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

[Charriu]

So I've set up a survey to better evaluate the changes done by Close to Home version 1.1. I would love if you would participate in the survey. Thank you.

Version 1.1 survey

[Miguelito]

Another Serfdom idea: to expand on the "worker civic" characteristic and refelct indentured labour, allow workers to be sacrificed in cities for hammers like FFH slaves, giving a return lower than their cost (45hammers? 30?). Would need a malus for wonders similarly to whipping (or just don't allow rushing a wonder with this). I'm aware that this is somewhat dangerous terrain.
I'd also would prefer this in RtR to "another caste system"

[Charriu]

That's definitly interesting, but it is a huge issue to balance that. So right now I don't want to implement it.

[Charriu]

So far 6 people have conducted the survey and I'm very thankful for the feedback. A few reactions from my side would be allowed:

I'm not sure exactly how Pro's trade bonus will play out.

PRO - is this multiplicative ord additive? If the latter, too weak. Else still too weak (late) probably

There is some uncertainty about the new trade bonus on the Protective trait. It works just the same way as the harbor trade route bonus works, but with 75% instead of 50%. By now I did quite a lot of test games and can say that the bonus is definitly not weak. Here some things I noticed:

• As you know your first trade routes generate +1 commerce, with Protective they produce +2 commerce as long as you are connected to the capitol
  
• This means this bonus activates as soon as you connect your cities. If you are not playing on the coast this bonus activates earlier then Financial especially in CtH.
  
• It's true that as soon as Financial starts kicking in and you scale up your cottage economy, this bonus gets a bit weaker in comparison.
  
• The next big spikes for this trait are Currency, for obivious reasons and Optics for those coastal cities with Harbors. With just 17 turns of peace you get another +1 commerce on every trade route connected to other players.
  
• All in all I noticed that the trade bonus is weaker then Financials commerce bonus, but it is definitly is on equal footing to Organizeds civic reduction, if not stronger.
  

TL:DR Pro is definitly not weak anymore.

Celts are considered one of the worst civs.

4 of 6 persons thought that this. Celts got buffed in a few ways:

• Mysticism was buffed and has a better start then in BtS. They also have Mining which is great.
  
• Their UU replaces Swordsmen which were buffed slightly.
  
• Their UB no longer obsoletes. That means Riflemen and all future Gunpowder units can get Guerilla 2 with just one promotion.
  

One way to buff Celts more is to give them Guerilla 2 instead of 1 with their UB, but I'm very hestitant to go that way. This would mean that all of their melee, archery and gunpowder units get double hill move from the get go and with just one promotion they get Guerilla 3 with its +50% withdrawl and +25% hill attack. I think this would be too strong of a bonus. Still I will make a note for myself too look into Celts in the future.

Incas are considered one of the best civs

Well I nerfed their UB quite hard with lower culture rate and higher production cost. Like one participant said, the only thing making Inca the best civ right now is the Granary bonus from Expansive. Without it their pole position is gone. I could remove this connection with Expansive, but it would be so awkward to have just one building not being affected by a production bonus. We also know that Terraces are still considered strong in RtR with no bonus, cost of 45 and only +1 culture. There's another thing I'm thinking comes into effect here: Physchology. It's really hard to break up with established opinions about established strength and weaknesses.

Change log shows "IND/PRO" now exists, which it did already; I assume you meeant "IND/PHI."

Correct. My mistake and will be fixed in the next version.

Agg is just uninspired.

AGG - athematic, worker bonus better with PRO?

You are all correct and I'm still not happy with Agg. I think Agg needs a bit of an economic bonus like every other trait has now. Right now I'm thinking about adding +1 happiness for Agg on barracks and bring back the Jail production bonus. My thought here was to make Agg work a bit better with Slavery, which would fit the term "Aggressive" a bit better.

Security Bureau should be changed, as should jails. Since the desire of the community is largely not to play around with espionage, these buildings should get changed

Well the Jail still has its use in the war weariness reduction, which was its original purpose. Right now I don't want to address anything espionage related. They only way to fix espionage is a complete overhaul of the system, which is too much right now.

[RefSteel]

4 of 6 persons thought that this. Celts got buffed in a few ways:

• Mysticism was buffed and has a better start then in BtS. They also have Mining which is great.
  
