A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[Charriu]

To expand on that I was actually experimenting with a form of slavery nerf, that is a bit simpler then the one in RtR, but I feared that players believe the RtR nerf is too much at all.

Instead of a split between the first whip giving 30 hammers and every following whip 20, I tried reducing every whip from 30 to 25. This has the following consequences:

• It's a lot easier to comprehend for newcomers then the 30/20 split
  
• A double whip will have the same effect with 25 hammers then with a 30/20 split
  
• The total amount of hammers generated by pops in RtR is 30/50/70/90/110
  
• With 25 hammer whips the total amount of hammers is 25/50/75/100/125, so high pop whips are a lot more valuable compared to RtR, but who really does 4-pop whips or even more anyway.
  
• With the exception of a monument and most late-game buildings the amount of whips needed for completion stay nearly the same, but even a monument only needs 5 hammers to be a 1-whip, which should be doable.
  

With units it is a bit more complicated. Compared to RtR the following units require an additional pop to whip

• Chariot (same as monument 5 hammers in and it is a 1-pop-whip)
  
• Work Boats (same as monument 5 hammers in and it is a 1-pop-whip)
  

But with the following units you require 1 pop less to whip or more

• Settler (Same as BtS)
  
• Grenadier (Same as BtS)
  
• Cuirassier (Same as BtS)
  
• Cavalry
  
• Executives and most of the late-game units
  

[Charriu]

Also. I wasn't that involved with civ 4 in its early days. Could you elaborate a bit more how whipping in those early days was different then now, T-Hawk?

[T-hawk]

RTR does the 30/20 split as a factor of balance against the anger cost. Bigger whips are always better than multiple smaller whips because of that concern, which generally outweighs the small differences in food box size. You get 30 hammers for a killed population that incurs anger and 20 hammers for one that doesn't. That difference roughly matches the should-be cost of another angry face (exactly so if that laborer would be working a grass forest for 10 turns.)

I don't really want to explain the old bug (and I'd probably get details wrong by now), but the general idea is whipping didn't correctly use noninteger (not +100%) hammer multipliers, so you wouldn't get it from Org Rel or forge or Expansive workers. That's not necessarily a bug (cash rushing still deliberately ignores those); the bug was that the Slavery yield could round *up* to the next +100% increment; fixing that bug indirectly increased Slavery's yield from the original design.

[Commodore]

Instead of a split between the first whip giving 30 hammers and every following whip 20, I tried reducing every whip from 30 to 25. This has the following consequences:

*It's easier to whip in wonders for low hammer/high food fishing cities. The old problem for double-whipping is you basically have to use axes/spears; sink in 2 hammers, double whip, get ~19 overflow (50+4-35). And once you obsolete axes/spears, you're out of luck. If the initial whip is 25, you can much more efficiently use things like work boats, Exp granaries, etc: sink in 2 hammers, double whip, get ~24h overflow (50+4-30)

[Hitru]

I would like to keep whips as in RTR as it would be annoying to think about 3 different whip systems while doing micro + I think rtr solution is actually pretty good as it balances hammers vs anger cost (as T-Hawk said).

Furthermore, I would not want move serfdom to earlier tech as then it is big buff to spi, which does not really need more buffs. Additionally that feels like pretty big move away from original, which was not the aim for this mod.

[Cornflakes]

I would like to keep whips as in RTR as it would be annoying to think about 3 different whip systems while doing micro + I think rtr solution is actually pretty good as it balances hammers vs anger cost (as T-Hawk said).

Furthermore, I would not want move serfdom to earlier tech as then it is big buff to spi, which does not really need more buffs. Additionally that feels like pretty big move away from original, which was not the aim for this mod.

+1 for all of this

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I think slavery should be kept as is in a mod like this. My philosophy of balancing would argue that moving serfdom to some earlier slot (could just be alphabet? writing?) would be the most productive thing to do.

[Charriu]

Thanks T-Hawk for that insight. I must say I almost expected something like that with the pre-expansion version. I just wanted to make sure it's what I expected. You all were making good arguments in favor of the 30/20 split, but I have to say the best argument against 25 hammer whips is what Hitru said and that is keeping the sanity of RB players to a manageable level.

This only leaves me with the decision between standard slavery and the 30/20 split model. It's tough call to make between balance and keeping to the original. I will think about this some more.

I also have to agree with Hitru about serfdom. While moving it to something like Masonry is very interesting, it's definitly a big change compared to BtS. At the same time I also believe that moving it to an earlier tech like Writing or Alphabet will either feel like a big change or won't help serfdom enough.

[Hitru]

Few more points: (first of all, it has been long time since I have played vanilla bts so my apologies if something is wrong here)

Changing scouts to move 1 tile is decreasing quality of life a lot. In really early turns scouting new area is the most interesting part of the game and making scouts move 1 turns slows that down a lot.

Traits are (again, in my opinion) the most unbalanced thing in vanilla bts so I don't think we can just finetune them with minimal changes if we want to get resonable balance.

Take exp, for example. I can't see how it could keep both worker bonus and granary bonus, one of those has to be moved. And here I think rtr made really good decision by moving granary bonus to pro which simultaneously makes pro good and nerfs exp to be in line with imp + it feels resonable or pro having granary boost. I would even go as far as saying that copying traits from some older version of rtr (say from pb38, for example) might be the best way to balance them while keeping them resonably close to original traits (I think that version of traits had the same flavor as the originals and were close enough and balanced enough).

[Hitru]

But I guess regarding traits it is matter of preference between balance vs staying true to original. I would prefer balance but can understand if you want to keep this closer to bts. But again, if we have 3 games running here (original, rtr and this) it would be great if some things would be shared with at least 2 of these (same as with whipping, it would be annoying to try to keep in mind 3 different sets of traits instead of 2).