RtR mod 3.0.0.1 proposed change log

[AdrienIer]

Shouldn't caste be at high cost rather than medium ? Makes it less of a one right choice if it's costly as hell (and if we add some bonus to serfdom like +1h to mines)

[Krill]

Cost doesn't do much to balance civics.

[GermanJoey]

The issue with Police State is that revolts are timed around golden ages. There is no way in hell that a civic is going to be used that late in the tech tree in most games, the games won't last that long and no one will spend time revolting just for that +25% hammers into units when production bonus is already +100% in large cities. So it needs to be moved forward. Mil Sci is simply one reasonable position on the tech tree that is around about the time that a third (or potentially second, I suppose) golden age would get used and the civic can be accessed.

So I'd have to say why you feel that Fascism feels empty given it has stuff that isn't viable/cost effective anyway. It seems more like a perception issue than anything else (although saying that I should acknowledge that we all have those issues...)

I think you're greatly under-estimating how much Police State actually gets you... that civic is actually really really good. In the late-game, it can be a better economic civic than rep even if you don't ever go to war again for the rest of the game.

Consider three late-game scenarios. In the first, you're so far ahead that you don't need to build much military anymore - PS isn't too useful here. Rep scientists created by bio farms will be far better than workshops. In the second, you're in total war mode, and obviously PS is better. Bio farms are useless here, you just want raw hammers. However, what if you're somewhere in between? Here, you'll have to continue building huge troop stacks just to deter your rivals from warring with you while trying to maximize your economy. Police State is very good here. Think about it this way: if you're building up soldiers without intention to go to war, then that means you're not in a total war mode, and thus you're allocating some (most) hammers towards troops and some hammers towards infrastructure and wealth builds. Thus, running PS "frees up" some of your military hammers to be redirected back towards wealth or whatever else. For example, lets say you're allocating 2000hpt towards military, generated from 1000 base hpt and a 100% multiplier, which I think is a reasonable number for a civ with about 45-50 cities or so, depending on their land quality. With PS, that total will be 2250 hpt. Moving 250 hammers worth of cities back to wealth to maintain the same 2000hpt-into-units status quo, we end up with an extra +222gpt from wealth builds. For rep to be better economically, we need to work at least 222/3 = 74 specialists empire-wide, perhaps actually more like 40-60 when we include beaker multipliers. This number is trivial to obtain if one is using the new buffed mercantilism, but is actually kind of a lot for a free market or state property civ once you consider that rep scientists often need to compete with fully developed workshops and mines, which have lower raw yield but a better multiplier. I have some numbers somewhere in my PB22 thread on this... somewhere.

At any rate, the fact that PS can be roughly competitive with Rep economically is only important because it ALSO makes one completely immune to war weariness (via Mt Rushmore, also available at Fascism), which can be an enormous additional economic advantage. Even *WINNING* a major war in the industrial/modern era can completely wreck your economy because of the sheer number of troops you'll be fighting with will generate absurd amounts of war weariness, especially if you have brothers-in-faith and motherland anger on top of that. (which isn't reduced by anything) If a player's best cities have grown to happycap before the war, then +10 unhappy on the second turn of a war can be devastating. If a player's GA timing doesn't work out so that they can switch into PS after they have Fascism for free at their own convenience, well that's a risk they took themselves. Their alternative is to build 50 jails (6000 total hammers), eat a turn of anarchy, or just suffer all the angry red faces.

Putting PS as early MS seems way too strong of a buff, as a game-wide +25% unit production bonus pre-factories, a much bigger relative bonus at this stage, means that the buildup and/or total-war scenerios seem virtually assured.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, late game golden ages are fairly common I think. In particular, the 'GA to set up Factories' or 'late game GA with maximised empire' are both good options to revolt into police state via Facism.

Also, Mil Science with Grens, SoTL, Commandos and Police State sounds very powerful.

I'm afraid I have a wall of text of my own ahead ...

