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Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod
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Yeah, the tech costs for most of the Ren era stuff is actually at 200% of base BtS values, so these changes would lower the tech costs significantly for that era. Any inflation change (any decrease, rather) always benefits that player with the highest costs, which has a correlation with the game leader (most cities, most pop, most units etc) with obvious point that it is a nerf to ORG.
(June 11th, 2013, 17:37)Krill Wrote: Any inflation change (any decrease, rather) always benefits that player with the highest costs, which has a correlation with the game leader (most cities, most pop, most units etc) with obvious point that it is a nerf to ORG. So the idea is to make smaller empires worse at research? 
Yeah, that's the main issue, which is why I'm hesitant to actually implement it. I think the increased tech costs and the increased hammer potential of larger civs is enough to limit the effectiveness of smaller tech focussed empires to a reasonable level. But if, as T-hawk says, the late game leader couldn't win the game due to spiralling costs then inflation would be the best place to look IMO. As it is, I think inflation is bearable at Monarch and below and doesn't need changing. I was just commenting on the areas that I think would be best to look at if the problem existed, rather than any implementation that I intended to do. Hope that clarifies things.
As a heads up, tomorrow I intend to post an updated version of the mod, with the following changes. I would then appreciate being informed of any bugs that people find. This is not the final version of the mod: I understand that there are still some points that people want ot discuss following PB8, but once this stuff is done, it should minimise a lot of work needed after PB8 has finished.
Considerations for 2.04 (2.03 is a working copy that I’ve got and will not be released publicly) EXP: cheap aqueducts. +50% workboat production (up form 35%). Cheap Hospitals? Doubt that. Issue: I disagree that EXP is irretrivably UP. The aim of EXP is to gain a turn advantage on every other leader, from T0 with the worker/workboat builds. The trait as implemented does that: the issue is then restated that EXP does not give a big enough advantage; counter-issue: increasing worker bonus to +50% means that in most plains hill starts can get 6 turn turn advantage over normal starts (15 turn worker v 9 turn worker). In Warlords MP EXP was considered madatory because in close starts (as in any PBEM) EXP turn advantage created unassailable leads. Suggested solutions therefore must focus not on giving a turn advantage but enabling the EXP leader to use the turn advantage for further other aims. This is can be considered as solved in a different mindset: EXP makes the secondary trait work more efficiently: late game traits become relevant earlier in the game, early game traits benefit from synergy. There are two options for further changes that I’ve considered, the first adding a mechanic similar to the ORG lower civic costs, but for city maintenance. My concern with this is that EXP then becomes similar to vanilla FIN, giving a turn advantage that means the EXP player is capable of not only expanding faster but also enabling that player to generate more beakers due to the lower costs. I kinda think this option is too powerful for EXP. The remaining option is to give cheap markets to EXP. This would do the same effect as cheap maintenance, but later on in the game, and not be completely free every time the EXP player made a new city, it would require investment. I don’t think this is a necessary change, but I’m aware it is still one that is available, and I think that were it to be made it wouldn’t make EXP OP. Question: Should EXP have cheap markets, cheap aqueducts, cheap hospitals, or cheaper work boats, or some combination there of, in addition to cheap workers and work boats, and grocers? CRE: Cheap Observatories Issue: CRE appears to be a bit weak, because it doesn't do much late in the game. Cheap observatories replace the cheap libraries it lost, but at a stage of the game where a research bonus is weaker. AGG: Any additional cheap buildings (Stables, Airport) AGG+ORG: Move cheap court house from ORG to AGG Issue: Aggressive as a trait was originally designed (before CIV was released) to showcase the new promotion system, which is different to previous civ games. In hindsight, it has become apparant that as every other trait is balanced around economic output, including the modded PRO trait, AGG is currently unbalancable. So a different approach is necessary in considering what it is that AGG does. One view is to consider AGG as a trait that enables map control, comparable to IMP, CRE, and EXP, but different in how it manages to do that. The C1 bonus is no longer the main point of the trait, but “The cherry on top” like the GG bonus to IMP is. After that, need to consider what AGG actually does, because the bonus needs to be economic: it has to make controlling the map either cheaper to accomplish (through easing expanding ie cheap settlers and workers) or to make it more affordable (less gold cost) or get the cities more productive quicker (easier growth, cheaper tile improvements, higher happy caps). There are one or two other options such as hacking the DLL to lower city maintenance, but I’m hesitent to do that when there are other options. Cheap court houses turn AGG into a trait that is capable of