Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[mostly_harmless]

The missing piece for Civ 4 is the entertainer specialist. In Civ 3, a city of any size could always get happy enough by hiring entertainers (+1 happy face, and after the first, the entertainer would be converted from an unhappy citizen, for a net of +2 happy.)

Can you not convert the spy specialist into an entertainer? I understand the espionage system is about to get scraped anyway.

mh

[Cyneheard]

Maybe imperialistic could get some slight late-game economic bonus, such as reduced inflation? Would sort of fit from a flavor point of view

Harbors get an expansive bonus. Imp should probably get something, and levees would make a huge difference.

Not sure what we're going to do with corporations, but a corporate-based bonus is a bad idea IMO, they're very powerful already, probably too powerful.

We need slavery in the early game, otherwise it won't be the same game. But slavery needs to not be the best mid-game option for production, especially in the era of, say, Cavalry (yes, I was still whipping them in PB3).

Ilios: A weaker granary weakens slavery, yes, but it also makes it harder for players not to slave, because they grow slower. I think a straight hammer nerf is better, as it purely weakens slavery, without messy side effects.

MH: I'm not sure how good entertainers are in Civ4's "unhappiness isn't death" setup.
Claim 1) There are three options for Entertainers:
a) +2 happy.
b) +1 happy, +Something Else (+1 Culture, a hammer, something). Just +1 happy makes the entertainer into an unhappy citizen...who keeps himself happy, and no one else.
c) +2 happy, +Something Else

Claim 2) Surplus happiness that is provided by an entertainer is wasted happiness. This is the same thing that happens with the culture slider: Every extra happy face is a wasted opportunity cost, as both are fully flexible resources from turn to turn. (Note: This isn't strictly true with HR garrisons, because troops aren't fully flexible, and sometimes you just need 20 units in one city).

Conclusion: Option a) therefore makes Entertainers useless at +1 unhappiness. Instead of an angry citizen, I have an entertainer sitting there and +1 happiness that's just floating into nothingness. This makes option a) very clunky, as it's only helpful when you have even numbers of unhappiness.
Option b) simply converts unhappy faces into something of fixed value. It's ok, but I don't see much attraction here. It can't be enough that players will want to consider intentionally being happy more often than "almost never", and then it barely does anything.
Option c) This is still clunky, but at least the entertainer is doing something useful when there's +1 unhappiness.

[v8mark]

In Civ 3, a city of any size could always get happy enough by hiring entertainers (+1 happy face, and after the first, the entertainer would be converted from an unhappy citizen, for a net of +2 happy.)

Sorry to jump in here, but what practical difference does this make? Surely the entertainer is a 'wasted' citizen in much the same way as an unhappy citizen is wasted in Civ4? The only difference I can see that it makes is to render the city unable to celebrate WLT*D, which is of negligible consequence in Civ4 anyway.

Edit: I should have refreshed - Cyneheard's post above addresses exactly this

[plako]

I'm stongly in favor of making as small changes as possible to reach the goals wanted. Changes are too large, if new features like entertainers are needed to compensate them. Why not just lower the yield of slaving to 20-25 and see how that works.

[Krill]

Well, then the right answer is to make your maximum-size cities stop growing. Work those hills and even workshops if you want hammers. That building should come from mines, not from slaves. Food tiles shouldn't be better hammer producers than hammer tiles. I still feel that Slavery wants some adjustment; a straight nerf to 25H whip yield doesn't feel like enough. (Also 25H gets rounded awkwardly on quick and epic speeds. 24H might work better.)

...but those mines and workshops don't give commerce. Yes, they can build Wealth and Research and Culture, and the only building you need is the forge, but cottages are the long term investment that you make to have a stronger late game. The cottage/slavery strategy should work, just not as well in the short-medium (maybe) as a production heavy strategy.

[Krill]

From Cyneheard, because he is not around atm:

What about this?
The first pop in a whip provides 30h. All other pop points provide 20h. So, more slavery unhappiness provides more hammers. But you can still give yourself happy room by making larger whips. And those big buildings can't be efficiently built with the whip. 20h for that marginal pop point is still useful enough that players will sometimes use it: It's not much better than 1:1 when your city has to be size 6 or 8 to even be able to get 3 or 4 pop in one go.

Hypothetical example: Normal speed. I want to build a Lighthouse and an Archer in a city that makes 6hpt (City center + 1/5 copper), and where I have 2 pop that I am willing to whip. Assume, for simplicity's sake, that the whipped pop would be working grass cottages.