Regarding our different valuations for Emancipation, maybe the difference comes down to what tile improvements we expect to see by Banking? I don't expect to see a lot of workshops, since they are expensive in worker turns and require a revolt into Caste system to become merely average improvements pre-Guilds. It's only after Guilds that I think they really get spammed, and Banking can be the very next tech. I do expect to see lots of the early game improvements; farms, mines and cottages. So the bonus to those tiles have a higher weight.

I don't feel that the specialist access from caste is valuable enough to outweigh that, because it's quite easy to plan enough GPs, via buildings or wonders, to get your golden ages and then use Caste for that short period to burst out the others.

Might as well segue in here to the free specialists by era idea. I really don't like free artists slots, especially for the medieval era. I don't think people should get free border pops so easily, until past the time of Music/Guilds. The merchant/scientist slots sound fine, but I don't think they should be necessary to balance caste either.

I think the +1h to mills Emancipation option you mention is likely to be underpowered, though it depends on the relative windmill vs mine value. It's probably weaker than the current Serfdom after all. If the aim is to be the late game competitor with Caste, giving +1g to villages but not towns seems counter intuitive as well.

I'm still skeptical that Free Speech can compete with the other options in it's column, given the sheer amount of up front per city bonuses they give. I can't be sure obviously, because those are some sick tiles if you're allowed to set them up everywhere, but that's my intuition. And I don't think there's any more flexibility to improve the town, +4 commerce just sounds too ridiculous. Without going into details of what each civic does, that's the basis of my argument that it makes more sense for workshop vs town to compete in the Emancipation vs Caste column with the separate bonuses being SP and US, rather than competing in SP vs FS column and separate bonuses in Caste vs US.

Smiley break here, because that's the most important point IMO.

Serfdom; you have two objections;
1. the ability to revolt into it in a timely and cost effective manner
2. That it needs to give hammers to compete with slavery.

I don't really think 1. is fair, I think if you pitched serfdom at the right power, you could see some people prioritising Feudalism as one of the first mediavel techs and revolting into Serfdom. They could either use an early GA or pair it with some combination of HR/OR/Vassalage. 2. is a fair point. Without Slavery or caste workshops, some flatland cities could struggle to put up any infrastructure in a reasonable timeframe. My only reply is that the civic would not be permanent and that trade offs make the game interesting. I went with a gold boost because I was afraid of making a hammer boost to any of the early improvements.

Of your options, I like trying out the +1h to mine, though I wouldn't move it forward to monarchy. I'm still think it might be too good, but I don't know and testing would tell. The workshop idea is better balanced, but it's boring. I don't think a village upgrading to a town and getting weaker is a fun mechanic.

I got to run, but quick points on the current changes:

-Don't like the capital change but I understand you don't trust mapmakers anymore .

-Not a big fan of the Colosseum implementation. It improves Cha, which is good, but at the cost of skewing warfare from the mediavel era beyond. It's unclear what affect that will have and I think that part of the game is fine and fun at the moment.

-Drill change is cool.

-I don't like +3xp settled GGs, attaching GGs as warlord is more fun IMO(yeah, very objective ). To give an actual argument; I think we have enough to worry about in the late game without yet more commandos.

-Military academy; again more commandos. Imp and Cha can probably set up two or more commando factories! At least take off the extra 1xp though, it's already saving 9.

-Quay vs Harbour is a bit boring IMO. They both give commerce, just in different ways. There's probably a one right choice for each city.

-Not sure if Breakwater is necessary. I like the fact that water tiles are weaker than land ones, it makes sense. Limiting Drydock spam a bit is a good goal though.

-Don't like the seafood changes. Variety is good.

-Something to consider if you can build good improvements on forest tiles: This allows people to save their forests for a wonder run with no opportunity cost. Then they chop/workshop out late wonders.

-Don't like unpillageable improvements.

-On the topic; planes currently get xp for pillaging improvements. Not terrible considering how late planes come, but could maybe use some discussion.

-Don't like the removable of animals. Maybe it makes a more balanced game, but at most it should just be an option like no barbs.

-Not convinced Imp needs a nerf. Off the top of my head I would definitely rank Pro as better. Though I guess with the new military academy ...

-Anything I haven't commented on looks good to me.

