Here I want to give some explanation and thoughts about the proposed changes. Note that I won't cover changes, that I think don't need explanations. Lets go right into it.
Quote:Tile Yields and Improvements
- Lumbermills: Available at Machinery, +1 commerce, Lumber mills and forest preserves now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers, just like the other improvements do. Necessary: 3 Closeness: 3
- Forest preserves: +1 commerce, now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers like above Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
Let's be honest, have you ever build a lumbermill or even a forest preserve in the base game? And I mean not in a strange challenge run or something else. I doubt it. The problem that both improvements face is that they come so late that by that time the world is already deforested and because there is no way to plant forests, these improvements are nearly never used. I don't want to implement this "plant forest" option, both because this is a whole new can of worms for balancing and because this would be a change that goes to far away from BtS.
Moving the lumbermill forward to Machinery should help it being more useful, it also fits flavor-wise. In my tests I saw that lumbermills were outperforming grassland hill mines and plains hill mines with Slavery, which feels right. After all you skip chopping those forests and therefore the immediate 30 hammers. Adding another commerce gives the improvement a little bit more value. The +1 commerce on corner tiles is more a bugfix then it is a balancing issue. This makes lumbermills a 2/2/1 tile on flat grassland. A chop with mathematics earns you 30 hammers, so in theory the lumbermill generates more hammers compared to a chop after 15 turns.
Of course there's another reason to chop forests and that is to remove defensive terrain for enemies. During conception I also planned to add "-25% defense" to the lumbermill, but I'm somewhat hesitant to add that, as it feels a bit too far of off BtS.
This only leaves the forest preserve for balancing. I honestly think that the +1 happy is already pretty strong, so it only needs a little bit of a buff with the commerce. Of course it receives the same bugfix on corner tiles as did the lumbermill, which by the way I will take from K-mod. With the happiness bonus I don't see a justification to move this any earlier in the techtree. The only hope for this improvement to have any forests in the modern era lies solely in the lumbermill.
While we are at improvements I also thought about nerfing the cottage economy somewhat. My plan was to put all available cottage upgrades on the techtree. That way you would have needed to tech for example currency to unlock hamlets. In the end I decided against it, because this would have a bigger impact in the games economy and it's somewhat off from BtS. But it also would have been a nice way to nerf Financial and Slavery through the back door.
Quote:Drafting: Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft. A city must now end a draft at size 6 instead of size 5 (So size 8 to draft a rifle, size 7 to draft a musket). Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
In base BtS you only need 1 pop to draft rifles, which is way too strong. Originally from RtR this was a good spot and change by Krill.
Quote:Inflation: Inflation rate now increases with global tech state. Previously inflation only depended on how many turns had past, and so if the global tech rate was very high (due to lots of tech trading), players would reach high end-game yields and still have very little inflation - which would increase the tech rate further. With this change, there will be higher inflation in games which have lots of tech trading. (And the inflation will be slightly higher for players with better tech!) Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
Both RtR and ToW increased later tech costs in one way or another. The reasons for those were to address problems like people running away in tech with tech trading and overall tech rate in that era being to fast. Originally from K-mod I found this change rather elegant and easier to wrap your head around, because it uses an already known system. It's also a subtle system that does not force you to re-calibrate all later techs. I still need to look up the integration in K-mod, but overall I find this change very attractive.
Quote:War Weariness: You no longer accumulate war weariness if you are winning battles. Captured cities only generate war weariness if you don't have the majority of culture in that city. War weariness also declines faster after the war ended Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
This is my attempt at addressing SoZ. SoZ is actually only a symptom of a problem with much deeper roots, that being war weariness. I as well as others were always annoyed about the illogical ways you accumulate war weariness. Why should my people ever be unhappy about me winning battles. War weariness is another attempt at nerfing the offensive, while also trying to shorten the length of wars. But this always was more of an annoyance then a real roadblock. Note that this change will still lead to the attacking player generating more war weariness as you still need to do collateral damage. By doing that you often loose battles with your collateral, which generates war weariness especially in foreign culture.
With capturing cities the scenario is a little bit different. Here the losing player does not receive war weariness, which is good. But one important aspect of war weariness is that the generated war weariness is split depending on culture on the plot. Say for example you own 60% of culture on a tile and your opponent 40%. This means that your opponent generates more war weariness on the tile then you because of your higher share of culture. But this also means that if you recapture cities you lost you may generate war weariness depending on your enemies culture on that tile. I find this wrong as recapturing or liberating cities that are clearly in your culture sphere should not generate war weariness. Of course you could also go with the change in the previous paragraph and eliminate generating war weariness for captured cities at all.
Lastly what to do with war weariness after the war ended. In the current implementation it takes ages to come back or close to 0 war weariness. And when I say ages I mean 200+ turns, way longer then any game. My attempt here is to change the war weariness reduction in peace time so much, that in 20 turns the majority of war weariness is gone. This value of course may change
Quote:Religion spread: Spreading religions via missionaries to your own cities never fails Necessary: 2 Closeness: 5
Are you also annoyed when one of your own missionaries fails to spread a religion in one of your own cities? Yeah, me too.
