Wow, this is impressive speed and detail. Kudos to you Charriu.
Some comments some of which I will spoiler out to not be obnoxious. The ones I do not spoiler out I have some heavy thoughts on.
Mechanics:
Tech Costs:
Buildings:
Unit Mechanics:
Land/naval units:
Agree with.
Corporations:
Civics!!!!!!!!!!!! The discussion trails off a bit, but I'll try to keep it organized.
Serfdom thoughts:
I have extensive testing with this option from the xml in an iteration of my own balancing mod. It is absolutely disadvantageous when compared to slavery. The most efficient food -> hammer conversion is when whipping size 2->1, and later on when you need to whip maces, 4->2. You want to be whipping small cities for maximum production. In any case, cities not growing is a huge disadvantage. This prevents the development of a proper specialist economy or a cottage spam, while not being very effective with whipping as a specialist economy is, and not offsetting the need to grow pop with cottages.
What to do with serfdom/emancipation:
Instead, my balancing mod (which, I believe handled economy/production decently), had a tradeoff between caste system buffing workshop produciton, and serfdom buffing the growth of workshops (Instead of tech improving workshops, they grew like cottages, only 2x as slow). However, such a change is too far removed from BTS and would change the meta. Giving serfdom a 1/2 of the emancipation bonus and switching emancipation to giving some other bonus that would provide meaningful tradeoffs is a good solution. For example, give emancipation state property's 10% hammer bonus, removing it from SP to nerf it, which is currently very necessary, and combine it with a +1 hammer to windmills bonus that would stack with environmentalism to make that civic less useless. Additionally, decrease the amount of unhappiness caused by emancipation by half.
Overall considerations:
I would strongly advise against the shuffling of civics around categories as suggested. Change what the civics do if you want to, but don't change the categories, it gets way too confusing.
Civics are not about what category they're in, but more about the synergies they play to. Rep/Caste, herd/slavery, free speech/univ suffrage. Bad civics are those that HAVE to be adopted.
"Bad" civics - from a standpoint of game balance, that is:
State property - assuming you are not playing around with corporations, this is the civic to be in. Environmentalism is absolute shite - health is only a problem between coal plants/factories and getting public transit. Plus, the +1 food of state property on water mills/workshops is I believe the only direct food bonus in the game except the baray. That's very telling about just how op it is. That +1 food compensates whatever health you're going to be losing in the industrial era. Remove the 10% hammers from SP if you are nerfing corporations. This bonus is just the icing on the cake.
Emancipation - the malus to happiness is game breaking, forcing all civs out of it, and penalizing those who are behind without any counterplay. It should be removed/nerfed in some fashion and replaced. Perhaps, swapping emancipation and free speech is reasonable, but simply swap the benefits, keep the names/positions. This would prevent players from being able to both pop and gold rush, in a civ3 style logic.
Free Speech? If you are doing well in your game, this should absolutely be a net positive to your commerce as compared to bureaucracy. I would say that bureaucracy's maintenance cost should be lowered to medium, and vassalage's set to low. This tuning should give more balance between the choices.
To recap:
Serfdom - Don't implement the food mechanic it will be bad. Instead, give it 50% bonus to cottage growth (this requires a DLL change due to stupid nasty rounding - giving 50% in the XML doesn't work for quite a few mechanics) as a counter to the specialist economy of caste system. Maybe give caste unlimited priests as well, to synergize a tiny bit with angkor and make it just a bit more op, now that serfdom has a major buff? Or, perhaps remove the worker speed buff from serfdom instead.
Emancipation - Swap bonuses with Univ. Suffrage. In effect, make Emancipation give +1 hammers on towns, and gold rushing, and have Univ. suffrage give the unhappiness of Emancipation, or perhaps some other, more creative bonus. The universal unhappiness is a terrible mechanic and should be avoided. Maybe give it 100% GPP boost? It would help carry specialist economies further.
----------------------------------------------------
State property: remove 10% bonus.
----------------------------------------------------
Vassalage: either make it give more extra free units or make the costs significantly less.
Bureaucracy: Set cost to medium.
Free Speech: No change - fine tune as needed compared to previous 2.
Traits:
I found this thought surprising:
Tech unlocks are a step backwards in the game thought. If anything, more things should behave like cottages. (e.g. workshops, farms for a commerce bonus)
Now, about each trait individually:
Financial - the nerf is effectively for early game only - you're losing out only on a small dole of the commerce. The bank +50% is totally unnecessary.
Agg - sure, that's not a bad change, but I would swap the jail/stable bonus between imp and agg. Buff jails as well, make them come earlier, they're not that amazing anyhow, and it would give players some ability to leverage espionage. Give one of the two drydock bonus.
Pro - Ah, similar to my mod, you are changing it to the "trade route" trait, at least somewhat. Not sure that +1 hammer on the city tile is a necessary change, but it gives it early game kick. Anyhow, Pro will synergize with castles much more nicely.
Ind - now the "hanging gardens" trait. I don't disapprove, however. Though, since the resource bonus is less, is Ind not better now?
Civs:
Overall, I feel like civs were changed more than necessary in many cases. Civs that are good can stay good (amazing ones, india/inca, do need nerfs), we just need to get the bad civs up to their level - Zulu, Mali - no need to nerf tbh.
Some comments some of which I will spoiler out to not be obnoxious. The ones I do not spoiler out I have some heavy thoughts on.