• Their UU replaces Swordsmen which were buffed slightly.
  
• Their UB no longer obsoletes. That means Riflemen and all future Gunpowder units can get Guerilla 2 with just one promotion.
  

Are you sure they have Mining? I thought Celts were Myst/Hunting, which may just be confusion on my part. Myst and Hunting both were buffed, but they're still the two starting techs with the slowest route to BW and Pottery. Whether Myst/Mining (with nothing on the way to Pottery or AH) is better or worse depends on starting food mainly.

On the other points, the UU and UB are really just two stages of the same map-dependent, non-economic one-trick pony. Buffing the UB to give G2 doesn't really change this; it just makes it a more dangerous one trick. It probably would make the civ pretty broken for the reason you state, but still wouldn't necessarily make it good. This is what I don't like about BtS Praets and 'phracts and the RtR American Armo(u)ry: They're devastating weapons for wrecking someone else's game, but they rarely actually put you in a strong position yourself.

We also know that Terraces are still considered strong in RtR with no bonus, cost of 45 and only +1 culture. There's another thing I'm thinking comes into effect here: Physchology. It's really hard to break up with established opinions about established strength and weaknesses.

Maybe give your voters more credit than that? (Why is India not assumed to be among top civs based on this "psychology"?) Culture on a granary is ridiculously strong. Decreasing the culture output does help, but it's not enough - especially with Myst buffed, reducing (though far from eliminating) Inca's biggest weakness as a civ. Changing the cost of the building only causes more problems: I think I'd rarely be happy getting Inca without Exp, because great as the free culture is, needing to find 70 hammers in each city to get the granary effect is very problematic - but I think it would practically always be a top-tier option with Exp, because 35h for Granary + culture is great! RtR's solution is broken in a whole different way: You get a discounted granary that also produces culture plus two fully-effective traits! Everyone else's granaries cost more and do less, except for the people who have the appropriate trait, whose granaries cost less but also do less, and who get the discount at the cost of almost an entire trait! I think RtR Inca has finished in the top 2 (when it was second, first has either been India with its own cheap and improved granary or someone who got two players' worth of land for free) in every game we've played under the new mod. That isn't because of psychology.

Still on the Terrace: If you remove the Exp bonus from the building, 60h is probably fine, but I agree this is not the best solution. Otherwise, it's a question of replacing the Granary + Culture design with something different. For flavor reasons, I like the idea of a Tambo as an Incan library that significantly reduces distance maintenance costs, keeping number-of-city maintenance intact, but of course that isn't close to BtS, and I don't know if it's even doable in the DLL.

I should note that Granary UBs are very hard to balance in general, but they aren't intrinsically bad. If the RtR Harrapan Granary had a normal cost, including the normal trait bonus, it would probably be fine - because getting +1 happiness doesn't matter until you grow to the cap, which you're unlikely to do without a granary even at full cost, so the synergy is illusory - whereas getting culture ASAP is critical, which is what makes the Terrace's value so wildly different with and without (in BtS/CtH) Exp.

[Old Harry]

Would making the terrace store only 40% of food offset the culture advantage? Or perhaps it could lose the health bonus?

[Charriu]

A few thoughts I have right now:

About the Inca UB: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm starting to believe that no matter what UB replaces the Granary, it will always considered very strong, just because the Granary is the single most important building and will be build everywhere. If true I'm thinking about not replacing the granary at all for any UB. This leaves Inca and Babylon with a need for a new UB and here is my idea for them:

Inca: Terrace replaces Aqueduct, +2 culture, Cost 60, Available at Pottery.
What I did here is removing the connection to the granary, while keeping the UB mostly the same as in BtS. Its still available at the same time, with the same cost, same culture rate and its still powered by Expansive. Yes you get +2 additional health earlier in the game frome the base building, but those don't matter at this point. Even at the original tech Mathematics, the additional health isn't that important at that point. The main difference is now that you need to focus on building the UB rather then getting additional benefits with the standard play of Granary first.

Babylon: Back to BtS implementation, but only +1 health and "Acts as a source of water".
Let me explain the "Act as a source of water" a bit more. With this building the city allows building and irrigating farms just like a oasis or fresh water lake would do. Depending on the implementation it may also grant the +2 fresh water health you get when settling on fresh water tiles. This allows for some interesting plays like being able to irrigate tiles that are normally blocked by hills or make food poor cities more viable. Being available at Constuction it also doesn't come too early to mess up the early game, while being at around the half way point to Civil Service. But even after Civil Service it stays relevant.

