Future of RtR

[Charriu]

I know this discussion would belong into the RtR subforum, but I'm not sure how many members show up there, especially those that aren't interested in RtR. So to increase awareness I post here.

As some of you may know Krill has quitted in PB46 and hasn't returned to these realms since the 10th of February. In his last post he wrote about quitting:

... but the reality is I needed a temporary sub in about 3 weeks anyway, for a period of up to 2 weeks and it's fairer to have a permanent sub.

According to his last post I would have expected him to return around the 16th of March, but he didn't. He also didn't replay to any of my PMs. He also never contacted me about quitting RtR or RB at all, in fact I even developed some stuff he asked me about during his absence. There were also some players who raised concerns about RtRs development both here in the forum and in PMs to me. This leaves the question of what to do with RtR in the future. But first let me quickly share what definitly will happen with RtR:

1. I will merge my BUG implementation with the core RtR project unifying the mod back into one version
   
2. The minor changes Krill asked me about will be merged into the mod. Don't worry about them, they are absolutely minor changes regarding late era starts.
   
3. I will add the three missing trait-combos/leaders discussed here: Vote here for new leaders
   

Krill started this mod back in 2010 together with Cyneheard. Their goal at first was to rebalance some broken stuff in BtS, but this quickly moved on to more changes. I started a discussion with Krill via PM about the mods direction, as I thought, we are going to far. The mission goal as Krill stated to me in a PM is and was:

The whole mod idea came about from a series of chats between Cyneheard and myself in August and September 2010 and then we went at it properly after Civ 5 was a bust.

My belief is that this means there is no objective measurement against which to measure the objectives achieved since that point. OTOH, I have been working to the following objective since PB37 ended, and we ran the test mod in PB42. That new mission statement is defined below:

"The aim of the RtR mod is to provide a new ruleset that allows games started with a reasonable number of players on an appropriate map size to reach a game defined victory condition".

Reasonable number of players on an appropriate map size is dependant upon, but not only to the recommended number of layers for a map size, and number of tiles per player. In game victory conditions defined as Conquest, Domination, Science and Culture victory conditions.

By this metric there isn't a "Too much". Whether that is a good mission statement is another question: I accept that many people focus on minimum changes.

Reading back through the old development thread here, I noticed that we lost quite a few players with more and more changes in RtR. Lastly I also want to share Krill's thoughts about the mod from his last post:

Also, I'm done with RtR mod at this point, at least after I do a final update. There's no way to test the next level of changes without problems with map generation and relative player skill being solved and that's beyond me to fix.

I myself got into the RtR project back in 2019 and initially wanted to just add BUG to RtR. Krill also asked me to add some changes inside the DLL, as you may know. The way I see it we had the following roles:

Krill was the lead and in charge of the overall direction of RtR and balancing
I just add BUG and help with changes to the DLL

I already mentioned that I think the changes in RtR stray to far from the original BtS. My fear is that we loose players with more changes and it is harder to get into the mod for new players. Interestingly this puts me in a similar position as T-Hawk back in the original development thread, who also disagreed with changes, but was happy to code changes in. Therefore if I would take over RtR I would probably leave it as it is and rather start a new mod closer to BtS, but only if there is interest in playing a mod closer to BtS.

With all these informations I want to return to you to start this discussion about the future of RtR. As you can see I started a poll with this thread because I want to know what the community as a whole thinks about RtR.

[thestick]

First of all, Charriu, thank you for a. merging BUG in (those dotmapping features are just lovely) and b. opening up succession talks.

Is there an 'other' option in the poll? I'm not marching anywhere in particular; all of the games I saw running here were using RtR, so I figured, might as well get with the program and figure it out. Definitely ran into barrier to entry concerns before deciding to dedlurk again.

[Charriu]

Thanks, for the feedback.

I did not include an 'other' option, because:

a: I couldn't think of an 'other' option
b: I would not know, what this 'other' option will mean, when evaluating the poll, because this can be literally anything.

[yuris125]

I appreciate Krill's work on the mod up to this point, and I greatly appreciate you taking on the BUG integration task, and the current development after Krill left / went on hiatus from RB. Given how old Civ4 is, I don't think we can blame low number of players on mod changes. People now have less time for Civ than they did 10 years ago, or may have just lost interest. Before joining Pitboss 50 I haven't played a game of Civ4 in at least 2 years - and I'm probably in a better position with regards to time available for gaming than many RB members. At the same time, players new to 4X are much more likely to play Civ6 or maybe Civ5 than Civ4. Civ5 may have been a bust on RB, but it was a success overall (at least post-BNW), and most Civ-related discussions nowadays focus on the last two instalments

Old World (Soren Johnson's new 4X game) should go early access in the next couple of months (they said "before summer" in the trailer), which may reduce the interest in Civ4 even further

I think RTR is in a good place atm, so I would suggest finishing BUG integration and any tasks already in progress which you think are worth implementing, then declaring the mod final and moving on

[Charriu]

Therefore if I would take over RtR I would probably leave it as it is and rather start a new mod closer to BtS, but only if there is interest in playing a mod closer to BtS.

I think a further clarification is needed here. Yes, I myself would not continue the mod with additional balancing changes. But if anybody else wants to take this up, I will of course support them with DLL changes just like I supported Krill.

[Cornflakes]

The biggest thing I like about the mod is balancing of the traits and civs, such that there are no longer a select few power choices. Also I like things that addressed permanent bans, such as Great Lighthouse nerf to just 1 trade route. Another positive change is eliminating air bombardment/pillaging of tiles (due to turn order issues, last in order can't guarantee resource connection).

The other mechanics changes I'm indifferent about (civics, naval, etc., etc.). I think the improvements (if any) from changes beyond the above is an order of magnitude less impactful and relatively inconsequential to the fun, at least at my skill level I shrug my shoulders, read the change log, and play the game.

EDIT: I fear that a 2nd alternative mod in parallel with RtR is a bad choice simply due to the limited player base. Rather keep some version of RtR with a "final" update (either one of the existing versions, or paired back closer to BTS according to consensus).

EDIT2: Also I like removing exploits such as building wonders in multiple cities to pile up mountains of failgold.

[Rusten]

FWIW, the RtR mod is also bringing people back into the game, not just losing players. I would not have come back to play pitboss again if it was still vanilla BtS.

[superdeath]

TBH, So long as we can finalize a RTR version ( with bug obviously ) Id be fine with a closer to BTS mod for games that want BTS, but dont want the " well, i didnt get india/inca... guess i lose" or "didnt get FIN, guess im behind all game "

[T-hawk]

There's already a "closer to BTS" mod here, over in the Tides of War mod subforum. I didn't follow that project so I don't know its status, but you could take a look.

[mackoti]

I dont know if we still have the older verison of the mod but there are few of them which are better then last one and close to Bts but still very nice.And TOW  is nice and balanced(towards production) how i liked. Btw is sevenspirits still around?