[Krill]

The issue with Police State is that revolts are timed around golden ages. There is no way in hell that a civic is going to be used that late in the tech tree in most games, the games won't last that long and no one will spend time revolting just for that +25% hammers into units when production bonus is already +100% in large cities. So it needs to be moved forward. Mil Sci is simply one reasonable position on the tech tree that is around about the time that a third (or potentially second, I suppose) golden age would get used and the civic can be accessed.

So I'd have to say why you feel that Fascism feels empty given it has stuff that isn't viable/cost effective anyway. It seems more like a perception issue than anything else (although saying that I should acknowledge that we all have those issues...)

I think you're greatly under-estimating how much Police State actually gets you... that civic is actually really really good. In the late-game, it can be a better economic civic than rep even if you don't ever go to war again for the rest of the game.

Consider three late-game scenarios. In the first, you're so far ahead that you don't need to build much military anymore - PS isn't too useful here. Rep scientists created by bio farms will be far better than workshops. In the second, you're in total war mode, and obviously PS is better. Bio farms are useless here, you just want raw hammers. However, what if you're somewhere in between? Here, you'll have to continue building huge troop stacks just to deter your rivals from warring with you while trying to maximize your economy. Police State is very good here. Think about it this way: if you're building up soldiers without intention to go to war, then that means you're not in a total war mode, and thus you're allocating some (most) hammers towards troops and some hammers towards infrastructure and wealth builds. Thus, running PS "frees up" some of your military hammers to be redirected back towards wealth or whatever else. For example, lets say you're allocating 2000hpt towards military, generated from 1000 base hpt and a 100% multiplier, which I think is a reasonable number for a civ with about 45-50 cities or so, depending on their land quality. With PS, that total will be 2250 hpt. Moving 250 hammers worth of cities back to wealth to maintain the same 2000hpt-into-units status quo, we end up with an extra +222gpt from wealth builds. For rep to be better economically, we need to work at least 222/3 = 74 specialists empire-wide, perhaps actually more like 40-60 when we include beaker multipliers. This number is trivial to obtain if one is using the new buffed mercantilism, but is actually kind of a lot for a free market or state property civ once you consider that rep scientists often need to compete with fully developed workshops and mines, which have lower raw yield but a better multiplier. I have some numbers somewhere in my PB22 thread on this... somewhere.

At any rate, the fact that PS can be roughly competitive with Rep economically is only important because it ALSO makes one completely immune to war weariness (via Mt Rushmore, also available at Fascism), which can be an enormous additional economic advantage. Even *WINNING* a major war in the industrial/modern era can completely wreck your economy because of the sheer number of troops you'll be fighting with will generate absurd amounts of war weariness, especially if you have brothers-in-faith and motherland anger on top of that. (which isn't reduced by anything) If a player's best cities have grown to happycap before the war, then +10 unhappy on the second turn of a war can be devastating. If a player's GA timing doesn't work out so that they can switch into PS after they have Fascism for free at their own convenience, well that's a risk they took themselves. Their alternative is to build 50 jails (6000 total hammers), eat a turn of anarchy, or just suffer all the angry red faces.

Putting PS as early MS seems way too strong of a buff, as a game-wide +25% unit production bonus pre-factories, a much bigger relative bonus at this stage, means that the buildup and/or total-war scenerios seem virtually assured.

I have absolutely no argument against what you said in terms of numbers: I agree with it completely (and that argument has been around since before release 10 years ago). Fuck it, it can stay there, there are other things to care about.

[Krill]

Yay for walls of text! Although I'm prpbably going to not reply to all this in one go...

Yeah, late game golden ages are fairly common I think. In particular, the 'GA to set up Factories' or 'late game GA with maximised empire' are both good options to revolt into police state via Facism.

I really, really, really think you are wrong here. For PHI they are possible, but not for anyone else unless they leave the third GA for factories.

I don't feel that the specialist access from caste is valuable enough to outweigh that, because it's quite easy to plan enough GPs, via buildings or wonders, to get your golden ages and then use Caste for that short period to burst out the others.[/quote]

I can't agree with that, not without PHI, not given the same issue with hammer cost of the specialist slots: You can't run 3 scientists until you get an Observatory unless you have OU. You can get to about the 300gpp GP and after that it's quite a lot of a crap shoot. That's why adding those free slots is so valuable to the other civics.