Quote:Espionage: Active missions removed Necessary: 4 Closeness: 3
I tried a lot of concepts to get espionage working, but this system is so wrong on so many levels that it would need a complete overhaul. Which I do not want to attempt right now. One idea I had that needs more input would have been the following:
- You no longer allocate espionage points to your opponents via the spy advisor. Instead you need to send your spies to the enemy and they will allocate your accumulated espionage points toward that enemy.
- Instead of the random chance to kill an enemy spy in your territory, I planned to setup a system that warns you that spies are in your territory. You then would need to send out a unit that detects spies (probably spies themself). When you detect a spy you then would be able to kill them, as they would have the "hidden nationality" trait.
- I'm not sure how active missions do work in that system.
Obviously this system still isn't perfect and like I said it's a major change to BtS. I just wanted to through these ideas out there for others to ponder about.
Quote:- Fishing: Cost 50 instead of 40 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
- Agriculture Cost 40 instead of 60 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
- Mysticism Cost 60 instead of 50 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
- Animal Husbandry Cost 80 instead of 100 Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
- Masonry Cost 100 instead of 80 Necessary: 3 Closeness: 3
- Slavery: Available at Masonry instead of Bronze Working Necessary: 4 Closeness: 3
- Hunting: No longer enables Scouts instead gives scouts +1 movement bringing them to their normal 2 movement Necessary: 5 Closeness: 3
- Scout: +200% vs animals instead of +100%, no tech required, that way everybody starts with a scout, movement 1 (+1 gained with Hunting) Necessary: 5 Closeness: 3
Here we say my attempt add balancing the starting techs and overall starting situation. Let's go over the different problems we face in the beginning:
Connecting food: This is the main reason why agriculture was considered one of the most important starting techs in BtS and why every agriculture civ was considered better in our point-based-picking system. By reducing the tech cost of Agriculture to 40 (same as Hunting) and sub-sequentially Animal Husbandry, you are now much more likely to connect your first food resource when you produce a worker first. Only an EXP leader with a plains hill city might run into the problem of a worker not having something to do for 1 or 2 turns.
Scout vs Warrior start: Back in BtS only civs with Hunting started with a scout. This bonus quickly turned into a problem when a non-Hunting civs shows up with their warrior at your doorstep. Giving every player a scout in the beginning already was a great change in RtR and ToW. This of course reduces the usefulness of Hunting, which is why I like ToWs additional change of reducing the movement of Scouts to 1 and them gaining another point of movement with Hunting. That way the old bonus of Hunting is restored without it turning to haunt you.
Animal RNG: Many proud scouts have died to bad RNG in the past. By increasing the 'vs animal' bonus to 200% the scout almost always wins vs wolves, lions and panthers. Only bears are dangerous, but this is nothing new compared to BtS.
Improve Mysticism: The only purpose of Mysticism in BtS was to give you a heads-up on founding a religion, but it never really helped you in the actual start. By increasing the cost from 50 to 60, Mysticism becomes much more valuable and it makes it harder for non-Mysticism civs to found a religion. But more important to improve Mysticism is slavery moving from Bronze Working to Masonry. That way Mysticism civs can also tech into slavery just like Mining civs. Of course because of that it was necessary to increase the cost of masonry. This also has the added effect that there no longer exists the one-right choice of going Mining-> Bronze Working. A Mining civ now needs to make an actual choice. Bronze Working was always a bit too strong with both hammer bonuses on it. This also has the nice side-effect that masonry is somewhat more fitting for slavery when it comes to flavor. Lastly this way forests might survive a bit longer until you can build lumbermills.
Connecting sea food: Sea food starts were always less desired than land food starts because you first needed to tech Fishing and only then start building a work boat. This change from ToW was also introduced in RtR and I have to say I never want to go back to BtS with this change alone. At the same time I raised the tech cost to 50 that way we have the same two 60 cost, two 50 cost and two 40 cost starting techs like in the BtS
Quote:Metal Casting Cost 300 instead of 450 Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
I can only quote sevenspirit here, who already explained this change excellently:
"Metal Casting's cost is also reduced. In almost every game ever, one person gets MC ages before anyone else due to the Oracle. The cost reduction is intended to make it less of a "one right choice" as an Oracle target, as well as allow non-Oracle-builders reasonably concurrent access to the tech. This is important for two reasons: 1) MC is a critical tech for IND leaders, and the fact that only one of them gets to go Oracle->MC has made taking the second or third industrious leader a really bad idea in a lot of games. All IND leaders should have access to forges. 2) MC is a powerful naval tech. Again, when one person gets it with Oracle and the other players forgo it for a really long time, this can be pretty dumb on a naval map. I tried to keep tech cost changes to a minimum because they are easy to forget about, but this one just screamed to be made."
