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Liquidated Wrote:Also, is there ever a good time to adopt environmentalism? I cannot honestly see a policy like that helping a world dominating empire, but the civic needs a gameplay boost regardless.
Situational.
In OCC games with forests preserves it is useful.
In normal games it is common to go towards assembly line early. Sometimes I adopt Environmentalism to enable building factories and coal plants without huge unhealthiness in big cities.
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Cyneheard Wrote:I don't think there's a good way to do this directly, at least under the XML. However, there is a possible solution:
Have Astronomy give +1 commerce to water tiles.
This could work. Although the nerf still feels a bit too much. Early game there really aren't much benefit from Financial if you need 3 commerce to get the bonus. Colossus feels quite broken wonder for Financial leaders.
Cyneheard Wrote:Should they be a primarily anti-knight (well, anti-mounted) unit? I don't think the fact that they crush swords, axes, and archers is a problem. That does lend itself to a 7str, +75% vs. Mounted (+50 isn't really enough to make them be better than Knights, because of imbalanced Combat promos) unit, without the spear and pike buffs.
str 7 + 75% against mounted sounds alright.
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plako Wrote:This could work. Although the nerf still feels a bit too much. Early game there really aren't much benefit from Financial if you need 3 commerce to get the bonus. Colossus feels quite broken wonder for Financial leaders.
If Fin at 3+ and bank discount isn't good enough (most likely the case), throw in a market discount.
At first I was thinking Spiritual would be strengthened by the labor civic changes, but now I think it's really minor. It was already useful for switching between slavery and caste in any case! And, with slavery worsened, the ability to be half in slavery and half in something else is also worsened, because it's not competing with staying in something else permanently. If necessary, Spiritual can lose the temple discount but I think it might be fine already. Philosophical, on the other hand, looks too strong. I am wondering if it should give +67-75% gpp instead.
For Colossus, how about making it for that city only. (It could be +2c instead of +1c, if that's necessary. Or, just have it give another couple culture points above 6. In any case, it's cheap!) Then it's not so important on water maps. I am also on board with a GLighthouse nerf to +1 trade route. It will still be good. And it will never be a negative to research Corporation.
ToA should probably just be cheaper if anything. But maybe it's ok to leave it. It's not a problem for there to be a weak wonder in the game.
About Cristo Redentor, Internet, etc. I pretty strongly feel these don't need rebalancing. They simply come too late! A small imbalance early on will have much more impact than a ridiculous imbalance late in the game, because Civ is a game of exponential growth.
By the way, one thing that has occurred to me when pondering civ balance is that it's very useful when a building has some trait that gets it cheaply. This can make you more likely to pick a certain civ just because you have a certain leader! Such conditional strength is good because it makes it more likely that each civ is the "best" choice in a relatively high number of situations. So I think if traits need to be strengthened, adding building discounts should be high on the list of considered adjustments.
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SevenSpirits Wrote:About Cristo Redentor, Internet, etc. I pretty strongly feel these don't need rebalancing. They simply come too late! A small imbalance early on will have much more impact than a ridiculous imbalance late in the game, because Civ is a game of exponential growth.
I think that argument could work for Cristo, but the internet as it currently exists is absolutely ridiculous. The internet should either be eliminated, or changed so substantially so as to be unrecognizable. As it currently is though, it completely breaks any game that gets to it.
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Shoot the Moon Wrote:I think that argument could work for Cristo, but the internet as it currently exists is absolutely ridiculous. The internet should either be eliminated, or changed so substantially so as to be unrecognizable. As it currently is though, it completely breaks any game that gets to it.
Do you mean getting it will always (or almost always) cause you to win? I.e. this would mean there are effectively two victory conditions; military and internet. So if people aren't able to eliminate one another in the first half of the tech tree, the rest will just be a race to see who gets to the internet first.
Or do you just mean it makes the game less fun?
Also, are you talking about games with/without tech trading, or both?
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I don't like the Financial nerf to 3+ commerce. I think it's very explicitly meant to work on sea tiles. For pretty much all of human history, financial center cities have been seaside ports. If Financial needs a nerf because it's impractical to bring all the other traits up to its level, give Financial a small penalty somewhere else. Something like -1 unit XP or +10% cost to barracks (bankers aren't good fighters) or -10% GPP (bankers think only short-term profits).
As for units, I don't think any are really out of line. Praetorians are OK as-is; of course they're strong, but there exists a countermeasure unit. And the Rome UB is one of the weakest. 10% city penalty sounds silly to me, making a UU the opposite of its base unit is very counterintuitive.
