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

[Gavagai]

I have a couple of small suggestions with respect to late-game balance.

1) Move Christo Redentor to Mass Media. It is very straightforward, this is an incredibly powerful wonder and it makes sense to make it more costly by moving it to a dead-end tech.

2) The following group of changes:
- drop Satellites requirement for Advanced Flight (now only requires flight)
- make Jet Fighters require Advanced Flight and Rocketry
- make Stealth Bombers require Advanced Flight and Composites
- make Stealth Destroyers require Robotics and Composites
- remove Stealth tech from the game.
The basic idea is that I want to introduce an interesting strategic choice by creating an opportunity to get a powerful counter to Tanks early at the cost of going for a dead-end tech. It also generally makes Advanced Flight more valuable and removes a tech that literally never gets researched.

[Charriu]

First of all. Mjmd I haven't forgotten your post about the American UB. I will talk more about that after the T150 report for PB65, which is right around the corner.

I have a couple of small suggestions with respect to late-game balance.

1) Move Christo Redentor to Mass Media. It is very straightforward, this is an incredibly powerful wonder and it makes sense to make it more costly by moving it to a dead-end tech.

It's true that Christo Redentor is powerful, but so are a lot of other things in the modern era. For what it's worth I doubt that moving it to Mass Media will shift the balance regarding that wonder that much. Radio is 6000 base beakers in cost and Mass Media 3600 base beakers. It should be no problem for a player getting Radio in time also to get to Mass Media rather fast. If you really want to delay it via tech you would better add a second tech like with the Great Lighthouse requiring Masonry and Sailing.
Other than that keep in mind that this wonder has no bonus resource reducing the hammer cost. Factoring in the cost these are the wonders more expensive then it:

Three Gorges Dam
Space Elevator
Pentagon

Three Gorges Dam is very map depended, but can be powerful on the right map. Space Elevator is a topic of its own. Pentagon is just as easy tech wise as Christo Redentor for a militaristic player.

With bonus resources in mind it costs more or less the same as these wonders:

Hollywood
The Statue of Liberty
United Nations

Hollywood is on Mass Media so harder to get then Christo Redentor. Statue of Liberty is very powerful in the right hands and way earlier available. United Nations needs no mention. The question is how you will use Christo Redentor. If you only use it to switch into your final late game techs then it's comparable to Taj Mahal but without the golden age. If you want to switch around civics a lot at this stage then it's awesome. The question remains though which civics you constantly want to switch around.
By the way SPI players get a production bonus for Christo Redentor, probably to deny the wonder to others.

TL:DR If you want to nerf Redentor you need an additional tech or higher costs. Right now I see no reason to nerf that particular wonder as we haven't seen it being abused to overpowered levels yet.

2) The following group of changes:
- drop Satellites requirement for Advanced Flight (now only requires flight)
- make Jet Fighters require Advanced Flight and Rocketry
- make Stealth Bombers require Advanced Flight and Composites
- make Stealth Destroyers require Robotics and Composites
- remove Stealth tech from the game.
The basic idea is that I want to introduce an interesting strategic choice by creating an opportunity to get a powerful counter to Tanks early at the cost of going for a dead-end tech. It also generally makes Advanced Flight more valuable and removes a tech that literally never gets researched.

Ok I try to unpack this. If I understand you right you want to get gunships online earlier to have as a counter against tanks? That's a lot of changes for something like that. Especially if there is already a counter unit against tanks available at around the same time as the tank itself: The anti-tank on Artillery. It has half the tanks strength (14 vs 28) and only 1 movement. It has +100% against tanks and Ambush promotion giving another +25% against tanks. If that's not enough it would be a lot less changes to just increase the anti-tanks units modifiers. Nice thing is you probably get to Anti-tanks earlier then tanks. I know I've built them in PB59 to prepare myself against my neighbors, when I was behind tech-wise.
By the time modern tanks roll around you can also have gunships.

