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

[NobleHelium]

Nobody is going to pillage their own iron and copper in MP. It also costs you production.

[civac2]

Why not? I get it is dangerous but you need maybe 3-4 turns. Of course, it is not possible in many situations but in peacetime organizing 4 turns without building an axe seems doable. You can also just take out the road to avoid production loss. In CTH you can also overflow whip warriors to print money. I probably should try that out at some point.

[scooter]

So, the other topic I'd like to throw out there is a discussion of the current state of Mysticism and Byzantium. They're nearly impossible to talk about separate from each other, so they should probably be discussed together. In short, I believe Byzantium and/or Mysticism need to be toned down quite a bit.


My initial reaction to 1.4 is that I was fine with Cataphracts being reverted back to their vanilla BtS strength. In general, I don't think Byzantium was actually all that OP in vanilla BtS because it required you taking the worst starting techs in the whole game, which meant you were going to be behind the curve OR you were going to have to "spend" a trait or two on expansion instead of traits that help you get to Guilds faster or power up your army once you get there. I felt like those tradeoffs combined with a UB that was arguably worse than the building it replaced made for a Civ that was generally okay. It was a totally predictable one-trick pony, but that one trick was quite good.


The problem is that CTH has since "fixed" Byzantine's UB by making it actually vaguely useful, and it's now made Mysticism a very solid starting tech. Mysticism costs more, so the opportunity cost to not having it is higher. Some of the most important growth techs (Agriculture and Fishing) are cheaper, and Fishing is not required to actually build the work boat. These changes reduce the opportunity costs of not starting with them, which inherently makes Mysticism more attractive. All of this alone is probably more than enough to make Mysticism a good starting tech, but in addition it picked up the +1 commerce in capital bonus, which is one change that seems especially unnecessary. In PB54, 6/11 players selected Mysticism civs, which is a shockingly high number. Mysticism should be a starting tech that has some downsides, because it opens the gate to a bunch of good stuff. I think a world in which it's one of the best starting techs is not really healthy. Access to Monuments, Stonehenge, and religion should have some serious drawbbacks.


As a result of all this, in Byzantines we have the best UU in CTH right now, an average UB, and decent starting techs. I think that's way too good. In terms of balance, I think I prefer we find a way to keep the Cataphracts pretty strong while toning the civ down in other ways. I think civs are most interesting when they have something that's strong and unique, but that requires that their other goodies be pretty weak to compensate. I think at minimum the commerce bonus at Mysticism needs to go, but I don't think that's enough here.

[scooter]

Also, I definitely overlooked the Quechua cheap MP thing earlier. It's still a generally weak UU, but I agree it's worth something.

Why not? I get it is dangerous but you need maybe 3-4 turns. Of course, it is not possible in many situations but in peacetime organizing 4 turns without building an axe seems doable. You can also just take out the road to avoid production loss. In CTH you can also overflow whip warriors to print money. I probably should try that out at some point.

Another factor here is you can't do this if you settle on copper/iron, which in some circumstances you might like to do. Of course, maybe that's a trade-off, but I'm not sure it's always quite as simple as just disconnect your strategic resource.

[civac2]

I am not convinced at all this is a good idea in MP games, for the record. It's also more expensive if your copper/iron is near a river as then you do have to sacrifice the production of these excellent tiles for a few turns. In my SP games (Immortal, often no TT) the additional ability to print money via overflow whips is an additional perk while for rb MP games with lush maps on Monarch this part would be actively detrimental I think.

[NobleHelium]

We are making the mod only for MP games.

[civac2]

I don't understand what you wan't to imply with that comment. The technique may be useful in MP games. I don't know if it is as I don't have much MP experience. Even the overflow whip thing is useful if you play MP games on difficulties with real maintenance costs.

[NobleHelium]

I'm saying that you're operating on vastly different assumptions that come from your SP experience. The idea of self-pillaging metal is unfathomable to me. There isn't really such a thing as actual "peacetime" in a tight MP game unless you're playing a full diplomacy game with NAPs.

[Wyatan]

I know that Cataphracts have a solid reputation for being borderline overpowered.
But are they actually *that* good?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...t-15763179

(Basically what I take from that is that they're indeed much better than knights in the field, but no better for taking cities. So I guess it depends on which use case is prevalent in your MP games.)

[Fintourist]

I know that Cataphracts have a solid reputation for being borderline overpowered.
But are they actually *that* good?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...t-15763179

(Basically what I take from that is that they're indeed much better than knights in the field, but no better for taking cities. So I guess it depends on which use case is prevalent in your MP games.)

Well, I don't know what is the limit of *that* good, but when you add +20 % into base strength of an unit, which is already pretty much the best MP unit of if its era.. that is pretty damn good. And the era happens to also be the one where many MP games will be decided.

Civ combat calculus works in a way that +2 strength does not always have a huge impact on odds. It might only improve your odds by say 10 % and in essence save you 9 hammers per attack. But in other fights that +2 strength turns a number of 30 % battles into 70 % odds, which will lead to significant savings and can turn a losing battle into a comfortable victory.

Overall civ selection does not of course really decide games. Strong player wins against a weaker one even if the weaker player would have unnerfed terraces, fast workers and cataphracts, but I think scooter has a valid point above if we try to achieve balance. I think cataphracts are good enough that if we give Byzantium two solid starting techs I would not really mind playing the civ against unnerfed India or Incas.. (probably still would pick I or I though)