Quote:Alphabet Cost 250 instead of 300 Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
Alphabet was always a worse choice compared to Mathematics. With spies being nerfed it is only appropriate to reduce the cost somewhat.
Quote:Aqueduct: Cost 90 instead of 100 Necessary: 4 Closeness: 5
I rarely see players building these at least in the early and mid game. It's obvious why, because you don't need the health bonus at that time. But even when the point arrives, when you need health, there are still better options then the aqueduct. Note that this also improves all UBs replacing the aqueduct.
Quote:Colosseum: +1 commerce Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
Like the aqueduct this is a building that sees less use. This is my (poorly) attempt at buffing it a bit, while also keeping true to the flavor of the buildings name.
Quote:Castle: Obsoletes at Corporation instead of Economics Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
The time span in which you can build these is way to short and you can even obsolete them before being able to build them if I'm not mistaken.
Quote:Customs House: Cost 120 instead of 180 Necessary: 2 Closeness: 5
I might be wrong, but for what this building offers it is way too expensive especially compared to other buildings in that time period
Quote:West Point: Cost 550 instead of 800, +5 XP instead of 4, Requires a level 5 unit instead of 6 Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
The biggest problem with West Point is not the cost, but rather that you need a level 6 unit to build it, which is very hard to get without extensive fighting. The other changes might be debatable, but the requirements change needs to stay.
Quote:Resource modifiers: All wonders that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource. Necessary: 3 Closeness: 3
As with other changes this originated from ToW and SevenSpirit already provided adequate explanation:
"Marble and stone don't get BANNED, per se, but mapmakers sure go through a lot of contortions to make sure people don't get them! They need to be balanced among players, and often mapmakers try to hide them as far from players as humanly possible, and sometimes they deliberately leave them off the map entirely. I think it's pretty similar to if people sometimes banned them.
At the same time, some of the wonders which have doublers are a bit overpowered for their cost. Taj Mahal, MoM, Pyramids... all of these and more have warped games in the past.
And finally, IND is a bit underpowered. Reducing the standard +100% production to +50% production makes IND a little better, makes all those wonders a bit less game-warping, and saves mapmakers some headache. It's a blanket change because that's way simpler to adjust to than if I were to reduce some wonder bonuses to 50% and keep others at 100%."
Quote:Flanking: Flanking strength (used to calculate damage from flanking strikes) of all units reduced by 50%. Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
Most flanking units are mounted units. Mounted units are already pretty strong in general, so it fits to reduce some of their strength.
Quote:Swordsman: +20% city attack instead of +10% Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
With horse archers and catapults, swordsmen are used rarely. This is my attempt of increasing their usefulness somewhat. I didn't want to go the full way that RtR did with +50% because I think this was way to strong. In RtR swordsman even get good odds against longbowman.
Quote:- ICBM: Cost 1500 instead of 500 Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
- Tactical Nuke: Cost 750 instead of 250 Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
- Nukes: Nukes never create fallout on tiles containing strategic resources. Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
Straight from ToW with their explanation:
"Nukes are frequently banned. This change attemps to fix them simply in the hopes that people won't ban them anymore. The basic idea is simply to increase their cost threefold. Not creating fallout on strategic resources is specifically a response to the idea that the first nuke gets to nuke the opponent's uranium, creating an unfairly asymmetric situation. The war weariness change is unnecessary. Maybe I should drop it. (EDIT: I dropped it.) But then, who would ever notice? The number of competitive games here that have involved nukes is miniscule."
Quote:- Astronomy: Add Paper as another prerequisite Necessary: 2 Closeness: 3
- Radio: +1 sea visibility Necessary: 2 Closeness: 3
- Refrigeration: lose +1 sea movement Necessary: 2 Closeness: 3
- Circumnavigation: +1 trade route in all coastal cities instead of +1 movement and can be achieved by everybody Necessary: 4 Closeness: 3
- Coastal blockade: only block trade routes, blockaded cities can still work blocked tiles. Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
- Privateer: Required techs are Gunpowder and Astronomy instead of Chemistry and Astronomy Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
- Submarine and Attack Submarine: Flanking vs Transports Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
These changes all address the naval balance. But before we start with the changes it is important to know, how I see the the naval balance in BtS. I see three distinct eras of naval warfare:
- Classical with galleys and triremes
- Renaissance/Industrial with galleons, privateers, frigates and ship of the line
- Modern with all the rest of the ships
Classical to Renaissance period sees a bit use of the caravel as a strong force against both classical units, but loosing against all ships that follow. On the other side in industrial to the modern era the iron clad is a strong coastal defense unit. With the exception of the modern era, every single ship that is newly discovered beats almost all previous ships, which is somewhat disappointing. The other big problem with naval warfare is the speed at which ships move themself and more importantly the speed at which they carry units around the world. Krill addressed the two problems with his naval changes introduced in RtR 4.1.1.6 but I think those go way overboard.
