Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[T-hawk]

It sounds like the closest thing we have to a consensus is to keep the Financial bonus as-is on 2+ commerce tiles, but add some delaying condition to let other traits catch up?

Don't worry about anything that needs DLL coding to handle, I should be able to manage it. (If I can stop playing Adventure 47 long enough. )

In C++, any kind of conditions you like can be put on the commerce bonus. It could activate when you simply reach the Classical or Medieval era. It could activate for city size 10 or any other size. It could activate on Guilds or any other tech or combination of techs (like to make a beeline not necessary, either Guilds or Paper or Nationalism.) It could activate for any building or combination of buildings. It could activate while you're not in first place on the scoreboard. It could activate when you have a level 4 unit. The sky's the limit (it could activate when you zoom out to sky view. )

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I personally feel like 50% faster cottage growth and half price banks, or something along those lines, is the best solution. It keeps the theme of Financial cottages going, but without allowing Financial civs to reach a level of commerce unobtainable to other civs.

I think the idea of +2 commerce per city or +1 trade routes is a step in the right direction, but it wouldn't serve to curb early game tech speed of Financial civs that much. A civ that expanded to 5-8 early cities would have 10-15 extra commerce by that point.

[Krill]

Would it be possible to make it that you needed 2 classical era techs to get a commerce bonus of +1c on 3 commerce tiles, and once you get 2 medi era techs, you remove that bonus, and get the full bonus on the 2 commerce tiles?

For example, list of classical era techs likely to be researched: Aesthetics, IW, MC, Monarchy, Maths, Alpha, CoL. List of Medi era techs, Music, Machinery, Fued, CS and Philo.

The reason for this is it phases in the bonus gradually, doesn't allow an oracle beeline to be the one right choice (like linking it straight to a single classical tech would do), and will start to kick off at a similar time to the vanilla game. I'd even consider adding in a commerce bonus on all 4 commerce tiles from the start game, actually, so it applied to gems/gold/silver/furs.

[novice]

I personally feel like 50% faster cottage growth and half price banks, or something along those lines, is the best solution. It keeps the theme of Financial cottages going, but without allowing Financial civs to reach a level of commerce unobtainable to other civs.

My gut initially agreed with this, but let's analyze it.

Compare the time to grow a cottage to a town, that requires 10+20+40 = 70 turns for a non-fin civ and 35 or 47 turns for a fin civ, depending on what you mean by "50% faster". (47 = 70/1.5) I'll assume 35 turns.

On T70, when the non-financial cottage matures to a town, the financial civ has earned 55 more commerce from the tile than a non-financial civ. Under BTS rules the number would be 60, but the fin civ would then earn an additional bonus commerce from the tile for the rest of the game. Under the 3+ rule the number would be 40, plus the bonus for the rest of the game.

So I would say that the cottage growth variant is a heavier nerf than the 3+ variant. What's more the cottage growth variant would make the bonus felt early in the game and then vanish, which is the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.

[novice]

Would it be possible to make it that you needed 2 classical era techs to get a commerce bonus of +1c on 3 commerce tiles, and once you get 2 medi era techs, you remove that bonus, and get the full bonus on the 2 commerce tiles?

For example, list of classical era techs likely to be researched: Aesthetics, IW, MC, Monarchy, Maths, Alpha, CoL. List of Medi era techs, Music, Machinery, Fued, CS and Philo.

The reason for this is it phases in the bonus gradually, doesn't allow an oracle beeline to be the one right choice (like linking it straight to a single classical tech would do), and will start to kick off at a similar time to the vanilla game. I'd even consider adding in a commerce bonus on all 4 commerce tiles from the start game, actually, so it applied to gems/gold/silver/furs.

I like this suggestion.

[Cyneheard]

If you want a Fin Civ to grow a cottage to a town in 35t, then you're basically giving that Civ Emancipation on T0 without anything else. By 50% faster, that would mean 47t.

T-Hawk broke the game economically with T0 Democracy in Mao's Muse, and I don't think the game has changed so much since then, even with 2 expansions and this mod, that it wouldn't still be true. US's free hammer made a big difference, but double-speed cottages was a lot of it in the Medieval era.

Also, that turns Financial into even more of a one-trick pony than it already is, and doesn't make Financial a good water civ, which was T-Hawk's point.

Would it be possible to make it that you needed 2 classical era techs to get a commerce bonus of +1c on 3 commerce tiles, and once you get 2 medi era techs, you remove that bonus, and get the full bonus on the 2 commerce tiles?

For example, list of classical era techs likely to be researched: Aesthetics, IW, MC, Monarchy, Maths, Alpha, CoL. List of Medi era techs, Music, Machinery, Fued, CS, [Theology] and Philo.

I'd even consider adding in a commerce bonus on all 4 commerce tiles from the start game, actually, so it applied to gems/gold/silver/furs.

I think there's some elegancy to it.
Ancient era: 4 commerce or better
Classical era (2 techs!): 3 commerce
Medieval era (2 techs!): 2 commerce

It also seems like it's about the right power level. But, I see two problems with this:
1) Notifying the player. How will the player be informed?

2) Planning on what techs to grab requires being sure of which techs qualify as Medieval or Classical ones. The game does a relatively poor job of notifying you about what era each tech is in. "Advances to the X era" only helps if two things are true:
a) The tech is currently researchable.
b) You're not in that era already.
So, the only in-game tooltip disappears once you've gotten one of the two techs you need. This is a real problem for Medieval techs, where the distinction between them and Classical ones isn't very clear-cut (Ancient techs are a lot cheaper than Classical ones. The most expensive Ancient techs are 120 beakers. The cheapest Classical ones (IW and Lit) are 200, and Lit is never the first Classical tech researched).

If those are solved, then we're good to go. But I'm not sure how to deal with those problems.

[Krill]

1) would require a python popup, IIUC.

2) T-Hawk?

[Cyneheard]

Let me clarify #2:

This is shown under F5 or the mouseovers of a tech when you're going to research something.

If each tech always displayed its era, then it could work.

[T-hawk]

I think there's some elegancy to it.
Ancient era: 4 commerce or better
Classical era (2 techs!): 3 commerce
Medieval era (2 techs!): 2 commerce

It also seems like it's about the right power level. But, I see two problems with this:
1) Notifying the player. How will the player be informed?

Ruff is a bigger expert on the UI and Python code than I am. Always showing the era tooltip sounds fairly easy, since that would just be removing a existing conditional from somewhere. I can also look into writing an event log message when the condition is first satisfied (whenever you acquire a classical or medieval tech, if you know exactly 2 classical or medieval techs.)

One loophole: I believe it's possible to reach 2 medieval techs before you know 2 classical techs, with Code of Laws as the only classical tech and Civil Service + Paper as the medieval techs. Do we need to do anything there?

[SevenSpirits]

Certainly sounds balanced (and could be implemented). But it's also really complicated. I mean, the only reason it's so freaking convoluted is because it's based off the original financial trait. I'm sure we could come up with something simpler that also works well. Basically we want a trait that favors tile commerce over specialists. And it needs to be worse than 2-financial, but shouldn't fail for coast tiles like 3-financial.