Future of RtR

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Specific ideas, since this is not the purpose of the thread.

I would not be continually excited for pitbosses after 44, the first one i joined, if not for RTR. I am not qualified whatsoever to voice my opinions on the changes of the mod, but I do think I have play-tested the mod quite a bit in the past few months.

My friends and I have switched to using RtR instead of my mod on the weekends on the online play server for quick duels and ladder-style games.

I welcome the spirit of most of the 4.1.1.6 changes (my discussion sidetracks into general mod changes), I think their implementation was not the best. It is absolutely necessary to allow everyone to circumnavigate. Having ocean tiles cost more movement than coast is equally necessary to slightly tone down the OP nature of sirian doctrine and the other naval buffs (for vanilla comparison, look at Alhazard vs. Gavagai in PB44).  The re-calibration of privateers was good as well, however it doesn't provide meaningful choices in the renaissance, which is now far longer due to tech cost changes. If caravel gets debuffs against triremes, should privateers not be balanced here as well?

Some changes I am less sure about. What was the reasoning for barracks giving culture? It devalues creative, does it not?

Certain civ changes seem dubious, like the ones to Native America and Khmer seem to be desperation, rather than inspiration. Spain is by far worst of all here.

Inca seems no less unbalanced. There is no significant difference from +1 and +2 culture for city-planning purposes - this is a creative trait with a 45 hammer decreased cost granary.

Bureaucracy/Vassalage should have the changes Krill mentioned at one point.

I do not see the reasoning behind giving caste bonus to all labor civics. Perhaps, it is fair, since specialist economies fall off late game.

Crossbow vs. Catapult tradeoff introduced was great, it provided an offensive vs. defensive decision to make for your collateral. However, a rebalance of China was not forthcoming.

Castle "rebalance" aka nerf seems strange.

Giving +7 exp (drydock) is never a good idea.

Town +1 food from emancipation is absurd and I do not see how that is a good change. Playing games with food is FAR more dangerous than with hammers or commerce.

Generally, the changes made to tech costs are fine, but could use retuning perhaps? This would be a discussion point.

I am not sure the swordsman-archer-axeman triangle is balanced, same for longbows-crossbows-maces.

Naval promotions are fine.

Open Borders with alphabet is late.

One thing I feel strongly about and feel am qualified to make a statement on in later era starts. Giving 2 settlers at the start in the classical era is NOT a good idea. Giving 2 starting workers is far better, opens up more interesting choices about going for math or IW or Monarchy first based on chop/rush/food respectively.
Lowering tech costs is fine for later era starts.

Village/Town indestructibility needs to be discussed.

Reverting to something more like BTS is a step in the wrong direction.

[Charriu]

I appreciate your feedback, but please understand that I don't want to discuss individual changes here. This discussion should be about how to continue with the mod in general.

[TBW]

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 haven't been playing pitboss games here for very long, but from what I've seen in PB46, there's no way you can get reasonable test data out of a map where some players have capital lake tiles + coast fish while others have permanently dry rice and 1 river tile, some players have peninsula starts with easy chokepoints to secure for space to settle a bunch of cities at their leisure while others are squeezed by 2-3 neighbors, some people start isolated on their own islands, etc. I mean, my performance as Rome wouldn't have told you anything about whether any changes to Rome or Shaka were good or bad, GKC's not going to have any really useful data about Aztec because he's scratching an empire out of what looks like 90% plains tiles, 2metra's Ethiopia got squeezed in and starved out regardless of whatever changes there were to steles, etc. That's not to say anything bad about the guy who took the time to make the map, because I definitely appreciate the time he took to do it, but you just can't run an experiment with that many variables and get any useful data out of it.

[superdeath]

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 haven't been playing pitboss games here for very long, but from what I've seen in PB46, there's no way you can get reasonable test data out of a map where some players have capital lake tiles + coast fish while others have permanently dry rice and 1 river tile, some players have peninsula starts with easy chokepoints to secure for space to settle a bunch of cities at their leisure while others are squeezed by 2-3 neighbors, some people start isolated on their own islands, etc. I mean, my performance as Rome wouldn't have told you anything about whether any changes to Rome or Shaka were good or bad, GKC's not going to have any really useful data about Aztec because he's scratching an empire out of what looks like 90% plains tiles, 2metra's Ethiopia got squeezed in and starved out regardless of whatever changes there were to steles, etc. That's not to say anything bad about the guy who took the time to make the map, because I definitely appreciate the time he took to do it, but you just can't run an experiment with that many variables and get any useful data out of it.[/quote]

Should spoiler stuff that relates to pb46 even if it likely doesnt matter at this point.

[Charriu]

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).

That's also what I feared. So far we already have two versions that are being played "regularly": The current 4.1.1.6 implementation of RtR and base BtS. But what I'm seeing is that there are some players, who are not happy with the direction in 4.1.1.6 and would rather play the PB43 version. For example JR4 said in his spoiler thread in PB43 that he likes that version and doesn't want to play another version. So we could potential look at 3 versions being played right now. That's also one of the reasons why I wanted to started this discussion.

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.

Yes, you are right and didn't want to imply that this is not the case. It's just that reading the old development thread, the people that didn't like the direction were more verbose and new players rarely say that they came back or started because of RtR.

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.

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?

I actually looked at ToW and I like some things. There's also a noticable overlap between ToW and RtR by now. As far as I can see SevenSpirits is still login in to RB from time to time. Would love here his opinion. But there's one important problem with ToW right now. In order to play it, it would need to be merged with PBmod from Ramk, so that we can play it on their server.

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

The fail gold exploit was already addressed in RtR, but only for national wonders. Shouldn't be a problem to do the same for world wonders.

[Fintourist]

I guess one could wait for PB43 and PB46 to end, discuss the experiences related to the latest round of changes and kind of "lock" the final version. I would say that some, but not all of the latest changes have been successful. In the big picture RtR is in a good place, so I would be hesitant to take it much further from the base BTS.

[Charriu]

Good point Fintourist and to clarify another thing. Yes, I would not continue the balancing of RtR, but I would assemble the final version of RtR according to the communities wishes. This would be the option "I prefer a mix between versions in PB43 and PB46" from the poll.

[RefSteel]

The fail gold exploit was already addressed in RtR, but only for national wonders. Shouldn't be a problem to do the same for world wonders.

RtR actually already addresses both. As I recall, the way it works is: For any given Wonder (whether World or National) you can only receive a benefit in one of your cities. When you complete a Wonder, any hammers in the same Wonder in your other cities are lost, without any failgold. When someone else completes a (World) Wonder, you get failgold for it in one city that was building it. If you had hammers in the same Wonder in any other cities, those hammers are lost without generating any failgold.

This eliminates the exploit while still allowing a "consolation prize" for players who try to build Wonders but are beaten to them, rather than just flushing all their hard-spent hammers away. It's always seemed like an excellent compromise to me.

[Charriu]

Ah, yes you are right. I misread the changelog.

[T-hawk]

I coded that originally. If I remember correctly and if it hasn't changed, the rule is simply no fail-gold for a wonder you complete yourself. (Technically, if it is present in one of your cities at the time the fail-gold would be awarded.)

National wonders always fall under that by definition. For a world wonder, you can still get fail-gold in multiple cities, but the tradeoff is you can't control the timing, your fail-hammers are tied up until someone completes the wonder. In general, that would rarely or never happen. Doing it in multiple cities only matters if one would exceed the cost of the wonder. In that case, you could just build the wonder instead. If you didn't want the wonder, probably nobody else does either, so you can't count on fail-gold from it.