So what will I do about those problems. Well first I think the Astro bulb needs to be delayed. It destroys the purpose of the caravel and introduces fast moving unit-carrying ocean-moving units way to early. It always felt like an exploit to me or at least an oversight by the developers. This is the reason why I added Paper as a requirement for Astronomy, to delay the discovery of Astronomy somewhat.
The next changes address overall movement speed. Circumnavigation was always awkward, because other players missed it to easily. At the same time I don't want to give everybody +1 sea movement, because that just makes the problem of high speed ocean movement even worse. I also think that a +1 trade route on coastal cities fits the circumnavigation much better. The overall high speed movement across ocean is also the reason why I removed the additional movement point on refrigeration. Lastly to secure your coast lines in the modern era and see a naval landing earlier I add another +1 sea visibility on radio.
With only two ships in classical times, there is not much balance to be done here, not that it needs much. But the renaissance/industrial era needs some changes. I plan to add collateral damage to one of the units, most likely the privateer, to make combat in that era more interesting. But that needs more testing.
The added flanking damage on subs in the modern era is meant as a defense against enemy landings. This also has the added effect that everybody needs destroyers to see those pesky subs. I'm not sure if this change is too strong though.
Lastly I need to address the coastal blockade. I think there are some things inherently wrong with this feature, but there's also some interesting game play here. First let's have a look at what coastal blockade does:
- Every tile under coastal blockade can't be worked by cities
- Sea trade routes are shot down in every city that is hit by the coastal blockade
- If you blockade with a privateer - and this works only with them - you receive gold from blockaded trade routes.
The interesting game play part I mentioned is the third bullet point. I still need to investigate the actual implementation, but I think it is linked to the hidden nationality and not the unit itself. I bet this feature alone is the reason why coastal blockade works across 3 tiles. Obviously the biggest problem with blockade is not the blocking of trade routes, but rather the blocking of workable tiles. Therefore I plan to remove this blocking and keep everything else the same. That way a privateer can block a city, stay outside the enemies culture and therefore cause fewer unit maintenance cost.
Quote:Corporations- Tech: Discovering the corresponding tech for a corporation earns you an executive of that corporation. To settle the HQ you still need a great person. Necessary: 5 Closeness: 2
- HQ: 3 gold instead of 4 received per corporation spread Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
- Sushi, Cereal, Creative and Mining Corps: Yields from resources halved Necessary: 5 Closeness: 3
I don't think that corporations are inherently wrong, mainly because they come late. There are of course some things that need to be addressed. First not every player gets equal chances of using them, which should be addressed by the first change. With everybody having access to corporations I felt the need to nerf the HQ a bit, because its effects may become more useful. Of course there are some corporations, which bonuses will need to be addressed. Lastly one additional positive effect of corporations is rarely considered and this is that Aluminium Co. and Standard Ethanol can generate late game resources Aluminium and Oil, which a player might not have in their territory or loose due to pillaging. I might even consider adding a conversion to Uranium to make one of the nuke changes unnecessary.
Quote:Serfdom: Produce military units with food like settlers and workers, +2 commerce on farms Necessary: 4 Closeness: 2
RtR nerfed Slavery rather hard, which I don't want to attempt as it's a rather large departure from BtS. I shortly considered splitting the growth bonus of granaries into two with +30% for granary and +20% growth for aqueducts. In the end I did not go with that, because it has a big impact on early economy and is a bigger change compared to BtS. Yes it's true that the good old slavery / cottage economy is really powerful, but one reason why that is the case, is because of lack of real alternatives. The first possible alternative to slavery is serfdom and caste system. I think caste system is already fine and has it's fair use with generating great people or helping in culture wars even more so when the workshop gets improved with Guilds. So this leaves only serfdom which is really lacking with its only bonus of +50% faster build time for improvement. Of course this bonus still remains, but I added two more.
First you are now able to produce military units with food just like settlers and workers. This is a conversion of 1 food to 1 hammer, which is still worse then the food to hammer conversions you get with slavery. But at the same time you don't need to manage the unhappiness and with bigger cities the food-hammer conversion of slavery gets worse. The buildings and units also get more expensive requiring more pop to whip them. Of course there is a hidden disadvantage with this change: your unit-building cities stop growing. I'm not sure how to judge this. This is bad for smaller cities that need to grow, but at the same time, why do you want to build units in still growing cities, when you first need to setup the essential infrastructure like granaries, a culture building etc. Of course no growth is ok and maybe even desired with cities at the happiness limit. One thing you can say for sure is that this change is fitting for serfdom. Lastly one interesting tidbit with this is that this option is already in BtS integrated. I'm really interested why the original developers integrated it and then decided not to use it.
Lastly I wanted to improve farms with serfdom, as farms are a major theme with serfs historically and it works into the military production bonus by buffing farms. I may even buff mines or watermills down the road, but not now. This of course is a big change and may not be considered true to BtS, but as of now I did not come up with better ideas to improve serfdom.
Quote:Emancipation: No anarchy turns Necessary: 4 Closeness: 5
I think Krill made a good point in RtR that it should be easier to recover from pillaged cottages. At least this way it's not an additional hit to your economy, when you try to recover.
