Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Fintourist]

Tides of War Mod and RBMod have similar targets, but somewhat different approach and philosophy. Therefore it's not really possible to combine them in an attempt to create a better mod. However, there is one thing in ToW mod that I think could also improve RBMod:

Wonder/Building Resource Doublers
All wonders/buildings that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.

RESOURCE DOUBLING

Marble and stone don't get BANNED, per se, but mapmakers sure go through a lot of contortions to make sure people don't get them! They need to be balanced among players, and often mapmakers try to hide them as far from players as humanly possible, and sometimes they deliberately leave them off the map entirely. I think it's pretty similar to if people sometimes banned them.

At the same time, some of the wonders which have doublers are a bit overpowered for their cost. Taj Mahal, MoM, Pyramids... all of these and more have warped games in the past.

And finally, IND is a bit underpowered. Reducing the standard +100% production to +50% production makes IND a little better, makes all those wonders a bit less game-warping, and saves mapmakers some headache. It's a blanket change because that's way simpler to adjust to than if I were to reduce some wonder bonuses to 50% and keep others at 100%.

I like the reasoning behind the change and I think some sort of changes to wonder multipliers or costs could make sense. I think in RBMod the change does not need to be as simple as in ToW and it would for example be possible to have different multipliers for national wonders, most powerful wonders & "normal" wonders.

[Krill]

You picked a good time to post. I've just finished an essay that's been pissing me off for the past 2 weeks and I've got a rather nice collection of beer to be drinking whilst I write shit down.

There are several parts of the ToW mod that are worth considering, and that is very much one of them. The others are the change to PHI and lowering cost of MC. However, the context of all of these changes is slightly different. For example, MC unlocks more useful workshops and the Collosus here, whereas in ToW there is no change to the primacy of slavery, or any change to workshop yield, and Collosus is nerfed in total yield (over an entire empire) so MC is worth less in an absolute sense. So whilst a change in the value of MC may be a good idea, the size of such a change is more debatable.

PHI I wouldn't actually disagree with, I do think that increasing it to 150% is a reasonable option. However, a more useful change IMO would be an alteration to the threshold for GP, so instead of increasing 1000>1200>1400 etc it stayed linear, always increasing by 100, so the 30th GP cost 3000 gpp, rather than 2900 gpp getting you...18, I think? Or perhaps a combination of the two.

The change to the %age modifiers for wonder builds...I don't disagree that a reduction is a good idea. To give an example, I've thought for a while that Mids at 500 hammers is fine, but it's almost broken at 250 hammers. But I've never thought of just straight decreasing hte build modifiers for stone and marble, and frankly I think that a straight decrease is better than changing it on a per wonder basis, as it is much easier to understand that stone/marble only give +50% rather than it gives +50% to Mids, +100% to Henge, +75% to Notre Dame etc...

Ultimately, I do hope to incorporate those ideas that function well from ToW, if Seven is OK with it. But how it fits with the rest of the changes within the mod also has to be considered.

[Fintourist]

Cool. Looking forward to what your preferred solution is to aforementioned subjects.

And cool vol.2. writing essays drunk is too.. (I'm assuming that you did not manage to wait those 2 weeks completely without..)

[SevenSpirits]

Ultimately, I do hope to incorporate those ideas that function well from ToW, if Seven is OK with it.

Of course that would be fine. (I do hold a trademark of the phrase "fifty percent" but so far it's only gotten me sued by some rapper, so screw that.)

Regarding PHI and gpp changes, I don't think reducing the gpp cost increases above the 10th GP will make much difference to the game and certainly not much difference to PHI. It's too late in the game, and the changes are fairly small compared to the total cost of the GPs in question.

[Krill]

Yeah, but TBH, PHI is "gated" in a sense by tech: can only really make GS via specs unless you pick specific civs in an unrestricted game, except with the wonder gpp. I think that 150% is the right way to go as a first step, but if that wasn't enough, would have to consider other changes and I think that the thresholds would be the ideal second step rather than changes to when specs were available etc. But it's such an simple change that makes it so good.

[Lewwyn]

I agree with the slight PHI upgrade. I still think that PHI is weaker than most people do.

[Krill]

OK, here goes...below is the current "To Do" I have for 2.0.3.6:

Potential changes for RB (smegheads) mod 2.0.3.6 version

Events: what Commodore pointed out, increase number of quests decrease pretty much everything else (Ed: not likely to happen but I would like it to)

Map Trading/ OB: Decrease cost of Alphabet to be same cost as IW (or 50% more than Writing). Consider effect on rush to Currency ie increase cost of Currency slightly (5%) or make Alphabet not lead to Currency and lower cost of Currency?

AGG: minor nerfs needed, decrease city maintenance benefit from -25% to -20%?

IMP: Nothing needed IMO but discuss with others.

Byzantium: Change techs to Myst/food tech, Fishing ideally (duplicate with Spain only)

Vikings: lose C1 on Zerker (Ed: bug from version of mod from years ago)

Celts: Better wording on UB

Bugs: Query: Oracle/Lib free tech bug still need fixing? Check with Seven/T-hawk.

Barracks culture not doubling at 100 years (XML tag)?

