Society Mod

[Tatan]

With the disappointing reception of Civ 5 [not that I've actually played it yet] and the attempt at an RB multiplayer mod of Civ 4, I finally tried to execute something I've been thinking about for a while, a mod tweaking things in the game that have always bugged me personally. I will freely admit probably not all this is might be balanced [though I did attempt to balance some previously unbalanced things], and few of the ideas I blatantly stole from Cyneheard and Krill . I call this mod Society, because it was the first synonym for 'civilization' I could think of in under a minute.

I'm not exactly what you might call an experienced modder; I can program a Casio graphing calculator to a fair extent, and I've dinked around in XML before, but I'm no coder. I started the Society Mod by just starting to make changes of things I thought were unfun or unbalanced, and evolved as I incorporated many of the things that Cyneheard and Krill are trying to do in the RB Multiplayer Mod. The Society Mod has not exactly been tested thoroughly; basically I just made sure that everything loaded correctly [It does! Huzzah!. I'll try to do more testing in the future.

Here is a complete changelog of the mod:

Trait Changes:
-Aggressive gives Combat I promo to mounted units in addition to melee and gunpowder
-Aggressive gives double speed Stables
-Financial requires 3 commerce for extra commerce
-Financial gives double speed Banks
-Organized gives -60% civics maintenance instead of -50%
-Expansive no longer gives a health bonus
-Expansive gives +10% production bonus towards workers, instead of +25%
-Charismatic reduces promotion costs by 40% instead of 25% [so it goes 2, 3, 6, 11, 16...]
-Imperialistic gives +3 health
-Imperialistic produces Great Generals +125% faster instead of +100% faster
-Imperialistic double speed Intelligiance Agencies
-Protective gives Drill I, Sentry, and Medic I to melee, archer, and gunpowder units
-Protective produces Great Generals +25% faster in domestic territory
-Protective gives double speed Security Bureaus and Customs Houses

Civics:
-Police State gives -75% war weariness
-Serfdom gives +1 commerce to mines, farms, and windmills
-Caste System gives +2 health per city
-Vassalage gives +3 exp. instead of +2
-Emancipation cost is none instead of low
-Nationhood cost is low instead of none
-Slavery cost is high instead of medium
-Slavery gives +10% war weariness

Unit Changes:
-Spies cost +400%
-Spies require Stealth
-War Elephants get no bonus against mounted units
-War Elephants get -10% against melee units
-War Elephants no longer require Horseback Riding
-War Elephants cost ~15% less
-Note: Ballista Elephants ARE NOT AFFECTED BY ANY OF THE PREVIOUS CHANGES
-Ballista Elephants cost ~15% more
-Praetorians have 7 str. instead of 8
-Praetorians start with Drill I and City Raider I
-Cataphracts have 11 str. instead of 12
-Navy Seals have 30 str. instead of 28

Building Changes:
-Jails give -35% war weariness instead of -25%
-Terraces provide no culture
-Terraces save 60% of food instead of 50%
-Malls provide +3 food instead of +1
-Security Bureaus give -10% war weainess
-Monastaries give +15% beakers instead of 10%

Wonder Changes:
-Mt. Rushmore now only requires Nationalism
-Temple of Artemis costs 30% less

Tech Changes:
-Bronze Working costs 25% more

Miscellaneous:
-Colonial Maintenance made negligible [or massive, depending on if I did it right]
-Corporation spreading cost is increased by 100%
-Cost of seeing Demographics increased by 33%
-Cost of seeing enemy cities increased by 66%

Note: all changes are IN ADDITION TO; if I don't mention it, then it is still there. For instance, although it just states that Police State gives -75% war weariness, the other bonuses it had before are still there.


Some of the main concepts I tried to implement:
Balanceing The Traits
Essentially: I weakened Financial and Expansive, I made some of the other random traits a bit more interesting, and I made Protective MUCH more viable. Protective is actually a pretty potent warmongering trait now, as Sentry and Medic allows for quick and informed military campaigns; I think it would be pretty grueling to try and fend off Tokugawa [Agg/Pro] or Churchhill [Chm/Pro], let alone actually attack them.

Making Slavery Less Dominant
I'm one of those people who gets bugged by doing the same thing in a game over and over and over, so the fact that in the early to mid-game Slavery is largely the One Right Choice for almost all strategies is something that clearly needed fixing. Solution: make Serfdom MUCH more viable, and weaken Slavery itself, so that you have a military civic [Slavery] and an economic civic [Serfdom].

