Tides of War, a balance mod

[Ceiliazul]

ive been thinking about it since i read the update, i think the viking nerf goes too far. like org courthouses, vikings lose their identity with worthless trading posts... what if it was +3 xp instead of nav1?

[pindicator]

Free Flanking I could be an idea. It gets you on the path to Nav-1 without giving it for free; you still need to generate 2xp on your own

[SevenSpirits]

I'm just going to throw out a quote from Sirian the originator of RealmsBeyond:

Trimming the tall grass until there's no lawn left is not the best way to balance a game, although sometimes some of the grass does get too tall.

I agree.

It's an odd situation to be in, because if I were making a game from scratch, I would differentiate the civs more. Here, one of my goals is to keep the changelist relatively small, because the audience is people who've mostly played BTS and I specifically want to make it easy to adapt to. If I were to balance the civs at a level like what the vikings are at, it would require many more changes. It's a sad fact that most civs are fairly inconsequential. So that's why the civ changes are kind of downers.

What NobleHelium said is also a good point - naval balance in this game is pretty... lame. Specifically, it's one-dimensional: there are pretty much only boats and better boats. There aren't, like, fast boats, and counters to those boats, and so on. I mean there's a tiny bit of that but not enough that you'd notice it. Something I'm trying to do in the mod is to make the naval game a bit more nuanced. (And I'm not saying I've succeeded, this really needs testing to tell if it's doing anything. And also, it's never going to be that big of an impact - naval stuff just has limited importance in the game as designed.)

The issue with vikings (aside from them being generally strong: they get picked frequently whenever it's known ahead of time that the map is such that they will be worth something) is that they have a really strong naval ability. I think this naval ability (free +1 movement promotion) is too strong compared to the small things the naval game has going for it. (This is also why I removed circumnavigation.) It would be like if mounted units as a group were unique to a single civ, or required you to be the owner of a particular world wonder. To go with the grass analogy, I see the naval game in BTS as a plain covered with even dead grass and a large stupid-looking bush, in which I am trying to plant a few flowers. The bush should maybe get ripped out.

Pindicator, I like the flanking 1 idea pretty well. That seems comparable in strength to drill 1 and you're right, it's more in-flavor with the raiding.

Ceiliazul, I did consider XP, but it doesn't feel special enough to me. XP is something anyone can get, but free promotions are still special. For what it's worth, I think 3xp is comparable in strength to the promotions we are talking about. Early game you'd maybe prefer combat 1, but late game the free promo is probably equal or better.

[NobleHelium]

I don't know about that. Drill is pretty bad. It will pretty much never swing the odds in your favor. I'd take the 3 experience, because either I get an extra combat promotion which may actually matter, or I don't. I'd rather have a meaningful extra promotion sometimes than a meaningless extra promotion all the time.

[Old Harry]

+1 to pindicator's idea.

[flugauto]

Maybe change Drill1 from 1 first strike chance to 1 first strike? First strike chance is garbage of junk. Maybe change all the drill line like this?

[Ceiliazul]

i like Pin's idea as well. i would not like to see drill changed, because if that is the level of detail this mod addresses it will explode like RBmod.

[Hashoosh]

Maybe move the UB to late game-ish (Customs House) and give it the naval xp bonus?

[Catwalk]

Crazy viking idea (probably not suited for this mod):

UU = Longship, 3-move trireme
UB = Trading Post, Lighthouse with +1 trade routes

Vikings were renowned as traders too, not just as raiders. The longship is a far more suitable candidate for a UU than the berserker IMO. This way the movement bonus is limited to a single ship type, rather than giving you a bonus throughout the game. Or maybe give Trading Post a 50% trade bonus if +1 trade route is too strong on an already useful building. 50% is not much, but I think it'd be enough to give you 3c trade routes with your island cities.

[flugauto]

Crazy viking idea (probably not suited for this mod):

UU = Longship, 3-move trireme

A trireme that can carry units.