So as you can see, it's pretty sparse, the mod has been in development since August 2010 (still got the original chat that spawned it...). Most things have been done, and the mod is in a reasonable position to be left as completed.

The majority of changes that were introduced in ToW use, IMO, effective routes to get to a balanced point, but they are not entirely necessary here. To give an example, the rebalance of starting tech costs appears to make the majority of civs usable (I say apparent because there could be hidden problems that are not easily understood but are still there. I'm hedging my bets, so sue me). However, there is one thing that will always be entirely subjective, simply because of the variety of games that are played, and that is the trait balance.

I'm reasonably happy with the trait balance here, because I feel the variance between the "best" and "worst" traits is similar in size to the variance that would be caused by the game type. That said, I think that the following traits are a bit iffy:

• IMP. I like IMP, and I think a fundamental difference between the valuation that myself and Seven give to the trait is because of how we use it to get into someones face and control someone else's actions. And I think that's a reasonable difference that exists between a few players, it's not a good enough reason to change anything. But if multiple people think that there is a common problem, and it isn't group think, then there is a reason to introduce a change. I personally think that IMP would benefit from a mid game bonus around the time of CS, but I don't think that it's necessary for IMP to still be usable.
  
  
  
• PHI. I've never liked PHI. I think it's actually pretty shit but there are still tactical advantages to having it (like the ability to easily shove out GA to bomb people with), but really +150%, well, I don't think it solves it, but it makes it more functional. I don't think that messing any more than that is warranted at this point.
  
  
  
• IND. It's just hard to value a trait that when it is the sole version of it in the game can give huge advantages, but when there are 5 version of it in the game like in PB8 it's effectively junk. The main way to make it less junk is to make it function without any first to boni such as wonders, and with IND the only ways to do that are to make Forges more easily available. And that does require MC to have the cost lowered, but that has all the aforementioned problems.
  
  But are they really problems? Workshops, without Caste or Guilds, are merely capable of turning bare flatland tiles into the equivalent of forest plains and forest plains hill with river commerce. And they are expensive in worker turns. So really, that isn't a reason to not lower the cost of the MC. What about Collosus? Well, I figure that if Copper only contributes +50% production it does make it a little weaker, and it is obsoleted by Astro, an often critical tech so really would lowering the cost of MC make Collosus any better, when it is usually given freely to the IND player that uses Oracle to get MC? No, I don't think that's a good enough reason to not lower the cost of MC either. So actually, just dropping the cost of MC is a good idea to improve IND, never mind the changes to the wonder production modifiers. Which should happen anyway.
  
  
  
• CHM. OK, I'll just throw it out there like mackoti wanted. Should CHM have cheap Libs? Is CHM so low, so bad that it needs such a core city improvement at half price? Because whilst I know my opinion of the answer, I don't know the answer.

The other point is something that has been pissing me off for ages, and that is work boats. I gave an example of how they could be redesigned but really, I'm not doing that. ToW used the idea of increasing the cost of Fishing, and making work boat available without any tech as a potential solution, but I disagree with that solution for the following reason:

There is now no reason to want to start with Fishing because everyone can go work boat first and you only research Fishing if you have to, and if you have to research it to hook up a food resource that puts you further behind on getting to BW, to AH, to Pottery. Increasing the cost just makes it more of a punishment if you actually have to get Fishing; you either spend longer researching it, or you have a restricted amount of civs that you can choose from because you have to start with Fishing. On top of that, you have to invest 30 hammers into improving a single tile whereas the first worker you complete on T15 will over the course of the next 235 turns improve something along thee lines of 25 roads, 20 farms, 10 mines and 10 cottages give or take some wasted movement. They just don't compare. the problem with seafood isn't so much that it exists, just that at a capital there is too much pressure on resources to improve seafood.

The time that seafood works best is if the additional tile yield from improving seafood first (due to the lower cost of the work boat) is enough to make up the time on building the worker, and makes up the remainder of the cost whilst the worker improves the first resource tile. There aren't that many times where this works, because the capital needs to have high hammer output to get the work boat finished quickly (as opposed to high food output, either works in building a worker, but the work boat MUST have a high hammer start), and THEN the tile that is improved has to be at least 5 food in output to make up the lost ground. So a plains hill capital with plains hill forest with dry rice and freshwater fish: work boat first is great, better than worker first. flat capital with wet corn and ocean crab and only grass/plains forests = worker first every time.

This is no different from base BtS or this mod. So far I haven't seen or found any good solution that isn't a variant on modding the map generator to remove all seafood from the capital.

[Cyneheard]

The time that seafood works best is if the additional tile yield from improving seafood first (due to the lower cost of the work boat) is enough to make up the time on building the worker, and makes up the remainder of the cost whilst the worker improves the first resource tile.

Does making workboats eat food fix this?

[Krill]

Not really. Workers pay back until there are no more tiles to improve. Work boats just don't.

[WilliamLP]

Clearly if WBs cost 1 hammer, you wouldn't say there's no reason to start with fishing, and that seafood capital starts were weak. What's wrong with finding the sweet spot between 1 and 30 where you'd be hard pressed to decide whether you'd prefer to have fish or wet corn in your capital?