Quote:Environmentalism: Available at Biology instead of Medicine Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
I think Environmentalism is ok as it is. The only problem is that it comes so late in the game. Moving it a bit closer should alleviate this problem somewhat, while also being more flavorful. While we are at the late game civics there's one thing that I always found strange with these. When you look at the themes of all civics you basically have this:
- Government: Civics that give some kind of happiness bonus with some added effect
- Legal: Mixed bag of different bonuses
- Labor: Improving hammer output with some added effects
- Economy: Improving commerce and gold output with some added effects especially around corporations
- Religion: Mixed bag of different bonus, but all connected to religion
So with these themes in mind it would be more fitting to do the following:
- Universal Suffrage goes to Labor as it's bonus are improving hammer output
- Free speech goes to Economy as it's bonus improves commerce
- Emancipation goes to Government as it's bonus is somewhat centered around happiness
- Environmentalism goes to Legal as it's not fitting with other themes
Krills changes in RtR go partly into that direction and even I considered it, but ultimately decided against it because of the following:
- It is a big change compared to BtS
- You would need to look at all the possible civic combinations that open up with this and would need to balance that
- The Pyramids would allow Emancipation, which is way too strong.
So this won't happen, but I think it's a interesting thought experiment.
Quote:Vassalage: Medium cost instead of High Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
Having high costs is a bit to high for my taste. :P But seriously I think Vassalage overall is used less because of its high costs. Yes the main reason for going Vassalage is the XP bonus, but the free units bonus is somewhat anti synergy when compared with High cost.
Quote:Financial: +1 commerce on land tiles that have 3+ commerce, +1 commerce on water tiles that have 2+ commerce. +50% production of Bank. Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
And here we enter one of the most interesting parts, when it comes to balancing. First I want to bring up our point-based picking system:
4: FIN
3: EXP, CRE, India, Inca
2: SPI, IND, ORG, IMP, China.
1: PHI, Agriculture Civs
0: CHM, AGG, All other civs
-1: PRO
So based on this system FIN needs a big nerf, EXP and CRE a smaller nerf, PRO needs a big buff while CHM and AGG needs a smaller buff.
Back to the actual change. The main problem with Financial is that the bonuses have an (almost) immediate effect and remain very effective for the whole game. The problem with balancing this is that the main commerce bonus has three different effects, based on terrain:
- River tiles: This is the tile which has the biggest and earliest effect. In BtS you tech pottery and drop a cottage on a river tile and immediately receive the bonus.
- Non-river tiles: Similar to River tiles, but at least here it takes 10 more turns to reap the benefits
- Coast tiles: You get this bonus as soon as you tech Fishing, but to really capitalize on it, you need to tech Sailing and build a lighthouse in the city. That way the coast tile becomes equal to a cottaged river tile.
I honestly think that the bonus is fine on coast tiles, as you need to make a bit more investment to make it good and coast tiles never improve beyond their initial 3 commerce (except ... wait for it ... you are the Portuguese)
This leaves only the land tiles. I already said how I wanted to nerf FIN by unlocking the upgrades with different techs, but I deem that to risky. I would have loved to give hamlets at something like Currency and Villages at a bit later. Because of that I'm back to the above change. With that it takes an additional 10 turns to get the bonus on river tiles and 30 turns for non-river tiles. I think this is still a bit too strong which is why I also reduced the bank bonus. Note that I don't want to remove that bonus, because it gives FIN something interesting beside the commerce bonus.
Quote:Expansive: Remove Harbor bonus Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
This is a hard nut to crack. The two main bonuses are the granary and worker production. I don't want to remove the granary bonus as it fits the theme of the trait centered around health bonuses. So the other option is to do something about the worker bonus. The problem with removing the worker bonus is that it feels like a big change compared to BtS even though EXP only received the worker bonus with the Warlords expansion. I also think that this is a somewhat too big a nerf for EXP, so as a compromise I would remove the worker bonus, but give a building bonus for aqueducts. But like I already said this is a big change so for now I opted with a small nerf in removing the harbor bonus.
Quote:Creative: Remove Colosseum bonus Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
The main bonuses here are +2 culture and the library bonuses, which brings me into a similar situation like with EXP. I don't want to remove the culture bonus as it's the defining bonus and the theme of this trait. Its benefits are also strongest in the early game and loses effectiveness with later stages. The library bonus is also very strong because it gives a secondary source of usefulness. In the end I decided to remove the colosseum bonus, because CRE only needs a bit of a nerf and there is another trait which fits equally good with colosseum.
Quote:Charismatic: +100% production of Monument and Colosseum Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
The two defining bonuses here are the happiness and the experience bonus. The experience bonus is already great and needs no further adjustment. I did not want to just increase the happiness bonus which would have been adequate. By giving a bonus to monuments you actually get a few more bonuses. First of course you quickly get your second happiness bonus. This also pushes players gently to build monuments, which they need in new cities for culture, so in a sense it is a weaker version of CRE. One last hidden effect is that by whipping monuments you have another way to generate gold in the beginning. I also gave this trait the colosseum bonus which may be too much for CHM, but it fits the theme of the trait.
