Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Old Harry]

I think that breaking the save format is not something that I truly understand the complexities of, so yeah, I kinda prefer to not do anything that does that. I think that any system that forces the player to keep track of the barb/non-barb XP is a complete none starter for an idea because it is an overly complex fix to something that isn't really a problem though.

Could you use war weariness? If someone has some then they've fought a battle outside their borders. Which is fine since fighting inside your borders clearly isn't heroic.

[NobleHelium]

War weariness decays. And accrual of war weariness is (again) related to tile culture and not whose borders the tile is in.

[Old Harry]

And 10 xp units get killed. It would need to be a switch - you have to hit eg 5 war weariness, then its enabled. Is there a way to see your own weariness in-game?

[dtay]

Idk, this whole heroic epic discussion in my mind runs up against what I described earlier, are we really fixing an actual balance problem with the heroic epic? Is actually unbalancing that you can get it through only barbarians? (Its not exactly easy to do even that). I'm especially skeptical if the change alters how HE works for non-barb-enabled games.

[Dhalphir]

I don't really have much expertise in this matter, but I do want to agree with WillLP that RBmod should focus on eliminating balance problems and bugs, and stay away from making too many gameplay related changes, simply because it makes it harder and harder to switch between BTS and RbMod the more gameplay differences there are.

Hell, if we're going to go down the road of gameplay changes, there are a lot that I would like to see already.

For starters, doing something to prevent wardeccing with wild abandon just for the purposes of scouting would be nice. It would be nice if open borders had a purpose besides trade routes, and I'd like to have some influence on the ability of others to scout through my lands without my consent. As it is, they declare, move through, then offer peace. I don't have to give them peace, but why wouldn't I - it doesn't hurt them to remain at war if I refuse the peace, and usually they are on the other side of the world anyway!

I'd prefer to see some sort of ability to inflict a consequence upon someone for presuming they can just pass through your borders with impunity without any open borders agreement - perhaps something like accumulating war weariness whenever you are the aggressor in a war, even if you never actually do any fighting. This gives the sovereign civ whose borders are being violated some recourse - if I don't want people to scout through my lands - well, I may not be able to stop them, but I can hurt them by refusing peace if they choose to do it.

[novice]

I think that breaking the save format is not something that I truly understand the complexities of, so yeah, I kinda prefer to not do anything that does that. I think that any system that forces the player to keep track of the barb/non-barb XP is a complete none starter for an idea because it is an overly complex fix to something that isn't really a problem though.

Could you use war weariness? If someone has some then they've fought a battle outside their borders. Which is fine since fighting inside your borders clearly isn't heroic.

FWIW, information about who's been at war with whom is already in the game state, as evidenced by diplo modifiers. It's just information about each unit's battle history that's missing.

At any rate, reading Krill's comments I agree that the cure is worse than the disease in this instance - just play without barbs if you don't like xp farming.

P.S: I also agree that a balance mod should do balancing changes and not feature changes, the reason I brought up the HE is the knock-on effect from the SoZ change.

[mackoti]

Actualy HE and soz seems right for me cause getting them always has a cost, and farming barbs for esperience not that easy as it sounds, i lost my shock axeman atacking an axeman when i wanted to unlock HE .
The chnage which i would do and i arlready said to krill is charisthamic getting the double libraries stuff.And i ddint say until now but i want to say a big bravo to Krill and cyneheard for this Mod , even i am ver against mods and evrithing i think this one is beter then unmoded version.

[WilliamLP]

In RBMod you benefit from a monopoly on Alphabet but you may benefit even more from being one of the only contacts of someone else who has a monopoly on it, purely by chance! Not only do you get the benefit relative to someone who the contact hasn't found, and has no OB at all, but you're up the beakers for Alphabet on them too.

At that point, I'd question why a player with limited contacts decided to research Alphabet TBH and not something like Monarchy, Maths>Calendar, Aesthetics>Lit etc. I'm basically saying that I feel like if this situation occurs then the player with Alphabet has misplayed the tech strategy. However, lowering the cost of Alphabet (one of the potential changes would be to drop the cost of Alphabet from 120% of Maths or 80% of Maths) would decrease the "size" of this problem.

If I've got 10 cities and Currency, foreign land routes can easily be worth 20 commerce per turn, and overseas can be worth 40, compared to domestic. Either way, Alphabet becomes a cost effective tech to research even with few contacts, I think, as long as I know that nobody else will research it. If someone else does, of course it's better to not research it at all but bargain for OB instead. That bargain will be favourable compared to the cost of Alphabet because it's also a deal the the player researching it needs to make to get any value himself. This is an unstable equilibrium I find kind of weird, and it's chaotic - benefiting who plays "chicken" on researching Alphabet the longest.

Say we've got 6 players:




Either Alice or Bob, after currency (or maybe before), will get a lot of benefit out of Alphabet. Let's say Bob gets it. Now you really want to be Alice! You get foreign overseas routes, and you're up the beakers of Alphabet over Bob. Who really gets screwed is Carl. He gets domestic routes only, until Bob can find him much later. He can't find Bob himself by land or sea even with map trading and knowing exactly where he is, because he'd have to declare war on Alice to do so! Obviously that might be awkward. He can research Alphabet himself but he's probably already well behind Alice at this point and put beakers into Alphabet would put him even more behind.

Now what happens in BtS? Carl and Alice will probably get OB immediately upon writing. Alice may find Bob immediately which is admittedly an advantage for both of them. And Carl can also find Bob because of open borders, with a scout or a work boat. If Carl invests in scouting, he won't be at a trade route disadvantage over Bob. At worst, he is only down the difference between overseas and land routes, since he could get routes with the player X to his south.

The point is if I'm Carl (and I know Bob is the one getting Alphabet), I'm really quite a lot better off in BtS than in RBMod, as far as trade routes go. This also isn't a very hypothetical example.

War Elephants aren't an integral part of the game; still need balancing though. Same with several of the espionage missions.

Those aren't very good comparisons, since for instance (from what I hear) War Elephants are an extremely dominating part of the game when they aren't banned.

(And for the record I think almost all the changes in RBMod are fantastic. Even changes that aren't needed for balance, e.g. making whales a more valuable resource.)

[Krill]

The example you give is a 6 player map with 2 people that are in the centre controlling every diplomatic contact, and extrapolate that to all maps? If anything, Alice wouldn't offer OB to Carl anyway because she wouldn't want him getting IC TR; Carl still doesn't get TR with anyone, even domestic trade routes because Alice would'nt benefit from them if she is getting IC TR with Bob.

[WilliamLP]

The example you give is a 6 player map with 2 people that are in the centre controlling every diplomatic contact, and extrapolate that to all maps? If anything, Alice wouldn't offer OB to Carl anyway because she wouldn't want him getting IC TR; Carl still doesn't get TR with anyone, even domestic trade routes because Alice would'nt benefit from them if she is getting IC TR with Bob.

I admittedly draw on one example because I've played in one game...

In BtS, Carl surely gets TR with X to his south, at least, instead of nothing. Also it's likely that Carl met Alice before Alice met Bob, so they'd have OB for a while at least. It's still a negative sum game for Alice to cancel on Carl, since Bob probably don't have enough cities to fully saturate Alice's trade routes. So there's a cost to closing borders to deny someone else getting contacts. (I also believe this is an interesting strategic element.)