I think elephants are a worse problem, but not sure how to adjust them well. The problem for balance is the narrow resource requirement. But that's actually accurate: historically, elephants were very good for armies that had them available, and Wiki says they were used up until the 1800's and the introduction of the cannon. So Civ 4 got that right. 7 strength seems reasonable, and perhaps some small boost to spearmen's ability to counter it.
I'll try to get to some DLL coding over the weekend.
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Cristo: Spiritual on steroids. With a few bonus tricks thrown in because you can flip every single turn.
I'll reiterate my earlier point on the 'Net:
1) With Tech Trading:
Verdict: Broken. Prevents opponents from controlling how tech gets distributed to anybody.
2) No Tech Brokering:
Verdict: Likely pretty powerful. Did Munro build the Internet, and that's how he was able to get the techs he needed?
3) No Tech Trading:
Verdict: Insufficient data. If there's a tight tech race at the end, this wonder could prove decisive...but only if it's a three-way race. I doubt anyone not in the top 2 or 3 civs would have a shot at snagging this. How many civs will still be technologically competitive by the time Computers comes in? My guess is that the Internet isn't a common problem in these games. Look at PB2. Assume that, somehow, military power stopped mattering. Could anyone but Spullla and Nakor ever have had a shot at building the Internet? I don't think so.
Looking at the XML data, and we would have to convert the Internet into a wonder if we wanted to do anything to it but:
1) Increase the cost
2) Remove the Copper production bonus
3) Increasing the # of people who know a particular tech.
(We do have the graphics info...it's probably not too onerous to move it, but not worth doing unless there's a clear idea of what to do about it)
Possible options on what to make it, if switched to a wonder:
1) Free Labs everywhere. Labs come in at the same tech, cost 250h per, and require an Observatory. I think if that's the case, then the current cost (2000h, 2x copper) is actually OK, because it's a) not easily Great Engineered (2000 hammers is a lot), but b) not all that excessive, because you should have copper. Why would the Internet give you labs everywhere? Hm. Not sure. The Internet was built for defense purposes, so maybe NASA took it over?
2) Free tech. A second Oracle.
3) Boost to beakers civ-wide. +25% to +50% (the top cities should be Oxford-Academy at +225% or +250% beakers already (Lab for the last 25%), and several other academy cities at +125% or +150, providing most of your tech. So, realistically, a +50% base boost is more like a +20 or 25% actual boost, even if you've got a Rego (PB1)-sized empire). Not sure if the XML can handle this one.
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T-hawk Wrote:I don't like the Financial nerf to 3+ commerce. I think it's very explicitly meant to work on sea tiles. For pretty much all of human history, financial center cities have been seaside ports.
If Financial needs a nerf because it's impractical to bring all the other traits up to its level, give Financial a small penalty somewhere else. Something like -1 unit XP or +10% cost to barracks (bankers aren't good fighters) or -10% GPP (bankers think only short-term profits).
I think we want to avoid nerfs that intersect with other traits, since all that does is really nerf everything but that trait pair. Lizzie would still be solid if she only gave 5GPP per specialist instead of 6. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave a whole lot of options.
I tried using the XML to give a -10% penalty to military unit production (by tweaking each individual unit). The game does not interpret penalties to production very well, there were several bugs that I found in like 5 minutes.
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Cyneheard Wrote:Cristo: Spiritual on steroids. With a few bonus tricks thrown in because you can flip every single turn.
I'll reiterate my earlier point on the 'Net:
1) With Tech Trading:
Verdict: Broken. Prevents opponents from controlling how tech gets distributed to anybody.
2) No Tech Brokering:
Verdict: Likely pretty powerful. Did Munro build the Internet, and that's how he was able to get the techs he needed?
3) No Tech Trading:
Verdict: Insufficient data. If there's a tight tech race at the end, this wonder could prove decisive...but only if it's a three-way race. I doubt anyone not in the top 2 or 3 civs would have a shot at snagging this. How many civs will still be technologically competitive by the time Computers comes in? My guess is that the Internet isn't a common problem in these games. Look at PB2. Assume that, somehow, military power stopped mattering. Could anyone but Spullla and Nakor ever have had a shot at building the Internet? I don't think so.
It's clear they are strong. I still haven't heard a solid argument for why that's bad. (Tech trading itself is a broken mechanic; it's not worth trying to balance other things for it.)
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I would just remove internet, even if it is quite irrelevant in most of the games. My limited experience suggests that usually the most advanced nation/alliance builds it for denial purposes and game has often been decided by then. However if the game result is not yet clear the benefits seem pretty decisive.
I don't like negative effects of the financial trait, when all other traits are giving only positive effects.
It is pretty hard to invent simple new ideas without totally changing the nature of the trait. Maybe Financial could offer +1c only from cottage/hamlet or better, lake and coastal tiles. Is this easy enough to implement?
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