Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

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.

I find it's good to have the discussion at least, at worst there is an opportunity for both sides to gain a little bit more understanding even if no change occurs (and most of the time a change doesn't).

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.

There is no fundamental difference between a gameplay and balance problem; imbalances cause specific game play patterns, for example the power of slavery causing the generally preferred option being to save pop in cities as a hammer storage system to then whip out units.

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.

Build a unit. Kill the scout. Problem solved. If you choose not to build a unit, or they have units that you can't economically kill not really much you can, or ought to be able, to do.

Being able to hurt economies through WW is

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.

FWIW I think the costs with an early HE are pretty high. Have to research Aesthetics>Lit which give no innate advantages unless you then invest further hammers, don't improve happy cap, commerce generation or provide military advantages. Have to get a unit to 10XP isn't easy (really have to use multiple units to ensure some certainty in reaching it but that has another set of problems). Yes the wonders are pretty good but if you rush those techs the wonders are pretty expensive and take a while to pay back. Later on though, I don't think that the HE is any different to the other NW; everyone has them, and you want to use them effectively regardless, right?

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.

Thank you.

I'm not sure that Charismatic needs that large a boost tbh is all, I know a lot of people value Charismatic quite highly.

[Dhalphir]

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.

Build a unit. Kill the scout. Problem solved. If you choose not to build a unit, or they have units that you can't economically kill not really much you can, or ought to be able, to do.

That would be an awesome suggestion were it not for the stupidity of coast-based naval combat. Maybe if there was some sort of combat advantage to fighting in your own waters, that would be a viable answer.

[Krill]

Build a galley. Leave it on coast in their way. Problem solved. Which you ought to do anyway if you have seafood because not everyone is so nice that they don't pillage your nets. The combat advantage that you do have is knowledge of the area so you can position units to block (and know the timings so you know when you have to finish a galley by).

[Dhalphir]

I defer to your expertise.

I still feel that it's silly, but I'm not going to pretend I think it's better for the game to change it or anything

[SevenSpirits]

Build a galley. Leave it on coast in their way. Problem solved. Which you ought to do anyway if you have seafood because not everyone is so nice that they don't pillage your nets. The combat advantage that you do have is knowledge of the area so you can position units to block (and know the timings so you know when you have to finish a galley by).

That often works, but also, often the coast is wider than 1 tile.

[Krill]

Oh don't get me wrong, naval combat is pretty shit in CIV, and it would benefit immensely from being redesigned. I'm just not going to do it for this mod because of the design parameters. But this mod is almost finished, everything that needs do is basically bug fixes and small changes to civs (plus potential map trading and that isn't certain).

Maybe I'll take this mod and then use it as the basis for something new, something different. Maybe try to redesign some stuff like a new corps system that starts in the classical era, new naval combat or late era starts, but that would not happen for a while because of RL commitments (like not failing my new degree etc).

That often works, but also, often the coast is wider than 1 tile.

Build 2 galleys and double team him.

[dtay]

New naval combat would be great. Does anyone have ideas about effective redesigns? SevenSpirits fix is interesting and helps fix the constant defender advantage, but doesn't alter the 'larger stack basically always wins' factor.

Would you want to create an entire set of rock-paper-scissor units? Or maybe make it all promo based? Create the naval equivalent of catapults? (Just throwing random ideas out there)

[Krill]

Really, that topic deserves a thread all for itself. Feel free to make it, I know a lot of people will want to contribute their thoughts (read: that thread will be spammed out of existance).

[Dhalphir]

Give coastal defenses bonuses only when in your own waters. That would be a good start.

[Krill]

Oh god someone unless the spam version of Cthulu.