Mechanics:
Tech Costs:
Buildings:
Unit Mechanics:
Land/naval units:
Agree with.
Corporations:
Civics!!!!!!!!!!!! The discussion trails off a bit, but I'll try to keep it organized.
Serfdom thoughts:
I have extensive testing with this option from the xml in an iteration of my own balancing mod. It is absolutely disadvantageous when compared to slavery. The most efficient food -> hammer conversion is when whipping size 2->1, and later on when you need to whip maces, 4->2. You want to be whipping small cities for maximum production. In any case, cities not growing is a huge disadvantage. This prevents the development of a proper specialist economy or a cottage spam, while not being very effective with whipping as a specialist economy is, and not offsetting the need to grow pop with cottages.
What to do with serfdom/emancipation:
Instead, my balancing mod (which, I believe handled economy/production decently), had a tradeoff between caste system buffing workshop produciton, and serfdom buffing the growth of workshops (Instead of tech improving workshops, they grew like cottages, only 2x as slow). However, such a change is too far removed from BTS and would change the meta. Giving serfdom a 1/2 of the emancipation bonus and switching emancipation to giving some other bonus that would provide meaningful tradeoffs is a good solution. For example, give emancipation state property's 10% hammer bonus, removing it from SP to nerf it, which is currently very necessary, and combine it with a +1 hammer to windmills bonus that would stack with environmentalism to make that civic less useless. Additionally, decrease the amount of unhappiness caused by emancipation by half.
Overall considerations:
I would strongly advise against the shuffling of civics around categories as suggested. Change what the civics do if you want to, but don't change the categories, it gets way too confusing.
Civics are not about what category they're in, but more about the synergies they play to. Rep/Caste, herd/slavery, free speech/univ suffrage. Bad civics are those that HAVE to be adopted.
"Bad" civics - from a standpoint of game balance, that is:
State property - assuming you are not playing around with corporations, this is the civic to be in. Environmentalism is absolute shite - health is only a problem between coal plants/factories and getting public transit. Plus, the +1 food of state property on water mills/workshops is I believe the only direct food bonus in the game except the baray. That's very telling about just how op it is. That +1 food compensates whatever health you're going to be losing in the industrial era. Remove the 10% hammers from SP if you are nerfing corporations. This bonus is just the icing on the cake.
Emancipation - the malus to happiness is game breaking, forcing all civs out of it, and penalizing those who are behind without any counterplay. It should be removed/nerfed in some fashion and replaced. Perhaps, swapping emancipation and free speech is reasonable, but simply swap the benefits, keep the names/positions. This would prevent players from being able to both pop and gold rush, in a civ3 style logic.
Free Speech? If you are doing well in your game, this should absolutely be a net positive to your commerce as compared to bureaucracy. I would say that bureaucracy's maintenance cost should be lowered to medium, and vassalage's set to low. This tuning should give more balance between the choices.
To recap:
Serfdom - Don't implement the food mechanic it will be bad. Instead, give it 50% bonus to cottage growth (this requires a DLL change due to stupid nasty rounding - giving 50% in the XML doesn't work for quite a few mechanics) as a counter to the specialist economy of caste system. Maybe give caste unlimited priests as well, to synergize a tiny bit with angkor and make it just a bit more op, now that serfdom has a major buff? Or, perhaps remove the worker speed buff from serfdom instead.
Emancipation - Swap bonuses with Univ. Suffrage. In effect, make Emancipation give +1 hammers on towns, and gold rushing, and have Univ. suffrage give the unhappiness of Emancipation, or perhaps some other, more creative bonus. The universal unhappiness is a terrible mechanic and should be avoided. Maybe give it 100% GPP boost? It would help carry specialist economies further.
----------------------------------------------------
State property: remove 10% bonus.
----------------------------------------------------
Vassalage: either make it give more extra free units or make the costs significantly less.
Bureaucracy: Set cost to medium.
Free Speech: No change - fine tune as needed compared to previous 2.
Traits:
I found this thought surprising:
Quote:I already said how I wanted to nerf FIN by unlocking the upgrades with different techs, but I deem that to risky. I would have loved to give hamlets at something like Currency and Villages at a bit later. Because of that I'm back to the above change.
Tech unlocks are a step backwards in the game thought. If anything, more things should behave like cottages. (e.g. workshops, farms for a commerce bonus)
Now, about each trait individually:
Financial - the nerf is effectively for early game only - you're losing out only on a small dole of the commerce. The bank +50% is totally unnecessary.
Agg - sure, that's not a bad change, but I would swap the jail/stable bonus between imp and agg. Buff jails as well, make them come earlier, they're not that amazing anyhow, and it would give players some ability to leverage espionage. Give one of the two drydock bonus.
Pro - Ah, similar to my mod, you are changing it to the "trade route" trait, at least somewhat. Not sure that +1 hammer on the city tile is a necessary change, but it gives it early game kick. Anyhow, Pro will synergize with castles much more nicely.
Ind - now the "hanging gardens" trait. I don't disapprove, however. Though, since the resource bonus is less, is Ind not better now?
Civs:
Overall, I feel like civs were changed more than necessary in many cases. Civs that are good can stay good (amazing ones, india/inca, do need nerfs), we just need to get the bad civs up to their level - Zulu, Mali - no need to nerf tbh.
"I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of man to command my cavalry on this expedition."
- William Tecumseh Sherman
- William Tecumseh Sherman
