make slavery better.
True.
Quote:Regarding workshops, I don't see why they should be competitive with slavery. Mines should be competitive with slavery. I would rather just move workshops back to guilds or chemistry, if that would make people happier. But I think the reason they're at MC is because the four ways they can get boosted (guilds, chemistry, communism, code of laws) are all independent. You can get perfectly good workshops with any three of those four techs.
The interesting point about workshops is that they aren't competitive with slavery until you pick up one of Guilds or Caste: with Caste they turn grassland into grass hills, which basically means that the player has the choice to turn flatland into hills to alleviate production issues. FWIW, scooter didn't revolt to Caste until later on in the game, well after T150, despite getting MC with the Oracle, and this would have been one method to limit to problem of lacking production tiles. The problem with having mines as the only tile improvement competitive with cottages plus slavery is that the player can be screwed if they don't get enough hills, but at least with workshops there is an out further down the tech tree that isn't quite so far away. The only change was to move the bonus from Chemistry down to MC, making it integral to the workshop, and Chemistry wasn't far away on a beeline thanks to GS bulbs in vanilla BtS, but with increased tech costs leaving the bonus at Chemistry would be a fairly big "nerf" to workshops.
I'm not convinced that SP is the uber civic that everyone believes it to be, partly because FS is there, and FM can be worth significantly more commerce: when I revolted to SP from FM I think I lost over 200cpt, even accounting for the cheaper civic costs and the lower maintenance. That said, changing the civic costs would be the first consideration to this problem, and making Merc not suck so much (which pretty much means changing the no foreign trade routes thing IMO).
The point to nerfing slavery is that it makes cottages a less safe option, you can't just build up a huge amount of pop working cottages and depend on that pop for an army if you get invaded; the same theory applies to the weakening of drafting. Any improvement to slavery relative to other civics will always make cottages better, so even if vanilla slavery were used, it would not make the island starts any stronger than high food inland starts, and could even make them weaker, as the inland starts could spam cottages and win out in the late game. The island starts will still lack land. This is a separate issue to the high food v low food start scenario, but it is still one that has to be considered.
Quote:I also do think tech trading exasperated things, and it wouldn't seem so bad to me if 1) TT was off and 2) I hadn't drawn a hand that would've been much more useful in vanilla civ.
Tech trading is a total bastard to balance. The tech tree has to be balanced for tech trading, NTT and NTB. Everyone has seen what NTT does to the game, turning it into a pure tech race with no wars ever happening until someone falls behind and can't defend themselves, yet we also remember the cartels forming in PB1.
FWIW, I think that TT here is just better on every level than vanilla TT, which is the only fair comparison for a TT game; it is also only fair to compare NTT to vanilla NTT, and not modded TT to vanilla NTT. Beyond that, I think PB5 was the first game that used both TT and AI diplomacy, so it's probably fair to make allowances to missteps based off not knowing what is an acceptable. TT is probably the most difficult option to play "right" because of that, but NTB is probably the easiest to not completely fuck up, and likely the most balanced.
(October 23rd, 2012, 02:53)Krill Wrote: The problem with having mines as the only tile improvement competitive with cottages plus slavery is that the player can be screwed if they don't get enough hills, but at least with workshops there is an out further down the tech tree that isn't quite so far away
I don't see how they can be screwed... they can just use slavery. Not having hills or forests does mean it's harder to build wonders, but that's not the end of the world.
Quote:I'm not convinced that SP is the uber civic that everyone believes it to be, partly because FS is there, and FM can be worth significantly more commerce: when I revolted to SP from FM I think I lost over 200cpt, even accounting for the cheaper civic costs and the lower maintenance. That said, changing the civic costs would be the first consideration to this problem, and making Merc not suck so much (which pretty much means changing the no foreign trade routes thing IMO).
Not sure if the mod you were playing with made FM better, but one thing to note is you don't usually have as many foreign trade routes as you did that game, when you're so far ahead. FM is typically just 2c per city plus a couple extra for big cities, which is much less than SP. Also I'm surprised you called Merc bad; it's usually better than FM in my experience.
Quote:The point to nerfing slavery is that it makes cottages a less safe option, you can't just build up a huge amount of pop working cottages and depend on that pop for an army if you get invaded;
I think you're trying to solve a phantom problem here. In the last games I've played, people have always maintained standing armies once borders start to touch. That is not unique to a setting where slavery has been nerfed.
I think you are responding to games from far earlier, when we always played with full diplo, and just weren't as skilled at war-heavy games. People made NAPs, and used token defenses, and had slavery as a fallback in case of suspicious activity or outright betrayal. But with recent PBEMs, that is clearly not the metagame anymore.
Quote:the same theory applies to the weakening of drafting. Any improvement to slavery relative to other civics will always make cottages better,
So you think strategies that compete with cottages do not use slavery (or at least don't use it as much)? I strongly disagree. The competing improvement is the farm, and it uses slavery just as much or more.
Quote:so even if vanilla slavery were used, it would not make the island starts any stronger than high food inland starts, and could even make them weaker, as the inland starts could spam cottages and win out in the late game. The island starts will still lack land. This is a separate issue to the high food v low food start scenario, but it is still one that has to be considered.
I agree that the island starts in this game had several terrible drawbacks.
