[SPOILER] [PB38] OT4E plays this one because lurking around takes too much time

[OT4E]

[chumchu]

I did a post detailing my thoughts on RTR 2.0.8.3 for ghostpants before he backed out. I thought I would put it in here as well without some of the explanations.

I played around a fair bit with 2.0.8.3 in single player in anticipation for this game. My general feel about the RTR mod is that there has been a slight powercreep where many traits, civics, wonders etc are better than before or availiable earlier. This makes the game accelerate in the early parts and then slow down in renaissance/industrial when the increased tech costs hit with full force. The increased tech costs is also a nerf to economic bonuses as it is hard to get as big a military advantage from it as it was before.

I find that my early game gravitates to roughly the same tech path: Currency-Feudalism-Guilds. A big part of it is serfdom hammers and gold, especially in golden ages. They make hills better than flat non-river and watermills incredibly attractive. I find that I cottage very few tiles and usually leave half the river tiles as farms to be replaced by watermills later on. With the buff to serfdom and vassalage and the improvements on machinery getting feudalism and machinery early is high priority. It is also on the road to knights which is the key midgame unit. If I am organised or spiritual then Code of Laws and Bureaucracy can be strong but otherwise I prefer having vassalage and serfdom. Pacifism and the wonders on aestethics litterature line are strong choices before guilds but that depends on having peaceful relations.

My thinking when choosing traits is that the game usually progresses through three phases. In the early game you need hammers to expand and grow as fast as possible. In the mid game you need economic bonuses to avoid crashing your economy from all the expansion. After that you need a military edge to win. You ideally want something in all three categories. I do not rate Darius very highly for that reason as organised and financial means that you lack early hammers and any big military advantage.

Financial: +1 commerce on all non-river tiles that have 2+ commerce. +100% production of Bank.
Good eco but no help with hammers and military. With the nerf it takes 10 extra turns to get the bonus from cottages which is significant. The other improvement choices are better as well. It is good on water heavy maps Iwhere you will be working a lot of coast but on land I do not rate it.

Expansive: +2 health per city. +35% production of Worker, Work Boat. +100% production of Market, Aqueduct, Grocer, Harbor.
Helps with both hammers and eco. I think it is underrated in the current meta because of the loss of granaries. Faster workers/work boats and markets is a nice compensation. You gain 3 turns on the worker right from the start in most cases and a lot of upfront hammers during the entire expansion phase. Markets and Grocers are not bad at half price either as you unlock them with already important techs currency and guilds.

Creative: +2 culture per city. +100% production of Theatre. +35% production of Library, Observatory.
A good help with early hammers from free border pop. The bonuses to eco and military are small. I personally do not rate this trait

Charismatic: +2 happiness. +1 happiness from Broadcast Tower. -25% XP needed for promotions. +100% production of Colosseum, +35% production of Library.
A small help with early hammers from the extra happy for slaving or growing onto mines. The happy also helps with eco in the early midgame. Really good military bonus with the extra xp. Especially for water as can be seen in PB37.

Protective: Free City Garrison 1, Drill 1 promo for archery and gunpowder units. +100 production of Granary, Walls.
Good early hammers from granaries. Good but defensive military bonus.

Imperialistic: +50% production of Settlers. +100% Great General points. +100% production of Custom Houses.
Best trait for early hammers. The eco and military bonuses are underwhelming.

Aggressive: Free C1 promo for melee and gunpowder units. -25% city maintenance. +100% production of Barracks, Stable, Drydock.
No early hammer bonus, the culture on baracks just means that you get a better building than a monment for culture needs. The economic bonus is small but good because you get it from early and for free. The military bonus is great.

Philosophical: +150% Great Person production, +100% production of University
Only an eco bonus and one with diminishing returns. You need a good plan to use midgame bulbing for something else to make it strong. Weakest trait in my opinion. Better in late starts though.

Industrious: No change from BtS
Decent early hammers from cheap forges. Metal casting is significantly cheaper now and on the road to machinery so it is more possible to get it early. In SP you can use it to oracle machinery which is incredibly strong but that is hard to accomplish in MP I would think. The eco bonus depends on which wonders you can get. That wonder resources only give 50% production helps a lot but in a 26 player game I do not think that you can count on getting many wonders.