Killing Off Spies
I've always thought espionage points themselves can be fairly interesting in action, with trying to direct enough points to see the graphs and cities of all those arrayed against you. However, I've always hated the spy system itself. I didn't like trying to do it, as a result the AIs constantly poisoned my wells and incited revolts, and when I turned on No Espionage culture got all screwy. The Spy system is literally the single biggest factor that caused me to make this mod.

What I did was keep espionage points themselves, while effectively disably spies by keeping their unlock so late [I figure that they're not actually that broken in the very late game because things there are already so broken]. Note that I also made it slightly harder to get graphs and see cities, so that working to get some espionage points can still be useful.


So, anyway... there you have it. The zip file for the mod is attached, if anyone wants to try it out; I trust you know how to load mods.


I'd love to hear comments or criticism about any design, balance, or coding issues.


In my opinion, the mod is not too shabby for something I did in one evening.

[Cyneheard]

It's amazing what all can be done in an evening. And this mod looks like a lot of fun, even if the balance isn't there.

You know what would be a lot of fun with this mod? Playing one of Toku, Boudica, or Churchill, giving yourself the Internet (requires WB edits, or creating a copy of this mod where the Internet costs 1 hammer and has no tech requirement), and playing an Emperor or Immortal AW game. (Or even Deity, especially as, say, Boudica of Mongolia. Just get to knights). Just blowing lots of stuff up with completely ridiculous units. Sentry is an incredibly powerful promotion when used right. And now every single one of your units (except the ones who can get it naturally!) has it if you're Pro...



My guess is that you've over-nerfed Expansive, particularly with how massively powerful the combat-oriented traits are. +10% Worker production might as well not exist (barely notice it with chops and whips, that's it). Our Protective trait is quite a bit stronger than your Exp, and we've not done nearly as much to make Agg, Pro and Cha top-tier traits (I think that Toku, Boudica and Churchill are now some of the best leaders in your game)

Likewise, +10% War Weariness is also worthless as a slavery nerf. At most, that's +1 unhappiness, and 90% of the time, not even that. High upkeep makes a noticeable difference, but only a few gpt.

Fun times with Boudica of Mongolia.

+3XP Barracks
+4XP Ger
+3XP Vassalage
+2XP Theocracy

12XP Knights, who start with Combat I and get 4 promotions out of the gate. We're talking Combat IV/Shock knights that are going to crush pikemen. Heck, Charismatic Mongolia's enough to be incredibly deadly. Settle 2GG in a city, and now it's FIVE promotions on top of Combat I.

Also, did you intend Vassalage + Charismatic to mean 3 promotions by itself? Our Vassalage buff wasn't actually about Vassalage, but Pacifism (Well, Medium upkeep for Vassalage was there to make the Unit Cost reduction a little better).

[Ilios]

I agree EXP has been hit a bit too hard.

I think Customs house should be half price for the Imperialistic trait (seems more logical, the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, etc Empires all had conquest and TRADE as main drivers).

This allows you to pair the Security Bureau and Intelligence Agency discounts for Protective.

Charismatic seems a bit overpowered.

Organised is still underwhelming, as most MP games are played on Noble diff.

I like the solution for Slavery.

More later

[Bobchillingworth]

I have a few suggestions for trait amendments:


Imperialistic seems too powerful now, I'd remove the health bonus and perhaps add a modifier to slightly decrease the cost of city distance maintenance (which sort of fits thematically).


Expansive has been gimped too far. I'd leave it as it is in vanilla BTS- I don't think that you need to both improve the weaker traits and nerf the favored ones.


Similarly, Financial probably doesn't need to be changed from standard BTS, although I think your suggested fix works alright as long as they now get half-price banks.


I think you're on the right track for fixing Protective, but I'd suggest different promos. Free Drill for melee makes Protective to similar to Aggressive, as Aggressive no longer claims sole ownership to the significant advantage of allowing melee units to pick up shock or cover with a barracks. Having Medic I and Sentry on so many different units is also overly redundant, since you don't need more than a couple of each per stack. Instead I suggest having PRO give all combat units a free City Garrison I promo (mounted and seige included), as well as Flanking I. Protective civs should only get the free Drill I on archery and gunpowder units, as they do currently.


I'd give Organized a few more random discounts since that seems to be the "theme" for that trait- perhaps cheaper Jails and unit upgrades?

[Tatan]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I tested the traits as the were a bit, and honestly I am really not satisfied at all, so I am thinking about re-doing the traits completely.

There were also quite a few, uh, "programming typos", that I'm working on fixing. Don't know when I'll get a new version up, may be a bit.


Sorry if I look like I don't really know what I'm doing, because I, um, don't.