So, totally ignoring the last 152 pages of discussion which I haven't read, why don't you balance slavery by having it give units some sort of strength malus promotion, FFH-style? Maybe something like "Unreliable: -15% strength"? It would make sense, since whipped units are supposed to represent slaves hastily equipped with weapons, or conscripts provided cheap slave-labor equipment or whatever. You could give something similar to drafted units too.
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Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod
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Bob, that'd be creating a whole bunch of new mechanics, which is precisely what I've tried to avoid doing. As it is slavery is basically performs exactly the same function as in base BtS (which is necessary, as it is pretty much the 1 mechanic the entire game is built around), but it's not quite as efficient, which is all that is needed.
Slavery isn't nerfed just because of how it benefits working mass cottages, how it makes it possible to mass produce units efficiently in few turns, it's also nerfed because of how it makes high food starts so much stronger than lower food starts.
Also, mentioned in my thread in PB13, but a reminder: Food tech to poor Byzantium.
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Added.
One thing I was thinking about that could do with discussion is the lowering the cost of Alphabet. It would keep OB, but dropping it to about the cost of IW (so 80% the cost of Maths/HBR rather than 120%). It could theoretically go lower but I think that would be enough. To balance out the potentially easier route to Currency it would need to either increase the cost of Currency or remove Alphabet as an optional prerequisite. The reasoning for such a change would be the somewhat varied utility of what Alphabet provides: Spies are not always relevant (No espionage setting), OB themselves vary in economic benefit due to islands, contact with others and routes between players (rivers, coastal cities) etc. Research is about the only constant benefit but that's not enough to justify the huge cost of the tech relative to getting Maths, HBR or IW. Thoughts?
Well Maths is just huge in and of itself; Chopping is king, particularly in the slavery-nerf world. I'd still generally prefer to go the Maths route. Why not the same at least, though?
One thing to be very very careful about with Alphabet though is the fact that it gates *all* the juicy bulb paths...
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out.
December 9th, 2013, 15:02
(This post was last modified: December 9th, 2013, 15:17 by WilliamLP.)
I think it may be an unpopular opinion, and I'm probably just repeating myself but I don't like gameplay changes of taking OB off writing, or see why the change does anything to help game balance. And I don't see why the variant it creates is a more interesting game.
The good is it gives an interesting strategic option for a tech that would otherwise be dead weight. What I don't like: - It's an additional snowball magnifier at a pretty crucial point in the game that didn't exist before, when everyone can get OB much earlier. There are already so many punishments for early conflict (which isn't always a choice), that falling behind on one more key piece to accelerate a mid game economy just hurts more. - Between two equal players, starting in position where you can get contact with someone with Alphabet is a very large advantage, just due to geographical chance. It's not going to be a good idea to research Alphabet yourself if you don't need to, so if I have to in order to get what you already have I'm more behind, and this isn't small. - Someone who researches alphabet can now sell OB for a significant amount of income, making technologically backward players actually suffer for it, while it's still in their best interest to buy it vs researching themselves. So this makes it an even larger snowball magnifier, and punishment for early conflict. It becomes like Hit Movies on steroids. (Some could argue this is a feature and not a problem.) - The strategy and tension around open borders in the earlier game is removed. Do I allow it for trade routes with any given player, vs how much do I care about them scouting me out? It adds a reason to start thinking about long term peaceful relationships earlier, with the sustained peace bonus mechanic. - Open borders happen much less. Scouting past a neighbour is often infeasible. Phony war declarations happen a lot more often, for water scouting. This isn't a big deal but it's not to my taste. (December 9th, 2013, 15:02)WilliamLP Wrote: I think it may be an unpopular opinion, and I'm probably just repeating myself but I don't like gameplay changes of taking OB off writing, or see why the change does anything to help game balance. And I don't see why the variant it creates is a more interesting game. One problem with OB available at Writing is that it still acts as a snowball effect, but it's not available to everyone due to constraints with trade routes; it's also a much larger effect at Writing compared to Alphabet when cottages are not mature and there are fewer tiles worked (although admittedly there are also fewer cities). It does though, enable a faster rate of settling cities due to easier access to commerce for some players. OB at Writing is not without problems. Quote:- Between two equal players, starting in position where you can get contact with someone with Alphabet is a very large advantage, just due to geographical chance. It's not going to be a good idea to research Alphabet yourself if you don't need to, so if I have to in order to get what you already have I'm more behind, and this isn't small. I don't quite understand this point, because this is still a problem with OB available earlier (and the problem there is Writing will be researched early whereas Alphabet will force a player to spend additional beakers on the tech). Writing is a gateway tech so it has to be researched anyway. It's even worse that uneven map knowledge can affect the commerce benefit as well. Quote:- Someone who researches alphabet can now sell OB for a significant amount of income, making technologically backward players actually suffer for it, while it's still in their best interest to buy it vs researching themselves. So this makes it an even larger snowball magnifier, and punishment for early conflict. It becomes like Hit Movies on steroids. (Some could argue this is a feature and not a problem.) That's a somewhat skewed and illogical way to look at it. At no point should a player pay for OB if they aren't going to benefit from it, that's just a dumb decision if they do. What you're saying is that a player can benefit from a monopoly on a tech. That, IMO, is not a snowball magnifier, at least not in any way different to Currency, settling for early happiness resources or getting a religion. However, making Alphabet cheaper would make it more likely for Alphabet to not be a monopoly tech. Also, the concept of being tech backwards ignores that players can make gambits to other techs and benefit from the beakers generated in other ways. Quote:- The strategy and tension around open borders in the earlier game is removed. Do I allow it for trade routes with any given player, vs how much do I care about them scouting me out? It adds a reason to start thinking about long term peaceful relationships earlier, with the sustained peace bonus mechanic. I think that one issue with PB13 is that with so many people, you need maybe 3 OB to get full trade routes. That generally means you don't care too much about the other 14 players in the game so much if they aren't close to you; the problem isn't with OB, but a side effect of the game type. OB at Writing, well, the same problem still exists (infact with 1 trade route per city don't even need OB with more than 2 people). Quote:- Open borders happen much less. Scouting past a neighbour is often infeasible. Phony war declarations happen a lot more often, for water scouting. This isn't a big deal but it's not to my taste. That'd pretty much happen regardless of OB earlier or later. You don't need OB with everyone; if the player about to be scouted doesn't want to give OB war is still one option, and they have no reason to give OB if they are going to be scouted out and can't scout out the other person at the same time, as the OB can be cancelled once the galley is through to the other side. (December 9th, 2013, 15:13)plako Wrote: I'd move map trading from Writing back to Paper or to some other later tech e.g. to Optics. It feels wrong to have almost perfect map info very early in the game and also makes more likely to accidentally land circumnavigation. The issue with map trading is that players need to know if someone is going to run away with the game so they can take appropriate action to stop it (or do what they can to stop it, anyway). If a player is hiding in the FoW, it's more difficult to assess who is a threat long term and who isn't. On top of that, it's beneficial to have Map trading available at the same time as OB so that OB isn't totally one-sided (and hence even more of a snowball). So while I understand the point that something feels weird with the early map knowledge, it's a necessary evil IMO. All that said, there is an idea that OB and Map trading can both be available at Alphabet, and that this manages every problem inherent with OB; it just doesn't deal with the lack of map knowledge to assess player positions very well. The issue is that loading so much onto a single tech means that the cost of the tech is difficult to balance so it's either a nobrainer for first classical tech, delays economic techs/HBR too much long. |