Spiritual: No change from BtS
No early hammers but a small bonus form fewer turns in anarchy. Good midgame eco and decent military from the ability to switch between civics. The buff to many civics and the fact that they are earlier helps spiritual a lot. It requires a different tech path to unlock them though.

Organised: No change from BtS
No early hammers except from lighthouses on heavy water maps. Good midgame eco. A decent military bonus from espionage advantage.

My highly subjective tiers for the traits.

1 Expansive, Aggressive, Charismatic
2 Organised, Protective, Spiritual,
3 Financial, Creative, Imperialist
4 Philosophical, Industrious

What do you think about the balance of traits and strategies in 2.0.8.3?

[OT4E]

Welcome, chumchu!

I agree with almost everything you have stated, but I also have some extra considerations about traits which I will definitely post a bit later.

For now I am a bit limited in time and can only say my tier distribution.

Tier 1 - must have: EXP, ORG
Tier 2 - strategy determining: AGG, PRO
Tier 3 - nice to have: FIN, SPI, IND, CHM, IMP
Tier 4 - situational: PHI, CRE

[OT4E]

EXP gives you more workers and basicly they give you everything else. They chop hammers into settlers, buildings, wonders or military, they improve more tiles so you can maintain higher population, get more commerce or everything. Discount on markets is very powerful because in most cases you cant build those early at all. No discount for granaries means you just need to chop extra forest in new cities, so consequently you just need a little more workers.

ORG is what you need on big maps. I expect that half of nations will get eliminated or locked early and those who want to compete must be able to attach extra lands quick. This can drag your economy down. The more land you have the greater bonus you get from this trait compared to FIN. The same thing is with the late game where you pay a lot of civic upkeep and live till factories.

AGG got greatly pumpled by RtR mod. Culture from rax, city maintance and stables bonus opens a lot of opportunities. Though I believe 1 star is not what can break the tie by itself. In most games I have played you'd better expand quicker or research something or at least have your plans concealed till the last moment than go all-in in open. 

PRO is ok in early game and is annoying once you get the minimum development. I agree with GJ about this trait that it can ruin even well prepared attack against its owner. Though it still requires to be properly used and keeping your eyes open every time.

With FIN I have an experience of cottagin everything except rivers and leaving rivers for other improvements. In theory it works great but the experience is somewhat negative, though I want to give one more try.

More comments later...

[OT4E]

SPI as you said allows you to use civics earlier and better, gaining advantage of several civics almost at the same time. But it is hard to turn it into decisive advantage untill very late game because in mid game you can always plan Golden Age well.

IND doesnt suppose that you will hunt for every single wonder. With this trait you can guarantee one wonder you need for the win. It can be Pyramids, MoM or Collosus. With the nerf of resource bonus IND bonus plays bigger role. Though I cant stop myself from wonderwhoring thats why I will unlikely pick IND given other better options.

About CHM I do not value it very high because most of RB maps are lushy and you can have at least 2 quick happiness resources, so +2 happy is still good but not that essential as it can be on random map where you can have no easy happy at all and cant fix problem with happy before calendar or monarchy. The military bonus as I said about AGG I believe cant be decisive and outweight advantage in production and technology.

I dont see IMP as a strong trait that can change balance. Though it allows you either take more land or settle what is yours quicker than others. 

CRE allows you to settle better spots but there are limited number of cases where it is truely important.

PHI is slightly buffed in RtR but I dont see how to turn it into powerful advantage. You either get some wonders with IND for better GP generation or rush NE or use pacifism with SPI or during golden age.

[chumchu]

We mostly agree it seems. The difference might be ORG and CHA.

The only downside with ORG in my book is that it takes a fair while to kick in. I remember PB34 where I and Borsche played IMP/ORG and had to crawl to Code of Laws because of our expansion. Even if you get half price courthouses, 60 hammers is not always that easy to achieve in new cities (e.g fishing villages and islands). If you can pair it with an early advantage it rises in my opinion for example ORG/AGG or ORG/EXP. However ORG/IND, ORG/SPI or ORG/PHI I do not rate highly. It does not give you a snowball, but it does allow your snowball to keep rolling.