To be totally honest from a flavor stand point it would be better if those civs switch their UBs, but this way they stay closer to their BtS implementation. I'm curious about your thoughts.



Next talking point: Starting situation. I'm still a bit disappointed about two things. First the good old Animal Husbandry resources only starts. The biggest problems here are when you are able to connect your first food resource and the delay towards Bronze Working. Here are a few crazy thoughts I had.

Make Animal Husbandry an optional prerequisite for Bronze Working: This way you only need either Mining or AH to tech Bronze Working. Now this is definitley awkward from a historical point of view, I admit. But it helps with getting back to speed with AH. I doubt this will destroy the overall pace of the tech path in the beginning. Players not needing AH won't likely tech AH and Mining first to get a cheaper Bronze Working, as its much faster to go with Mining->Bronze Working, especially when you start with Mining. Of course civs, who do need to tech AH for their first food tech and also have Mining, do get an advantage. But out of all the Mining civs only 5 start with a combination of Mining + Hunting/Agriculture, while 8 other Mining civs have a harder time getting to AH and have a bigger need for this advantage. The biggest issue here is China, with its Agriculture/Mining start, which makes it still one of the best civs for an AH only start. It's also worth pointing out that you still want Mining eventually otherwise how do you want to connect your copper or other mining resources. Can't settle on every single mining resource.

Reduce the build time of the first worker to 15 turns: One thing that makes an AH only start worse nowadays is that the current meta demands a plains hill start for every player. I can understand why players want it as it makes the early game a bit quicker and starts the snowball sooner.
My first problem with this is that the PH start eliminates one of the earliest and most interesting decisions of the game of where to settle your capital, which is just said. It's also interesting that we demand a PH start, but hate the idea of starting with a settled city. Most of the time it comes down to both being the same, so much for illusion of choice.
The other problem is that a PH start drops the first worker from 15 to 12 turns. This mostly benefits starts with Agriculture resources and to a lesser degree Fishing resources. Thanks to the PH start you can connect your first Agriculture resource at around T17 while your first AH resource only connects at best at around T21. One way to achieve this is to temporary disable the additional hammer from PH starts either until a specific tech is researched or you switch into slavery. But that feels so wrong at the same time.

Give AH an additional third prerequisite: The Agriculture and Hunting civs have it easier to connect their first AH resource and can do that almost at the same time as an Agriculture resource. I already proposed this in a past post and the biggest problem here is which tech should be the additional prerequisite.

I'm still at a loss of how to make an AH start a bit better. I may try the first option in a few test games.


Now the other thing that bothers me with the starts right now is Fishing. Yes making available Work Boats right away was a good change, but at the same time it made Fishing a lot weaker as a starting tech. To that extend I will increase the cost of Fishing to 50 (and Hunting back to 40) as I intended in an earlier version. This way the Fishing civs get at least a little bit of value. Still I think this is not enough. Right now if I start with a Fishing resource there's not much of an incentive or advantage to start with Fishing. Now you could say the same for Hunting or Agriculture, but with Hunting you get at least some turns of quicker scout movement, while Agriculture might be needed as a prerequisite for AH, when you start with Agri and AH resources. Now with Fishing the only thing you get during those first 10 turns is the ability to work water tiles. Now this can be useful for a Financial civ working a fresh water like or if you happen to start with a Fishing resource in a fresh water like. The last case won't happen in a standard game, while the first also isn't ideal as you want to work strong hammer tiles in the beginning to get your first work boat out, why else did you take Fishing other then for that reason. Now there is additional incentive in that Fishing leads to Pottery, but that's for latter. I think Fishing still needs a tiny bit of a bonus to make it good as a starting tech. The only problem is what this tiny bonus should be.

[Charriu]

4 of 6 persons thought that this. Celts got buffed in a few ways:

• Mysticism was buffed and has a better start then in BtS. They also have Mining which is great.
  
• Their UU replaces Swordsmen which were buffed slightly.
  
• Their UB no longer obsoletes. That means Riflemen and all future Gunpowder units can get Guerilla 2 with just one promotion.
  