Might as well segue in here to the free specialists by era idea. I really don't like free artists slots, especially for the medieval era. I don't think people should get free border pops so easily, until past the time of Music/Guilds. The merchant/scientist slots sound fine, but I don't think they should be necessary to balance caste either.

Music is Medieval era though...? You need one of Machinery, Feudalism, Music, Philosophy or Civil Service to enter the Medieval era, without getting one of those techs, not free spec slots.

I can accept placing the specialists slots at different points though, ie giving 1 artist slot in medi era and then more later on.

I think the +1h to mills Emancipation option you mention is likely to be underpowered, though it depends on the relative windmill vs mine value. It's probably weaker than the current Serfdom after all. If the aim is to be the late game competitor with Caste, giving +1g to villages but not towns seems counter intuitive as well.

I imagine that water/windmill +1 hammer would leave it to be underpowered, but at the same time that's OK if it leaves space for it to be buffed now in terms of, say, buffing mines as well (because the total value of a windmill and mine buff is going to be the same for any given empire due to always having the same number of hills for those improvements). Excepting flatland metals, of course.

That is to say, if Emancipation gave the +1 hammer to water/windmills, it could also give a commerce bonus to mines and it wouldn't necessarily be OP.

I'm still skeptical that Free Speech can compete with the other options in it's column, given the sheer amount of up front per city bonuses they give. I can't be sure obviously, because those are some sick tiles if you're allowed to set them up everywhere, but that's my intuition. And I don't think there's any more flexibility to improve the town, +4 commerce just sounds too ridiculous. Without going into details of what each civic does, that's the basis of my argument that it makes more sense for workshop vs town to compete in the Emancipation vs Caste column with the separate bonuses being SP and US, rather than competing in SP vs FS column and separate bonuses in Caste vs US.

If it's a question of per city bonuses being an issue for FS, then would it not make sense to consider giving FS a flat gold %age modifier? In the same manner that SP get's a flat hammer bonus, but rush buy makes that more interesting.

Smiley break here, because that's the most important point IMO.

And I'm done for the night.

[Krill]

-Don't like the capital change but I understand you don't trust mapmakers anymore .

I don't even get this. How is it even a real change? All it says is that you can move you settler and the map maker can't fuck you over at random because he forgot to give you a plains hill.

[The Black Sword]

I really, really, really think you are wrong here. For PHI they are possible, but not for anyone else unless they leave the third GA for factories.

Well, just thinking of PB18 and PB22, as the two active late games at the minute, a good proportion of people have had late game golden ages with opportunities to revolt to Police State. I don't really want to comment on the games specifics since they're running and I'm not bothered going back and checking previous games atm.

I can't agree with that, not without PHI, not given the same issue with hammer cost of the specialist slots: You can't run 3 scientists until you get an Observatory unless you have OU. You can get to about the 300gpp GP and after that it's quite a lot of a crap shoot. That's why adding those free slots is so valuable to the other civics.

Well, even say 300gpp then get 3 more from a caste burst in your second golden age and 2 or so from your National Epic city. There's a bit more of a lottery involved but you can usually find something to do for each GP. It's not like people had much of a problem generating GP in base BTS when they mostly used Caste inside GAs (I'm thinking PB19 and 53 specifically for myself).

Music is Medieval era though...? You need one of Machinery, Feudalism, Music, Philosophy or Civil Service to enter the Medieval era, without getting one of those techs, not free spec slots.

Only 1 person will actually get Music though in that era. So I don't think any of those other techs should have free border popping since that's all Music is apart from the GA.


Both of your suggestions for Free Speech and Emancipation would help. I'm still not sure if Emancipation need a little extra.

I don't even get this. How is it even a real change? All it says is that you can move you settler and the map maker can't fuck you over at random because he forgot to give you a plains hill.

He can still forget to give you a food resource or a variety of other things though. It's obviously a minor change but it does reduce the space of options for the mapmaker.

[Krill]

Not replying to everything because too drunk. but a few points...