Quote:Imperialistic: +100% production of Customs House and Stable Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
This already was an ok-ish trait. Giving it the customs house is a small benefit for the later stages of the game. The real kicker here is the stable bonus. I'm not totally convinced that this should remain here, not because it does not fit the theme of the trait, but rather because I fear to improve mounted units even more.
Quote:Aggressive: +1 hammer on strategic resources, +100% production of Jail Necessary: 4 Closeness: 3
This is already an ok-ish trait like IMP, with its main bonuses being the Combat 1 and barracks production bonus. What it lacked was an economic bonus, which also is connected with the militaristic theme. I considered different things and decided to give +1 hammer with strategic resources. It's always dangerous to tinker with yields, but here the bonus is not as widespread as with financial. After all it only effects Copper, Iron, Marble, Stone and Horses. Another nice side effect is that this bonus gets better with later eras with the introduction of coal, oil, aluminium and uranium. But I also have to admit that this bonus alone isn't that strong, which is why I also added the Jail as it fits the theme of the trait.
I also wanted to mention why I did not want to add the stable as a bonus to AGG. By adding stable as a bonus one leader in particular (Boudica) becomes a military powerhouse with Combat 1, cheaper barracks, stables, drydocks and the expierence bonus. By adding the stable to IMP there is more of a choice involved with the three military traits. Also everything I said about the stable in my IMP section applies here too.
Quote:Protective: +1 hammer on city tile, +25% trade yield, +100% production of Harbor Necessary: 5 Closeness: 3
And here we are at the worst trait of the game. Admittedly this was a harder nut to crack. Its theme is clear with defense, but I would argue that there is a hidden theme with trade. You get another trade bonus from the castle and trade bonuses get stronger the longer lasting a peace is, which you can secure with defense. I know it is a stretch, but at least it is something.
But before I go over the trade bonuses I briefly want to talk about the "+1 hammer on city tile". This actually is another hidden bonus to defense. What this does is that every tile, and especially grassland hill tiles, give the same hammer output as a city settled on a plains hill tile. That way there are more defensive hill spots available to settle.
Back to Trade. The bonus to trade yield only really comes into effect with the later early to mid game. It's worthwhile to mention that although the game only shows you full integers in the trade section of cities, it actually uses decimal values in the background. So even a +1 commerce trade becomes a +1.25 trade. I'm not sure if +25% trade yield is enough and would also consider raising this to +50%. Because we already gave PRO the additional theme of trade I decided to give the harbor from EXP to PRO. Note that if I would remove the worker bonus from EXP I would give it to PRO and would take another good look at PRO.
Quote:Industrious: +100% production of Aqueduct and Coal plant Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
Industrious was already indirectly improved with the cheaper Metal Casting and nerfed resource modifiers for world wonders (because others non-Industrious got worse at building wonders). These buildings therefore only add a bit more flavor the trait.
Quote:- America UB: NEW Town Hall - Colosseum replacement, +3 Great People Points +1 happy from Hit Musical, Singles and Movies Necessary: 5 Closeness: 1
- America UU: NEW Minuteman - Musket replacement, Starts with Guerrilla 1 and Woodsman 1. Necessary: 5 Closeness: 1
America was already a very weak civ to begin with. At least it had the agriculture tech. With the recent changes to Fishing, America also got improved a little bit, but not enough to safe it from a complete rework. Of the two initial uniques I considered the Mall the better one, but it still came way too late. With that it is time to get creative. It was very easy to come up with a theme that is fitting for America. The one thing defining America more then any unit or building is the American Dream and the effect it had on the world with people immigrating to the US and the US having a lot of famous and great people (just look at the noble price). This is what I had in mind with the UB Town Hall. As you can see I kept the happiness bonus from the Mall, but replaced the gold bonus with generated Great People Points. It's noteworthy that these points are neutral and don't pollute the pool in any way. With +3 GPP it is equal in GPP production to any specialist. You don't receive the other yields that the specialist generate, but you also don't pollute your pool. If +3 is enough to make America good is something to look at in the long run. I could also consider replacing the courthouse instead of the colosseum.
The Minuteman is stolen from an earlier version of RtR. It's certainly better then the original UU, both because Guerrilla 1 has more useful appliances and it comes earlier. I'm fine with the UU not being the stronger part of this civ as I think the UB should be the main focus here.
Quote:Arabia UU: Replace Horse archer instead of Knight, receive +20% vs mounted Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
With Mysticism/The Wheel Arabia already got the short end of the stick in BtS, but with my changes Mysticism was improved and therefore Arabia was improved. The Madrassa is already a nice bonus and the main reason to take Arabia in BtS. What really bothered me with the UU is that one of it's bonus is a non-bonus and that is the "no horse" bonus. By replacing the horse archer instead of the knight, the unit immediately becomes more useful, but not quite enough. Therefore I decided to add a bonus vs mounted to give it something unique. I also considered adding an attack bonus in the deser, but that's somewhat unusual for BtS and a bit to strong or situational. I also briefly want to mention that replacing the unit horse "archer" with the unit camel "archer" is so much better when it comes to flavor.
