Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

CRE/ORG may be the same as before (modulo the lost courthouse discount), but ORG/anything else has been changed for the better.

Well duh. I think ORG is a generally weak trait, and you don't. So I think that's a good thing, and you don't.

It doesn't matter how good the trait combo is in relation to a BTS trait combo with the same name. It matters how good it is in relation to other trait combos you could choose instead.

And again, this comes down to opinion on trait strength. I think SPI is the strongest trait for most game settings for example, and from that starting point, it's easy to understand why it is possible to accept that the balance between trait pairs is better than in base BtS even including AGG.

The goal of having the AGG trait with its military boosts is at odds with having a balanced set of traits. If I were trying to make a balanced set of traits, I would replace AGG with something else, or remove it.

One of the constraints I accepted as necessary was that none of the traits should get redesigned. It wouldn't be trivial to design a new trait that worked reasonably well, or to create new buildings that made trait balance better, or even give AGG cheap granaries, duplicating boni already present, but it's not exactly difficult. But I decided at the outset that those solutions aren't acceptable, and if that means the trait balance isn't perfect I'm happy with that. I will still try to balance the traits, and that will involve considering some weird and wacky ideas, but thinking about changes isn't the same as implementing them.

Traits are imbalanced; that's a problem. One "solution" to the problem is to just never pick the worst traits. Another "solution" is to play with a certain complicated mod that changes a lot of things. My claim is that these two solutions provide comparable levels of increased balance (not much in either case).

I find that rather humourous, truth be told, considering the sheer amount of shit that players have been through setting up multiple pitboss games and arguing over what needs banning, and then in PB5 and PB8 both games just started without any rules issues including random leaders. So...sure, claim that.

IMO, the cost of all the mod changes (many of which I don't like) is greater than the cost of being down two traits. That's why I consider this to be a pertinent comparison to make.

The crux of the matter is that you have either a simplistic view on how to play CIV or aren't considering the sheer variety of possible game types this mod has to be balanced for, and don't appreciate different playstyles. Which is fine, no one here is forcing you to play anything that you don't like. You are ignoring what players have argued over during the past 4 years, such as nukes, tech trading, wonders and focussing on the one area that everyone seems to say is better than in base BtS though.

[SevenSpirits]

People discuss rules tweaks when they know the game and have played it repeatedly. Players in PB5 and PB8 didn't know the balance of the mod well enough to make decisions about what things to change. That's awesome, and it's a great benefit of novelty, and using mods in general. I love novelty. However, it is not indicative of balance.

One nice thing I will say about your mod is that it makes some of the best BTS choices worse: for example, FIN and CRE lost a large amount of their value, and Granary-bonus-trait lost a bit of value too. And the overpowered civs got reigned in a bit. However I maintain that the difference between best and worst traits didn't change much: we are more conscious of the fine differences between quality in the best traits, because they are used the most when available, and because seeing peoples' preferences between them via countless snake picks enables us to build up fairly precise (if not necessarily accurate) relative group evaluations of them. But actually the differences between good traits and excellent traits are quite a bit less than the difference between good traits and poor traits. The poor traits are REALLY poor, but people don't have a strong intuitive grasp of how poor they are because they are rarely set against one another in a competitive environment. This is how all those changes can stir up muck, forcing everyone to reset their evaluations of all the traits, without actually lowering the disparity in quality that much.

I am curious to know what you think of as my simplistic view on civ, and what I am ignoring.

[Krill]

Yes, players would ideally have hundreds of games worth of experience to judge balance from, especially when judging a new game, or a conversion mod, which this isn't. I feel that less experience would be necessary to have a good grasp of what changes to game balance have occurred.

As to the rest...traits are obviously going to be valued differently depending on settings. AGG in a 4 player PBEM on a map the size of PBEM34 is going to be significantly more useful than on a standard size map with 5 players, with the different metagames. Then there are later era starts, team games...I think it is simplistic to state that a given trait is OP or UP and give it a set value.

[plako]

Rebalance the pause button. It is very unfair to players who have diplo window open.

[Old Harry]

Rebalance the pause button. It is very unfair to players who have diplo window open.

And player order. That's unfair too.

[Krill]

If anyone has an idea how to mod the game to remove those pause problems I'm all ears, but I don't see what the problem with play order is.

[Old Harry]

Is RB mod concurrent-pitboss only? In PBEM and sequential pitboss trade routes are supposed to slightly tilt towards first player and away from last player, it's easier to be first to early wonders and NAP expiration always favours the player earlier in the turn order, as they can declare first (unless you can negotiate a NAP that gives you that right - in which case you're some kind of diplo genius).

I don't think you should even try to fix these though...

Thought of a related dumb question - does enforced peace take notice of when in the turn order it's signed in PBEM or sequential pitboss or does it just expire at the end of a turn?

[BRickAstley]

Also, the color imbalance. Almost identical civ colors that confuse the eye, need some serious nerfing.

[Krill]

Is RB mod concurrent-pitboss only? In PBEM and sequential pitboss trade routes are supposed to slightly tilt towards first player and away from last player, it's easier to be first to early wonders and NAP expiration always favours the player earlier in the turn order, as they can declare first (unless you can negotiate a NAP that gives you that right - in which case you're some kind of diplo genius).

The only things that a mod will help with are the bugs that occur, like the trade routes bugs. I'm not entirely sure that they are fixed in her, because it's not something I would be able to fix, but others might have done it in the past. That change is something I would like to see fixed when the DLL is next altered. The diplomacy and wonder stuff is never going to change, simply because those are mechanics inherent in a turn based game; someone will always finish a wonder first on turn order or otherwise, and NAPs are out of game diplomatic agreements that need to be enforced by out of game rules. I personally favour writing in who gets the first move into any NAP I agree to (so I state that X person is the first person who may attack when the NAP expires, and can attack on turn X). NAPs need to be written clearly to not lead to misunderstandings and bad blood. As to the turn order stuff, if you do a snake pick I think that whoever picks first ought to go last in turn order, and ether use a 4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1 pick order or 4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4.

Thought of a related dumb question - does enforced peace take notice of when in the turn order it's signed in PBEM or sequential pitboss or does it just expire at the end of a turn?

I'm not entirely certain but then again I just woke up.

[Bigger]

Rebalance the pause button. It is very unfair to players who have diplo window open.

yes, the injustice of it all!

I always imagined the trade route bug (favoring players early in turn order in a pbem) would have been fixed already if Krill knew how to do that.. and obviously its not relevant in pitbosses