Are you sure they have Mining?  I thought Celts were Myst/Hunting, which may just be confusion on my part.  Myst and Hunting both were buffed, but they're still the two starting techs with the slowest route to BW and Pottery.  Whether Myst/Mining (with nothing on the way to Pottery or AH) is better or worse depends on starting food mainly.

On the other points, the UU and UB are really just two stages of the same map-dependent, non-economic one-trick pony.  Buffing the UB to give G2 doesn't really change this; it just makes it a more dangerous one trick.  It probably would make the civ pretty broken for the reason you state, but still wouldn't necessarily make it good.  This is what I don't like about BtS Praets and 'phracts and the RtR American Armo(u)ry:  They're devastating weapons for wrecking someone else's game, but they rarely actually put you in a strong position yourself.

Thanks for pointing that out with regards to Myst/Hunting. I even have Celts down to Myst/Hunting in my notes. I must have slipped one line when I wrote that. I agree that both of their bonus are map-dependent, but I would argue to a lesser degree then for example Jaguars or the happiness from Charismatic, because you can always expect a good amount of hills on any map and with Guerilla 3 only needing two promotions you have a great tool to attack those cities on hill, which you also can expect on almost every map. But you are correct that they are a kind of one-tick pony. Will think about them.

[El Grillo]

Terrace as early Aqueduct with culture feels awkward, since you rarely want the health until much later, and only in a few cities, whereas you want culture early and often. I’d probably build a Monument or found a religion over that if I needed to pop borders quickly, but I guess there’s the novelty of being able to rush Hanging Gardens with a prebuilt Terrace as soon as you finish Mathematics.

The Babylon irrigation idea sounds much more fun to play with. There’s precedent for a UB changing how you settle midgame cities in the Dike, and being able to irrigate some annoying dry valleys feels satisfying, though it’ll often just be a way to get +1f on an adjacent otherwise dry farm resource while Worker labor is still a constraint right around Civil Service.

[chumchu]

Here are my personal thoughts on the traits as of 1.1.
My main problem is that at its current state some of the traits feel a bit too much like a mix of different small bonuses (especially AGG, CHA and IMP). It would be easier for players new or skeptical to changes with fewer and stronger bonuses. If you have multiple bonuses, they should be on one theme. Also avoid mixing up the theme between traits so all of them feel distinct.

AGG: The most thematic economic bonus would be to give AGG cheaper unit maintenance. Either by giving them more free units or giving a percentage discount. This does mean a schema change to insert a function in traitinfo which is why I did not do it for my mod. If you could do it I would recommend between 25% and 50% discount on unit maintenance. That way you can keep something very close to the earlier RTR-versions of the traits which in my opinion was very close to the smallest possible changes to make all traits reasonably balanced. (granary to PRO, eco bonus to AGG, even faster workers for EXP)

CHA: I think the bonus to libraries being split on two traits makes both of them less distinct. There is no precedent for this in the base game, and I think that is for a reason. The added bonus production to monuments already makes these two traits quite similar. An extra happy is to me the cleanest change to this trait and it has the benefit of making it more unique.

IMP: I'm not sure that it needs any of these buffs. It is rated in the mid tier which I think is reasonable. If you do not buff PHI I do not understand why you would buff IMP. Both are very useful in the right situation but run into limitations (upkeep, increasing GP costs). If you do want to buff it, a reasonable buff is to increase its bonus to settler production to 67% or 75% or 100% depending on how weak you think it is. This is easier to remember than adding a bonus to two disparate buildings.

My suggestion from scratch for smallest possible changes with distinct theme and reasonable balance:

FIN: Your change is great. (Land tiles need 3 commerce to get bonus)
EXP: Remove Granary. Add double production speed of Aqueduct, Grocer. 35% faster production of workers and work boats.
CRE: 50% speed of library instead of 100%
Unchanged: SPI, IND, ORG, IMP
PHI: 150% GP rate.
CHM: 2 happiness base (instead of 1).
AGG: An eco bonus. Either- 50 % unit maintenance or -25% number of cities maintenance or 1 wealth per city.
PRO: Get granary.

EXP is the least elegant of these changes. The best argument for it is that it enables an easy fix to PRO and is familiar to RTR players. You could also move worker/work boat bonus to PRO instead of the granary but that might leave EXP a bit too strong and PRO a bit too weak.