Quote:Babylon UB: Replace Aqueduct instead of Colosseum, +1 health instead of +2 health, +5% food Necessary: 4 Closeness: 3
Babylon already has Agriculture as tech and the UU is good enough. The only problem with Babylon is that the UB is so useless compared to others. Replacing the aqueduct instead of the colosseum won't change much for UB and only can be considered flavor. The main thing going for it now is the additional food. This means that for every 20th food you produce you receive an additional food. This can be achieved rather quickly with the right food resources, but still comes later then the Khmer UB, which is now a direct competitor for this UB.
Quote:- Byzantium UB: Replace Colosseum instead of Theatre, +1 happy from horse, +1 happy per 10 culture instead of 20 Necessary: 2 Closeness: 3
- Byzantium UU: Strength 11 instead of 12, first strike immune like normal knight Necessary: 5 Closeness: 5
First of all it is worth mentioning that Byzantium already got buffed by buffing Mysticism. Therefore it is crucial to reduce the power of its UU, which was ridiculously strong. At the same time I want to change the UB because there are some aspects that are very annoying with it. This obviously is the fact that their original UB - a theatre replacement - can't work artists. There's also the tiny flavor annoyance that the hippodrome is actually more of a colosseum than a theatre. The above changes the UB stays more or less the same without those annoyances.
Quote:- Celts UB: Never obsoletes Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
- Ethiopia UB: Never obsoletes Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
It is my belief that no UB should be obsoleted at any point in time. There are more UBs that are effected by this like Spain and Native America, but they have additional effects I want to discuss. The Celts UB was mainly benefiting archer units because right when it gets interesting for gunpowder units it is obsolete. The Ethiopian UB gets its fair share of use, but right when it will be important for a cultural victory it gets obsolete.
Quote:- France UB: +1 free specialist instead of +1 artist Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
- France UU: NEW strength 11 instead of 9, movement 1 Necessary: 2 Closeness: 3
France itself being an agriculture civ is already good with an excellent UU. I still decided to change the UU because I needed its bonus for a different civ. This may be bigger change towards BtS, but interestingly it stays true to France in other civ games like Civ 3 and Civ 5 in which the always received the Musketeer as a stronger musketman replacement. The UB change is only to eradicate another annoyance concerning mixed GPP pools. It also buffs the UB a bit.
Quote:- Germany UB: Assembly plant now at Steam Power instead of Assembly line, +2 hammer Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
- Germany UU: NEW Stosstruppen - replace Grenadier, movement 2 instead of 1 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 1
Like America Germany too needs a redesign. The UU is actually fine, but comes to late same goes for the UB. I decided to move the UB to an earlier tech while also improving its hammer output. This might still not be enough and it may need a totally new UB. When it comes to UU there one theme that immediately pops into my head and that is speed. The Germans did use speed successfully in WW2, but even earlier like in the war in 1871 speed was the deciding factor. Therefore I gave them the bonus that France initially had.
Quote:- Greece UB: Replace Theatre instead of Colosseum, +1 happy, +1 happy from hit single, -1 culture, +1 free artist Necessary: 1 Closeness: 3
- Greece UU: Replace icon Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
These changes are purely flavor and a little bit due to annoyance. The original UB is actually fine as another duplicate of a theatre on a different base building, still I found the Odeon replacing a colosseum when it clearly should replace the theatre. I most likely will revert back to the original, because only replacing the theatre instead of the colosseum, but keeping the same bonuses is way too strong.
Lastly the UU. It is actually fine as it is, the only two things that really bothered me is that you can see that this unit initially replaced the spearman and the other thing that by replacing the axeman you now have to units with icon that are so similar that I constantly confuse both of them.
Quote:- Inca UB: +1 culture instead of +2, Cost 70 instead of 60 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
- Inca UU: no combat 1, Cost 20 instead of 15 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
Am I too hard with the Inca? Clearly the culture bonus needed to be reduced, but at the same time I felt it needed a nerf in combination with the EXP trait bonus. It's still cheaper than the combined cost of a granary and monument though. Lastly the only other way to nerf Inca even more is nerfing their UU, which now mainly serves as a cheap happy counter under hereditary rule or if you want to rush an AI without copper and horses.
Quote:India UU: movement 2 instead of 3, start with Mobility promotion, Cost 70 instead of 60 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 4
Same as Inca, India needed a big nerf. Reducing the movement, while still applying mobility, kept their awesome ability to chop forests fast or mine/road hills faster, but they no longer can zig-zag across your whole empire or be used deep in enemy lines. Because they are still strong I felt the need to apply the cost nerf like Seven did in ToW.