[Gavagai]

1) You seem to miss the fact that you do not need Mass Media for the space race and normally would not research the tech at all, especially in MP. Its beaker cost is essentially just an added cost to wonders that the tech makes available. By contrast, you need both Plastics and Assembly Line to launch. For that reason, moving Christo Redentor to Mass Media drastically increases the opportunity cost of the wonder, you slow down your spaceship in exchange for the ability to swap civics freely which is a genuinely unclear strategic choice. Adding the choice is worthwhile by itself and it also would make Mass Media a more viable tech. And the point of the mod is to make features that are normally unused usable.
(Hammer costs of wonders are negligible at this point of the game.)
2) Firstly, the anti-tank is a very weak counter to tanks. It counters tanks about as well as Pikes counter Cuirassier which pretty much means does not counter at all. Its role in the game is to give people who are late to Industrialism at least something to rely on. But once you have Industrialism, there is no point in building the anti-tank, you just mass tanks. Gunships, on the other hand, are powerful enough that adding them into the mix would considerably strengthen your army before modern armor (against modern armor gunships are weak once again which makes them a pretty useless unit in a normal game).
But the point is not just to counter tanks, the point is to make it worthwhile to research advanced flight. Once again, I want to make useless features into useful ones which is the very point of the mod.

[Gavagai]

Addendum about Christo Redentor. Its value in the late game is huge bc it gives the opportunity to costlessly switch between "space race civics" and "war-time civics". This, in turn, means you can run space race civics without worrying too much about your security bc you can switch at any point you want. In a tight space race, it could be the decisive factor.

[Ginger*]

FWIW I agree with Gavagai's analysis

Mjmd your take on the American UB is interesting, because it does seem really powerful, but I have to keep in mind that you still need to seed the pool with your desired GP type. (Assuming we're not just going for a scientist). So that's either Metal Casting, HG/mids, or GLH/Colossus.

Again, I'm not really sure it's broken per se unless you stack with PHI, and PHI itself is already very powerful in these niche situations like generating quality (non Scientist) GP from limited sources.
Like it's good, but so are EXP Barays
Yes it blows away the Forum but the Forum is pretty meh (and that's okay! Rome is very very good lol)

I just think there's this gap between the idealized potential of the PHI trait and the Carnegie Library vs the actual limitations you encounter

[Tarkeel]

FWIW, I also agree with Gavagai.

[Charriu]

Well my main problem with Gavagai's proposal is that it introduces a lot of changes. I remember not a long while ago making also a lot of change proposals for the modern naval combat side.

I think if we want naval combat rebalance, we can go back to RtR just as well. The idea of this mod is to balance the game for the multiplayer while keeping as much of the original game as possible. We already have a mod that tries to make Civ into a better game.

I would argue that Gavagai's proposal falls in the same category. But if people are fine with it I will integrate it.

[Gavagai]

Christo Redentor change is moving a wonder from one tech to another. Advanced Flight change is dropping one requirement for a tech and introducing an additional tech requirement for a unit. None of this goes beyond what we did for Galleon and Privateer.
I agree, however, that changes around Stealth are on a different level and I don't think we've done anything similar in the mod (deleting a tech from the tech tree). They are also the least important of all changes I proposed. So, I think, the way to respect your concern is to keep Stealth as it is and only implement Advanced Flight and Christo Redentor changes.

[civac2]

No, I agree your view. This is even less impactful than the proposed naval changes.

@Gavagai: Wouldn't artillery/infantry be able to handle a tank stack fairly easily?

[Gavagai]

No, I agree your view. This is even less impactful than the proposed naval changes.

@Gavagai: Wouldn't artillery/infantry be able to handle a tank stack fairly easily?

Well, the question is whether artillery / infantry is a good alternative to just massing tanks and I do not think so  I mean, yes, there are tools to contain tanks without Industrialism but they are all inferior to just having tanks yourself.
There is also a problem with artillery that this is an optional tech, strictly speaking, which you normally would want to avoid.