Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

Granaries are unfixable, they are too tightly integrated into economics of the game. The rest I'm interested in reading reasons why changes are justified.

[plako]

The key word is "chances", which I feel make a game inferior when applied to a single irreplaceable and valuable unit. Turning barbs off has much larger effects.

It is just another random effect among the numerous others and not even close to the most significant one. I admit that early game will be boring without a scout, but if you play it wisely there is a very good chance your scout will survive.

[WilliamLP]

It is just another random effect among the numerous others and not even close to the most significant one. I admit that early game will be boring without a scout, but if you play it wisely there is a very good chance your scout will survive.

If the philosophy is "if it isn't breaking the game, don't fix it" then it's not needed. But it's a small thing that would make the game slightly better.

[flugauto]

Granaries are unfixable, they are too tightly integrated into economics of the game. The rest I'm interested in reading reasons why changes are justified.

Economics change. Maybe it is time to move away from the granary economics. Or at least to try it.

Free commerce from rivers, it is like financial trait for free, almost. Who has rivers, he gets too much advantage. Compare riverside tiles and lakeside, nobody cares about lakeside. How about removing riverside commerce, making cities with fresh water have +1 trade route.

[SevenSpirits]

Granaries are unfixable, they are too tightly integrated into economics of the game. The rest I'm interested in reading reasons why changes are justified.

Economics change. Maybe it is time to move away from the granary economics. Or at least to try it.

Free commerce from rivers, it is like financial trait for free, almost. Who has rivers, he gets too much advantage. Compare riverside tiles and lakeside, nobody cares about lakeside. How about removing riverside commerce, making cities with fresh water have +1 trade route.

Civ IV is something like 50% about the differing yields of tiles. Making tile yields identical in the name of game balance is crazy. It's especially crazy because we use human-made maps. There is nothing actually preventing us from playing with balanced maps. It's also crazy because the differences in quality between resources is so much higher than 1 commerce. And the difference in quality between different terrain types is also equal or greater - plains is just as much worse than grassland, as lakeside tiles are worse than riverside ones. And the dropoff to tundra and desert, and rise to flood plains, is even greater! But yeah, this is most of the game we are talking about here. It stops being worth playing if you take out the varying tile yields.

Granaries could easily be removed, food costs for growth could be cut in half, and settlers could cost 70% more. Congratulations, you removed granaries and setting up a new city costs about the same. The question is, why would you want to do this? Granaries actually serve a purpose, namely forcing new cities to put up some production in addition to just food, and ensuring that there's a good economic production sink at the start of the game so you don't have every city producing military while it grows. You called granaries "broken" earlier, and that displays a fundamental misunderstanding of their place in the game. You're not supposed to be like, hm, should I build a granary first or a library first or a barracks first? for every city. Granary is the correct choice! But just because something is the correct choice, doesn't mean it's broken. An example is resources: guess what, you should improve resource tiles before you start working on those bare plains tiles. That doesn't mean resources are broken - you weren't supposed to ever be having that debate. They are adding texture and soul to the game.

[flugauto]

Civ IV is something like 50% about the differing yields of tiles. Making tile yields identical in the name of game balance is crazy. It's especially crazy because we use human-made maps. There is nothing actually preventing us from playing with balanced maps. It's also crazy because the differences in quality between resources is so much higher than 1 commerce. And the difference in quality between different terrain types is also equal or greater - plains is just as much worse than grassland, as lakeside tiles are worse than riverside ones. And the dropoff to tundra and desert, and rise to flood plains, is even greater! But yeah, this is most of the game we are talking about here. It stops being worth playing if you take out the varying tile yields.

Balanced maps are boring. Most RB PB games have very unbalanced maps.

And it is easy to see how those who get the bad land are happy.

We have some crappy land though (like 15 river tiles total, 3 of which are cottageable grassland, and not a whole lot of food)

Granaries could easily be removed, food costs for growth could be cut in half, and settlers could cost 70% more. Congratulations, you removed granaries and setting up a new city costs about the same. The question is, why would you want to do this?

Why do you say I want to remove granaries? Why would anyone remove granaries? Why cut the growth food? Why make settlers cost more? Remove the magic food, make granaries do something else.

You called granaries "broken" earlier, and that displays a fundamental misunderstanding of their place in the game. You're not supposed to be like, hm, should I build a granary first or a library first or a barracks first? for every city. Granary is the correct choice!

Firstly, granaries are not always the first correct choice. Secondly, even if they are not the first correct choice, they are the second one. I don't like this, I don't agree with this.

[suttree]

I think you and Seven are talking past each other, flugAuto. Seven explained that the granary serves as fixed cost in the development of any city. You design the game with a certain rate of horizontal expansion in mind - this rate is determined by the cost of a settler as compared to the cost of labour. Now, you can make the cost of a settler/pop constant OR you can split the cost between the settler/pop and a building - the granary. The latter option is more interesting for the player because it introduces choices in the development of the new city.

If you remove or redesign the granary you preserve game balance only by increasing the cost of a settler and decreasing the cost of labour. After that you could create a "new granary" that does something else - but why not leave the granary as it is and throw the "new granary" on top?

[suttree]

The granary reflects the idea that the function of every city in the game is to grow labour. Some cities will go on to generate hammers, or gold, or beakers, or culture, or espionage and each of those goods gets its own line of buildings. The granary is the unique "labour building." And so, by "granary economy" you are really referring to the "labour economy" - you can't get rid of it, you can only rebalance it.

[Merovech]

Balanced maps are boring.

Greatly disagreed.

[Qgqqqqq]

I agree with everything Sevens said, but would add that a rebalancing mod is the wrong place to be suggesting such a change. IMO the chance of Krill changing the granny mechanic is nil, its that fundamental to the game. If you look at the mods section at CFC there are plenty that would change the mechanics in such a way, and plenty have already.
Out of curiosity, when are they not always the right choices?