Since Krill is making the map it should be in standard RB-style which diminishes the advantage of CHA. I think it loses its early edge over the competition in this environment as the 6 to 8 difference in happy cap is not nearly as big as 4 to 6. Still happiness remains useful throughout the game for slavery, drafting, war weariness growing soem cities veyr tall etc. There are many other sources so it is not irreplaceable but it is free compared to the other ways. Maybe I value the xp too highly but the promo advantage was decisive in my last game where we tried to fight c2 galleon with c1. An third promo on your knights so that they can get formation also seems very strong. For melee/gunpowder the difference is less important.

[OT4E]

As I remember you were the first to Code of laws in pb34 so it couldnt be that late .

Promotions can play big role but it supposes that you have a fair tie in everything else.

Washington, Boa and Churchill or Mehmed and Hammurabi?

Well I do not really insist on playing top leader and it also depends on random this time. Actually I wish I could play Boa for a while but after Krill in pb37 it isnt that attractive. You could see I like trying something special.

[chumchu]

I had to sacrifice a lot to get there. There was a lot of research builds and too little infra and units. I settled aggressively to try to keep up with our Zulu neighbor who ate his neighbor almost for free.

On land collateral units mean that high production can be easily used to overcome better units. At sea, there is no collateral until battleships.

I like that it is random. It is more fun to overcome suboptimal starts than trying to maximize an optimal one.
That's plus a lot of aggression is my view of your games.

I like that. I'm not sold on protective even if it is quite good because of the fact that it can be a bit boring to play.PHI/SPI/IND are not the best traits but I do think that they are fun.

[OT4E]

There is indeed no collatherial in seas but rush Astronomy for spamming ships against another nation with Astronomy leads nowhere but to mutual destruction. Astro is good when you can capture important islands from the darkness with minimum striking forces or when you can make successfull full scale invasion. Building 20-30 ships just to beat enemy 20 ships is not good idea even if you have some advantage in promotions.

PRO has good potential for rush in RTR. I expect that we will have several land neighbors considering the number of players, so rushing 1 early can be important to be able to fight for the win later. With early granaries and what is important cheap granaries in new cities it is easier to consolidate new lands.

Talking about my preferencies I am disappointed in Bureucracy because you cant stay on high % of science so even academy +bureaue + big cap doesnt provide big advantage. Later on civic upkeep starts playing bigger role and nationhood with no upkeep, drafted units and espionage boost is just too good.

[chumchu]

It seems like there will be a delay until the map is fisnished. That is unfortunate but also how it is. I'm very graetful for the maps. Players volunteering to make custom maps is what makes us able to talk about balance in so much detail as everything is not crowded out by map position and starts. While we are waiting for the map here is my idea on how to balance the RTR traits. They come from a mod I made to be halfway between RTR and BTS but it has moved very close to RTS after playing it more. For the full context of the changes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ti9l20h1m0yr3j...r.odt?dl=0

The aim is to buff PHI/CRE and also IMP a little bit while giving ORG/EXP a nerf and giving AGG/PRO a small nerf. FIN/SPI/IND/CHM are fine IMO. I also wanted to focus the traits a bit more to make them distinct form one another which can be seen in CRE/AGG/IMP/EXP/ORG as they give fewer and less varied bonii. How would you tier these traits on the top of your head?

Aggressive
Free Combat I promotion for melee and gunpowder units.
Double production speed of Barracks, Stable, Dry dock.
-50% unit maintenance.

Creative
+2 culture per city.
Double production speed of Theater, Library [-Colosseum]

Expansive
+2 health per city.
Double production speed of Harbor, Aqueduct, Grocer.
35% faster production of workers and work boats.

Financial
+1 commerce on all non-river tiles that produce 2 or more commerce.
Double production speed of Bank

Industrious
Wonder production increased 50 percent.
Double production speed of Forge.

Organized.
Civic upkeep reduced 50 percent.
Double production speed of Courthouse, Factory [- lighthouse]

Philosophical
Great People birth rate increased 100 percent.
Double production speed of University.
+1 hammer from specialists.

Spiritual
No anarchy.
Double production speed of Temples and the Cristo Redentor wonder.

Imperialistic
Great General emergence increased 100 percent.
50% faster production of Settlers.
+1 culture on monuments.

Protective
Free Drill I promotion for archery and gunpowder units.
Double production speed of Castle and Granary.

Charismatic
+2 happiness per city.
Double production speed of Colosseum.
-25% XP needed for unit promotions.