I really, really, really think you are wrong here. For PHI they are possible, but not for anyone else unless they leave the third GA for factories.

Well, just thinking of PB18 and PB22, as the two active late games at the minute, a good proportion of people have had late game golden ages with opportunities to revolt to Police State. I don't really want to comment on the games specifics since they're running and I'm not bothered going back and checking previous games atm.

Yeah, not that interested in checking right now, but other than PHI civs I'm not sure of more than 2 that did. Will check later.

I can't agree with that, not without PHI, not given the same issue with hammer cost of the specialist slots: You can't run 3 scientists until you get an Observatory unless you have OU. You can get to about the 300gpp GP and after that it's quite a lot of a crap shoot. That's why adding those free slots is so valuable to the other civics.

Well, even say 300gpp then get 3 more from a caste burst in your second golden age and 2 or so from your National Epic city. There's a bit more of a lottery involved but you can usually find something to do for each GP. It's not like people had much of a problem generating GP in base BTS when they mostly used Caste inside GAs (I'm thinking PB19 and 53 specifically for myself).[/quote]

I think that requiring the usage of GA to continue the propagation of GP is a flawed expectation, but we said that last time we discussed Caste.

Music is Medieval era though...? You need one of Machinery, Feudalism, Music, Philosophy or Civil Service to enter the Medieval era, without getting one of those techs, not free spec slots.

Only 1 person will actually get Music though in that era. So I don't think any of those other techs should have free border popping since that's all Music is apart from the GA.

Music is necessary for MIl Trad though, it's not a dead end tech like Communism is. So it's not like that's all the beakers are useful for, it's just why Music should be prioritised. But you said it yourself, it isn't worth that, so I don't agree that adding this change takes something away from music when pragmatically, it didn't have that in the first place.

Both of your suggestions for Free Speech and Emancipation would help. I'm still not sure if Emancipation need a little extra.

I've been thinking about swapping Emancipation and FS around a bit, but I have difficulties seeing which of SP and Caste really buff the workshop. That is, I don't think that swapping FS to labour column "helps" to really make Emancipation worth picking inasmuch as running both SP and cottage bonuses would still exist, and that is something I don't want to encourage (as better tile improvements leads to favour a BIAB approach to the game).

I don't even get this. How is it even a real change? All it says is that you can move you settler and the map maker can't fuck you over at random because he forgot to give you a plains hill.

He can still forget to give you a food resource or a variety of other things though. It's obviously a minor change but it does reduce the space of options for the mapmaker.

If that's the only issue, then TBH it's one that I'm go to, frankly, ignore. Most people forget the 2H starts rather than the number of food resources at a start, given we've seen over 80 games played so far.

[Krill]

Serfdom; you have two objections;
1. the ability to revolt into it in a timely and cost effective manner
2. That it needs to give hammers to compete with slavery.

I don't really think 1. is fair, I think if you pitched serfdom at the right power, you could see some people prioritising Feudalism as one of the first mediavel techs and revolting into Serfdom. They could either use an early GA or pair it with some combination of HR/OR/Vassalage. 2. is a fair point. Without Slavery or caste workshops, some flatland cities could struggle to put up any infrastructure in a reasonable timeframe. My only reply is that the civic would not be permanent and that trade offs make the game interesting. I went with a gold boost because I was afraid of making a hammer boost to any of the early improvements.

I understand what you are saying about the right power level, but the main issue with either rushing Feud is the failure to get the bonuses that enable further horizontal or vertical expansion at an effective rate (Calendar happy, Math chops, Currency Trade Route). Vassalage doesn't help much on that either, and the military advantage from Longbows is a dubious advantage because of how it fits into the game with farmers gambits and stat reading. Not saying Feud doesn't have a reason to be researched, just that the reasons are generally in the wrong area to be an early research target except in really cramped maps, more cramped than PB15.

At the same time, I do acknowledge that Monarchy is a bit on the early side; only reason I mentioned Monarchy as the tech to move Serfdom to is to not move Serfdom out of that tech line which really would screw with Feud in our collective understanding of it as a research target.