controlling land through military means but also has economic benefits that allow it to compete with other traits. ORG is thought of by some as the most powerful trait. Whilst I do not agree with this view, I do not feel that removing cheap court houses weakens it to the point of irrelevance. The flavour issue, that court houses are THE point of the trait does ignore the point that civic cost reduction is what provides the majority of the impetus of the civic, and cheap libraries provide better scaling for what ORG is generally envisaged to do: saving gold that is then used to run the science slider higher, and tech faster. Arabia: Change starting techs from Myst/Wheel to Myst/Agri Kublai: Change traits from AGG/CRE to CHM/CRE Trade route bug fix: Check to see if it has been implemented, if not then implement as per Seven's solution. Known Tech bonus: Remove the NTT known tech bonus restriction for the NTT game option Following this, there are certain role backs that I intend to do: Sumeria: Revert Vulture to base BtS Carthage: Numidian retreat chance ought to be same as innate retreat chance on HA (bug fix) Khmer: Turn Ballistaphants into base WE that attack mounted first (ie they keep the feature that made them a UU in the first place, otherwise the same as standard WE.) War Elephants: Remove bonus against knights Cristo: Revert +SPI production to vanilla levels
First, my opinions on the non-tech changes: I think that almost all of these changes are excellent ones. One thing that I would do, if you are reverting the ballista elephant to basically a vanilla war elephant that attacks mounted first outside of cities (and weakening war elephants), is to give ballista elephants a first strike chance. On EXP, I would put cheap markets and cheap aqueducts and keep +33% workboat and worker production (along with cheap gorcers and the +2 health). Otherwise, I think that your suggestions are fairly solid.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
AGG is interesting. C1 is a pretty damn huge cherry on top; it can massively boost some of the already good UUs to greatness, like Impis, Musketeers, and Preatorians. But, that it the soul of a situational boost. Making it cheapen stables and airports makes sense...maybe boost castles as well? In the tech cost world of RBmod, Engineering is more likely to be earlier, so a boost to castles could be nice. ORG is courthouses; courthouses are ORG.
One side thought, going the other way to obsoleting castles...what about making customs houses fetorias? I would love to have a way to boost late-game fishing villages, which in slavery-nerfed RBmod are even worse off than in BtS. Maybe fetorias get some additional boost to their cheapness, like applying the boost to domestic routes too. This would mildly buff Imp, but Imp flags in the late game anyway.
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Commodore, when you ranked the traits, you said that AGG was the worst trait, even with cheap stable and airports. Do you think that Castles really makes that much difference?
I'd like to compare the difference between adding a city maintenance modifier to a trait, and cheap court houses. Cheap court houses require that the player researches to CoL, and then invests hammers into a court house to get a bonus, and the advantage gained is only a saving of hammers and a few turns of saved gold (plus the subsequent saved turns on the next building and tech). But court houses are available to anyone that has the hammers and tech to build them: later on the benefits of cheap court houses have played out, so cheap buildings can generally be viewed as short term advantages. Adding a new maintenance modifier isn't like this. It is not available to any other trait, and it is available from T0 onwards. It is more comparable to the bonus commerce FIN gets, cheaper civic maintenance of ORG, free C1 on AGG or less XP per promotion on CHM. Whilst it may not have such a large effect at the start of the game due to fewer of cities, late game it will till be giving a huge boost (well, larger if not using State Property). It is not a tech dependant, or building dependant bonus, its usefulness relies purely on expansion. This makes it really difficult to judge the balance: just look at the amount of time spent trying to balance FIN. I'm hesitant to use this mechanic with any trait, because it's basically strong enough to be a trait by itself, depending on the numbers used. If it were used with AGG, it could potentially be a must have with other traits, or completely useless: if you got to the late game you would end up the HRE UB bonus for free, on top of the C1. Late game AGG isn't a problem, it's perfectly OK, it's just getting to the late game so any bonus AGG gets should only help AGG get there, rather than making it any stronger once it reaches that stage. This is why I think giving AGG cheap court houses is a better option, regardless of ORG.
Castles do nothing other than saving, what, 50 hammers in 2-3 border cities, and the trade route bonus makes it a noob trap for core cities under most circumstances, as castles are obsoleted at Economics (a cheaper tech now with the lowering of tech costs in that era). I'm not going to go and introduce new buildings that are only buildable by specific traits, having to go through the process of finding new graphics, create new data for them like soldier points. People argue that the burden of knowledge is already high for this mod, and that change worsens it, by introducing a new sort of building.
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