Survey for Close to Home

[Charriu]

As some have noticed I started a new mod: Close to Home. I already have a good list of changes and would like your feedback. So I've set up a survey to better evaluate the changes done by Close to Home version 1.1. I would love if you would participate in the survey. Thank you.

Version 1.1 survey

If you want to participate in the overall discussion of the mod, just follow this link: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...p?tid=9939

Thank you.

[Amicalola]

Is it worth answering if we haven't actually played with the mod, but have read through the changes?

[Charriu]

Absolutely. Reading the changes is enough right now and ignore everything in spoiler tags as it's mostly not relevant for the overall balance of the game.

[Charriu]

Bumping this up to raise awareness. Would like to get more then one response on the survey to make this just a little bit more representative.

[RefSteel]

I filled out the survey (and am already second-guessing some of what I wrote; e.g. Spain is probably worse than Japan) but I thought I'd make a couple meta-suggestions about the survey itself:

- Top 3 (best/worst/most-boring) is too arbitrary a number. If (as in BtS - and, I think, here) two civs stand out as the clear favorites for any of these categories - or if one does, or four or five do, it can be both difficult and pointless to select exactly 3. Maybe better to just ask responders to check any civs they think are too powerful, too weak, and too boring in the respective questions, leaving the number to them.

- Power level (and even "closeness to BtS") doesn't exist in a vacuum. To take a simple example, if pastures are unlocked at Hunting (as seems to be still in question) that significantly changes the relative value of civs that start with the tech. It might be better to lock down the generic mechanics first before trying to judge the individual civs.

- The idea of "closeness to BtS" seems to lack context or scale. I don't think assigning arbitrary numbers to "closeness" is actually helpful; the question to me seems to be not "what changes are bigger than others" or even "which changes are needed more than others" - it's more like, "what problems really need fixing, and what's the simplest or most-intuitive change that will fix it?" For instance: If Serfdom is a niche civic used only occasionally and then only by Spi leaders, is that really even a problem that needs to be fixed?

[Charriu]

- Top 3 (best/worst/most-boring) is too arbitrary a number.  If (as in BtS - and, I think, here) two civs stand out as the clear favorites for any of these categories - or if one does, or four or five do, it can be both difficult and pointless to select exactly 3.  Maybe better to just ask responders to check any civs they think are too powerful, too weak, and too boring in the respective questions, leaving the number to them.

Good point, I will most likely do that for any future surveys. For now I keep it, because changing it now would mess with the produced data. My initial intention was to localize the 3 worst/best civs first and focis my intention on them. But like I said good point and I will change it next time.

- Power level (and even "closeness to BtS") doesn't exist in a vacuum.  To take a simple example, if pastures are unlocked at Hunting (as seems to be still in question) that significantly changes the relative value of civs that start with the tech.  It might be better to lock down the generic mechanics first before trying to judge the individual civs.

You are right about power level in a vaccum. I'm aware that this would change the power of different civs by a lot, which is why I wanted to know how people feel about the pasture/camp change and to a lesser extent about the slavery nerf.

- The idea of "closeness to BtS" seems to lack context or scale.  I don't think assigning arbitrary numbers to "closeness" is actually helpful; the question to me seems to be not "what changes are bigger than others" or even "which changes are needed more than others" - it's more like, "what problems really need fixing, and what's the simplest or most-intuitive change that will fix it?"  For instance:  If Serfdom is a niche civic used only occasionally and then only by Spi leaders, is that really even a problem that needs to be fixed?

To be honest the whole goal of staying close to BtS with Close to Home is rather vague. It's very subjective and comes down to how much if feels like BtS. Don't think too much about the numbers. If I could have used a slider instead of values from 1-10 I would have used a slider in the survey.
It's okay to have niche elements in the game, it's just that some elements are so rarely used that you can hardly say that they are niche like for example the lumber mill or worse the forest preserve. If I would remove those elements hardly anybody would miss them. Serfdom is certainly used by Spi leaders from time to time, but other then that I hardly see anybody use it and even Spi leaders use it rarely in BtS, because it not only has to compete with Slavery but also with Caste.
At the same time I have to say that it's not a problem for the balance of the game that Serfdom is rarely used. But as stated in my goals for the mod, I also want to promote/buff those really rarely used elements to make room for more choices to be made.

EDIT: And I always forget to say that, but thank you for participating.