Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[GermanJoey]

The 2h-capital-plant-anywhere is absolutely a fucking problem, A Wrong Choice, as I've tried explaining to you over and over and over again, via post and PM. But, just keep ignoring me over and over and over again I guess, just so that you don't have to type a few words when you setup a new game.

I couldn't give a fuck about Macemen.

[Krill]

I disagree fundamentally that mapmakers will not fuck up starts Joey, regardless of capitals being 2H or not. I'm not ignoring you, I just think you're wrong, and I don't care if you refuse to make any maps in the future.

[GermanJoey]

It's literally something you can see at fucking T0. If you don't get your fucking plainshill capital that you specify in the setup, just restart the game. I don't see how this is any different than checking settings at T0 and restarting if one is wrong.

This feature makes your mod fucking unplayable, unless you have an insane person like me willing to dedicate a ridiculous amount of time to checking the map. And, AFAIK, the only other person on this site willing to spend so much time on maps is Commodore, who dislikes your mod for other reasons. So, dismissing me as an idiot not worthy of a response is pretty stupid.

[Krill]

There is a 4 stage set up to making it work. It's easy.

1. You start everyone on a junk tile. Desert is good. Means if people move for 1 turn, they automaticvally get a shit tile in the BFC unless moving two tiles on a diagonal.
   
   
2. You put the food resources 3 tiles apart, on the north/south or east/west side of the outer BFC. This means that moving in any direction loses a food resource. Less incentive to move again.
   
   
3. Give the capital fresh water orthogonal to the food ie food 21 and 89 of hte capital, and a river starting at hte capital heading 77/NW. Further disincentive to moving.
   
   
4. Put forests in a position to block movement. More turns to reach a possibly better city location increases the cost of moving.

If you want a fifth step it's straightforward: give people a 3 hammer or 3 food start location.

Et voilá. start position people don't want to move away from, unless you shoved them in a really shitty coastal location. Metagaming a start is something no map maker (or mod maker) can stop.

[Cheater Hater]

This feature makes your mod fucking unplayable,

No it doesn't--this is the biggest unnecessary hyperbole I've ever seen. If you want perfect balance play perfectly mirrored maps, otherwise accept that there's going to be some imbalance. If you want games where you have to play the first 30-50 turns in the exact way you want them to, cut them out completely and start playing Classical start games (maybe modding the early religions to later techs, since that's the biggest source of stupid randomness).

[GermanJoey]

There is a 4 stage set up to making it work. It's easy.

1. You start everyone on a junk tile. Desert is good. Means if people move for 1 turn, they automaticvally get a shit tile in the BFC unless moving two tiles on a diagonal.
   
   
2. You put the food resources 3 tiles apart, on the north/south or east/west side of the outer BFC. This means that moving in any direction loses a food resource. Less incentive to move again.
   
   
3. Give the capital fresh water orthogonal to the food ie food 21 and 89 of hte capital, and a river starting at hte capital heading 77/NW. Further disincentive to moving.
   
   
4. Put forests in a position to block movement. More turns to reach a possibly better city location increases the cost of moving.

If you want a fifth step it's straightforward: give people a 3 hammer or 3 food start location.

Et voilá. start position people don't want to move away from, unless you shoved them in a really shitty coastal location. Metagaming a start is something no map maker (or mod maker) can stop.

I agree that this is a lot more workable solution than simply placing pre-placed capitals and probably a lot easier than manually checking a 100 tile area. But, if you can't trust the mapmaker to just select plains-type terrain and click on the settler, then do the same for hill, then why would you expect them to do all of this? I don't know what else I can say... I'll just say that I appreciate you giving a more substantial reply and just stop bothering you about it.

No it doesn't--this is the biggest unnecessary hyperbole I've ever seen. If you want perfect balance play perfectly mirrored maps, otherwise accept that there's going to be some imbalance. If you want games where you have to play the first 30-50 turns in the exact way you want them to, cut them out completely and start playing Classical start games (maybe modding the early religions to later techs, since that's the biggest source of stupid randomness).

I don't know where your comment about me scripting players on their first 30-50 turns comes from, because I sure as hell don't do that. We didn't test a single one of the PB27 capitals, just kind of eyeballed them that they were about the same then randomly handed them out. We used my tool to measure the overall land quantity/quality, but we sure as fuck didn't expect actual players to play like my stupid scripted AIs.

To put it more clearly, my complaint here is that I see this feature as essentially being "some players will randomly get 1-2 extra food resources in their capital." It's like goody huts (a feature that I also hate in Pitboss games) but way worse because it has a way bigger snowball effect, and there's no checkbox for turning it off. If there was that, I wouldn't complain about it.

I also don't feel my comments are hyperbole at all. I have thought about this feature a lot and have probably studied its effects more than anyone. I realize now that the tone of my last few posts would feel exaggeratedly out of place here, but that's because I've been pleading with Krill about this thing via PM for months, and other people wouldn't have seen that stuff.

The way I see it is that the whole point of playing with a balance mod is that we want a richer, more complex Civ4 pitboss experience or whatever. However, personally, if I feel this feature causes such an unbalancing effect on the map, such that I can no longer trust *any* mapmaker to fully compensate for its worst possibilities - including, as I have proven, myself - that it essentially overpowers all the other, more delicate flavors of the mod - akin to casually throwing a lump of mud in a simmering pot of lobster bisque because the chef thinks that the color is a bit too bright. So, then, why wouldn't I instead play with a mod I feel will give me a better game, like RtR 2.0.7.6 or ToW 1.4? This is what has me so frustrated because I'd otherwise greatly prefer to play these new RtR versions, including ones that come out after this. Most of those changes that people complain in this thread complain about? - I actually like them.

[novice]

The 2h-capital-plant-anywhere is absolutely a fucking problem, A Wrong Choice

FWIW by "these things" I was thinking of modifying stuff like ToA and macemen just because no players choose them. The 2h capital plant is a different category, as everybody chooses to settle a capital.

[GermanJoey]

Fair enough, fair enough. Sorry, didn't mean to snap at you.

[Commodore]

-this is the biggest unnecessary hyperbole I've ever seen.

+1 internets. "biggest unnecessary hyperbole I've ever seen" is the best hyperbole I've ever seen.

[Krill]

I agree that this is a lot more workable solution than simply placing pre-placed capitals and probably a lot easier than manually checking a 100 tile area. But, if you can't trust the mapmaker to just select plains-type terrain and click on the settler, then do the same for hill, then why would you expect them to do all of this? I don't know what else I can say... I'll just say that I appreciate you giving a more substantial reply and just stop bothering you about it.

The simplest answer I can give is that so long as a start has 2 food resources and makes 8fpt or more, anything "better" than that start is surmoutable ie if you have a 2 hammer cap and 8fpt you can win regardless of the amount of food resources a capital has. The third, fourth etc food resource a capital has doesn't speed up the start (first 30-35 turns) much at all. I don't think the issues you are concerned about are reasonable concerns.

A map maker can't force a player to settle on the starting tile, even if you make the capital look really nice: a player can always move the settler to look for a better spot, better defined in a number of ways other than output such as geographical position. Removing the 2H starting tile won't actually change that. Certain coastal locations do increase the likelihood of this. That's why I don't see this as a problem: this problem has root causes in other areas of hte game design and balancing rather than simply increasing the capital minimum hammers to 2.