Under the status quo, there's only one good way to do this and get 85h into the two targets:
Start the granary, work it for up to 4t, then whip into the Archer.
Assume I whip ASAP (makes no real difference). All figures are at the beginning of the turn.
T0: 0/60
T1: 6/60, whip for +60h
T2: 12 overflow into the archer, LH complete
T3: 18/25
T4: 24/25
T5: 5 overflow, Archer complete.
Unhappy penalty through T11

Under the 30-20 system, I now have a choice.
1) Archer first, one-pop whip on each the Archer (T1) and the granary (T4):
T0: 0/25
T1: 6/25, whip for +30h
T2: +17 overflow into LH
T3: 23/60
T4: 29/60
T5: 35/60, whip for +30h
T6: LH complete, 11h overflow.
Unhappiness: 2 unhappy until T11, 1 unhappy until T21.

Similarly, 5t of working 6hpt into the lighthouse, then whipping for 1 pop, and then starting the archer and whipping that, also takes more turns to complete. And the unhappiness penalty's worse in that case, because the first whip is later.

2) Lighthouse first, whipping for 2 pop.
T0: 0/60
T1: 6/60
T2: 12/60, whip for +50h
T3: 8 overflow into Archer
T4: 14/25
T5: 20/25
T6: 1 overflow, Archer complete.
Unhappiness: 1 unhappy until T12

Either way, slavery is weaker, and it gets progressively weaker as the game goes on and buildings and units get more expensive. You want to be whipping buildings like banks or forges? Good luck with that, unless you want to overflow off of 5 whips of archers and blow up your happy cap.

[T-hawk]

The first pop in a whip provides 30h. All other pop points provide 20h.

That sounds decent. It creates the tradeoff that Slavery needed - greater whip yield (over multiple whips) requires more anger. It goes a long way towards minimizing gamey overflow tricks: any pop point whipped for purposes of overflow only yielded 20h. And since units are cheaper than buildings, it skews higher whip yield towards units and less towards buildings.

It'll require some DLL coding of course, but that I can do.

[plako]

30-20 slavery idea sounds good.

Concerning making Financial a bit weaker, one alternative would be to allow the commerce bonus only to land tiles and not to coastal or sea tiles. Some half priced building could be given to compensate the loss.

[Cyneheard]

Version 0.3 is up!

Changelog:
1) Tile Changes:
Watermills: +1 base hammers, no longer receives +1h at Rep Parts
Workshops: +1 base hammers, no longer receives +1h at Chemistry
Mines: +1h at Rep Parts

2) Civic Changes:
Vassalage now provides free support for military units as well (meaning Pacifism is cheaper), and is Medium Upkeep
Slavery: 25h per whip (placeholder until T-Hawk makes his changes)
Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1h for Watermills and Windmills

3) The Draft
Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft. A city must now end a draft at size 7 instead of size 5 (So size 9 to draft a rifle, size 8 to draft a musket).

4) War Weariness
Decays 1%/turn during Wartime. Decays 10%/turn during Peacetime. I have not checked that these will work as intended.

5) Espionage
Switch Civic and Switch Religion now require Future Tech

6) Wonder Changes
The Great Wall now provides Great General points
Red Cross: 200h
West Point: 550h, +5XP. Now requires a lvl 5 unit (17XP/13XP for Cha)

7) Unit Changes:
Spears get +50% Attacking, +100% Defending against War Elephants
Pikemen get +25% versus WEs

8) UU and UB changes:
Terraces now give +1 culture
Praetorians have a -10% City Attack Penalty
Cataphracts are 11 strength

9) Trait changes:
Financial: Require 3 commerce to receive the bonus commerce. Double-speed banks.
Expansive: No longer gets double-speed granaries, but gets double-speed grocers.
Creative: Only +1 free culture
Charismatic: +2 happiness, but no longer gets +1 happy from Monuments
Protective: Double-speed granaries
Imperialistic: Double-speed Custom Houses (At least this gives Imp something on water maps. For flavor, Custom Houses are very mercantile, which is what 17th century imperialism basically was)

There are a lot of changes here...possibly too many. Fin and Exp needed to be nerfed, and Pro buffed. The others, well, they could stay or go individually IMO.

10) Miscellaneous:
Coastal Blockade now has a range of 1 square around the blockader, instead of 3 squares

[SevenSpirits]

Entertainers: a rather silly mechanic; all it means is that that excess unhappiness makes 1/2 a pop not work instead of 1.

Slavery: I'm still not seeing why a flat penalty (e.g. 25/24h instead of 30) isn't best. The cost of making more complex changes is always more people being put off from using the mod, and I'm not sure what we'd be gaining.

Traits: I like those changes pretty well. I'd still expect some of Org/Imp/Agg are a bit weak, and Phi too strong (especially with Caste System buffs, wow). I think traits are a good place to really try to balance them. That is a major selling point of this mod.

Great Wall: What does +2 GG points mean? Can the city produce a great general? Or is it not providing any gpp, and just incrementing the general counter instead?