My general thoughts are that buffing Serfdom isn't going to help the tech research targets without pushing it out of reach with Caste and Emancipation, which is why moving it forward is necessary: Code of Laws is available earlier than Feud. I think that Caste saving hammers on popping borders is as you say a very valuable reason to focus on revolting into Caste sooner rather than later at present; having artist slots available upon researching Feud does help to focus the beeline into the Medieval era, of which Feudalism is arguably the easiest path to take to reach the new effect (and Machinery is the second easiest IMO). So I suppose that adding the new slots would help with providing that incentive to get Feud as opposed to getting a good chunk of the Math area (but Artist slots, or at least 1, would need to be made available).

Of your options, I like trying out the +1h to mine, though I wouldn't move it forward to monarchy. I'm still think it might be too good, but I don't know and testing would tell. The workshop idea is better balanced, but it's boring. I don't think a village upgrading to a town and getting weaker is a fun mechanic.

I think that leaving Serfdom at Feudalism is probably necessary in a "conservative" 3.0.0.1 mod version, albeit with the somewhat unorthodox free specialists slots. Giving it the +1 hammer to mines will probably be OK if it's left there due to the delay in research time from beaker cost. Workshop idea is kept in reserve.

Villages aren't weaker than towns with Emancipation as is; it's getting None-FS Towns after 30 turns rather than 70, don't see how that's making Towns weaker.

-Not a big fan of the Colosseum implementation. It improves Cha, which is good, but at the cost of skewing warfare from the mediavel era beyond. It's unclear what affect that will have and I think that part of the game is fine and fun at the moment.

I'm considering upping the cost to 120 hammers which really should push mass completions of Colosseums past knight era, certain in a Guilds rush. Well, considering is wrong; I think I'd make this change to be on the safe side.

-Drill change is cool.

-I don't like +3xp settled GGs, attaching GGs as warlord is more fun IMO(yeah, very objective ). To give an actual argument; I think we have enough to worry about in the late game without yet more commandos.

-Military academy; again more commandos. Imp and Cha can probably set up two or more commando factories! At least take off the extra 1xp though, it's already saving 9.

I really don't want to make "mass produced from every city" commandos a reality; aim is that they should be attainable by all civs with effort and sacrifice. So numbers may need adjusting, I have no problem with that. Given that WP still needs a level 5 unit, I think that adds some difficulty to unlocking mass commandos although Boudicca needs watching.

-Quay vs Harbour is a bit boring IMO. They both give commerce, just in different ways. There's probably a one right choice for each city.

Depends how you dot map: there is still choice even if that choice is made earlier in the game.

-Not sure if Breakwater is necessary. I like the fact that water tiles are weaker than land ones, it makes sense. Limiting Drydock spam a bit is a good goal though.

Breakwater is in a bit of a weird spot. Right now I'm thinking that pushing both CH and BW back to Corp is beneficial, and I'm also thinking of just making BW give +1 commerce to water tiles like the Quay does; scrap the hammer. The problem with scrapping it entirely is the DD resurgence though.

-Don't like the seafood changes. Variety is good.

Does that variety also apply to starting resources

-Something to consider if you can build good improvements on forest tiles: This allows people to save their forests for a wonder run with no opportunity cost. Then they chop/workshop out late wonders.

Can't please everyone...the simplest way around that is to make late game LM and FP better than other tile improvements. I'm not sure if LM are actually better than orkshops though.

-Don't like unpillageable improvements.

Stupid question: Can you chop peoples forests if you have OB with them? If the answer is yes then I'm not doing the forest preserve change. But fuck spite self pillaging, and fuck impossible to stop air bombing of cottages.

-On the topic; planes currently get xp for pillaging improvements. Not terrible considering how late planes come, but could maybe use some discussion.

If air combat could be redesigned away from "production wins all" that would be ideal IMO.

-Don't like the removable of animals. Maybe it makes a more balanced game, but at most it should just be an option like no barbs.

Animals could be left in and the scout given +1000% against them...

-Not convinced Imp needs a nerf. Off the top of my head I would definitely rank Pro as better. Though I guess with the new military academy...

Depends on the map and what a fast third city gets you but yeah.