Quote:- Japan UB: NEW Dojo, Barracks replacement - +1XP to Gunpowder, +1XP to Mounted, +1XP to Air, +2XP to Melee in addition to +3 XP for land units Necessary: 5 Closeness: 1
- Japan UU: requires Copper or Iron instead of only Iron Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
Japan is almost as rarely used as America or Germany in the original. At least they had an early UU, which admittedly isn't that powerful although flavorful. The copper addition the UU is only to reduce a little annoying effect on the UU. The main business here is the new UB. The old UB comes way to late and is useless. You might remember the new UB because it actually is the American armory from RtR. I really liked were Krill was going with this, but always felt that it fits the Japanese better with their UU.
Quote:- Khmer UB: Acts as a source of water Necessary: 4 Closeness: 3
- Khmer UU: Stays at 8 strength instead of base units now 7 strength Necessary: 4 Closeness: 5
The big question here is if the UU would lead to the Khmer being banned. If that is the case I would convert it into an attack only bonus. That way you can kill defending Ballista Elephants more easily. The effect of the UB is something totally new, but I know that other mods did this, so it should be doable. With the new Babylonian UB and the Khmer taken rather rarely I felt the need to buff their UB a little bit. The question remains if this is out of touch.
Quote:- Korea UB: Cost 180 instead of 200 Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
- Korea UU: Targets melee first outside of cities Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
The UB was always ok-ish. With a little cost reduction it becomes more useful. The main new addition here is the addition to the UU, With this addition the unit can actually profit on its bonus vs melee.
Quote:Mali UU: No first strikes Necessary: 3 Closeness: 5
Straight up copied from ToW. Just a little bit of a nerf.
Quote:Maya UU: Immune to first strikes and City garrison 1, other City garrison promotions are now eligible for melee Necessary: 3 Closeness: 4
Maya is an interesting case. With the buff to Mysticism, Maya too was buffed. And with the addition of Mining they now have a cheap way to tech to masonry and slavery. Their UB is actually fine and doesn't need a change. Its the UU that is more concerning and honestly I'm not convinced myself with what I came up. I'm open for improvements.
Quote:Mongolia UU: Replace Knight instead of Horse archer - not immune to first strike, first strike, ignore terrain Necessary: 2 Closeness: 4
This is more of a flavor change then actual balance. With the Arabian UU now being another horse archer replacement and the actual Mongolian conquest happening in the middle ages, it was a no-brainer to replace the knight instead of the horse archer. The bonus stay the same.
Quote:- Native America Tech: Hunting/Agriculture instead of Fishing/Agriculture Necessary: 5 Closeness: 3
- Native America UB: Available at Archery instead of Mysticism, +3 XP for archer units and +1 for gunpowder units, never obsoletes, Necessary: 4 Closeness: 3
- Native America UU: Need more ideas to make it useful
This is the first civ, which needed a change to their techs and only to make their UB work better. The great side-effect is that replacing Fishing with Hunting is a kind of buff, because it allows a cheaper Animal Husbandry. The UB is actually interesting. I kept the changes from RtR to make it useful for a longer period and of course this too does not obsolete. The move from Mysticism to Archery seems very strange, but it synergies with the actual bonus and therefore improves the UB.
The big problem here is the UU. I still haven't found anything useful to do with it.
Quote:Portugal UB: Replace Harbor instead of Customs house - +1 commerce on water tiles Necessary: 4 Closeness: 4
The UU with its 2 cargo and shipping everything is a bit weak but very interesting as long as astronomy comes later. The main problem I have here is the UB, which comes just a bit too late. Moving it to replace a harbor might be too big of a buff. In that case I would move it to another tech earlier then Economics.
Quote:Rome UU: Strength 7 instead of 8 Necessary: 5 Closeness: 5
Straight up nerf. The question remains if it should receive the +20% city attack from the base unit. Attacking a city the base unit can be considered a 7.2 strength unit. If the praetorian receives the +20% it would become a 8.4 strength unit attacking a city. Maybe I will settle with +10% city attack, bringing it to a nice 7.7.
Quote:Russia UB: Replace University instead of Laboratory - Cost 180 instead of 200, only +1 free scientist Necessary: 5 Closeness: 2
Stolen from RtR. Just moved the UB to an earlier building and reducing the bonuses adequately. The original is way too late for anything. A nice bonus feature the original artwork also works as a university.
Quote:Spain UB: Never obsoletes, +3 XP for naval units Necessary: Closeness: 4
Never obsoleting is already great, but seeing that Spain is also a well known seafaring nation, I felt the need to attach the experience bonus.
Quote:- Zulu UB: -10% maintenance instead of -20% Necessary: 5 Closeness: 5
- Zulu UU: Remove Mobility promotion Necessary: 5 Closeness: 3
Like with Inca, am I too hard on them? The adjusted maintenance bonus is justified, but what really hurts here it he loss of mobility on the UU. But consider what this means. The unit still runs as fast as always across flat terrain; it still can keep up with mounted units and lastly it is a bit more fitting from a flavor perspective
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In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."