Im making a mod now that focuses more on balancing out current issues in the game rather than adding lots of new bells and whistles. It will focus on putting more strategy into the game and make it more competitive and enjoyable in multiplayer especially. Its coming along nicely but ive gotten mental blocks on a few issues and have seen good ideas coming from these forums before so am asking anyone with some creative or innovative outakes on these ideas to speak up. When proposing ideas please hypothesize how they will play out in a multiplayer game before suggesting them. Keep in mind a human player is far more cunning and can exploit unbalances much better if they exist. Also keep in mind everything is related to everything. Adding lots of health will in turn reduce the usefullness of forests and the expansive trait. Adding lots of happiness lets universal sufferage govts wage war much easier and obsoletes the nationalism civic etc... Adding a third tier production building makes workshops in the endgame pointless and makes the production bonus civics of organized religeon and police state less useful. The goal of this mod is to add more strategy, but not necessarily add tons of new items and definitely not to obsolete current features. Also keep in mind though i like using historical accuracy to justify certain features it will always take a back seat to balance issues.

Here are the areas i would like to see some creative thoughts on:

1) Labor civics: Every other category of civics remains useful endgame depending on your situation,, except for labor civics. Each of the goverment civics can be potent depending on your situation, same with legal, economic and religeous. But the labor civics basically go like this for most experiened players: Tribalism for a good chunk of the game, maybe a dash of slavery or serfdom (caste system if aiming for cultural victory) which is then followed by the inevitable switch to emancipattion which you stay in the rest of the game with no point to ever switch back to anything else. I want to add more variety and usefulness to the labor civics. So far all ive done is added a +1 production to quarries and +2 commerce to plantations to slavery. Let me hear your ideas for the rest of them or for a better model for slavery or any of the labor civics. (note: I also find it odd that its technically possible for you to have both slavery and universal sufferage at the same time,, perhaps gold rushing should be moved to emancipation?)

2) The addition of more national units to smooth certain parts of the game out: For example endgame in multiplayer it gets very hard to take cities. Spies are prevelant so your opponents knows exactly what you are building up on your border. In addition they will have at least 10 infantry, planes and artillery guarding thier city.... War seems such a hassel at this point. My solution is to add a new unit in the endgame that will help at punching through defenses and harassing the enemy. I was thinking of a special forces unit that starts with the commando promotion and a few others,, has a high first strike rate and 2 movement. The game stalls right now after the industrial age but before the space race begins. Its my hope some unique units like these (which will be national units so limited to 3 or 4 only) will help break up the monotony at these points. Also there are certain parts of the game where this is reversed and its all too easy to wipe someone out, like at the beginning. So far the solution i see to this is to make castles available earlier. But i would be down for more creative things like maybe making a new national unit at monarchy or another tech, something like a royal guard that is a very tough defender and will especially help out those players who have no copper or iron early on yet are under attack by horses and swordsman. I would like to hear more ideas along these lines.

3) Slight wonder or building alterations: A few wonders in the game i think are overpowered. For example the pyramids. Allowing a human player to get representation or universal sufferage that early unbalances the game incredibly. In addition because of the great engineer points the pyramids give that same civilization (which is usually doing well in the first place) tends to get a great engineer very early on and thus guarantees them yet another very powerful wonder of thier choice. My solution was to change the effect of the pyramids to any religeous civic instead and make the building contribute points toward a great prophet instead. Id like to see what people think are some other wonders which are currently out of sync..

4) Chop or die: Such as people chopping down all thier trees in a competitive game for the bonus production early on and there being little reward to those who keep thier trees but end up dieing in the process. I dont want to put forest replanting in the game which most mods have done because that only encourages the chop or die attitude if you know you can just grow them back later. So far ive added about 2 more health negatives which most empires will get in the mid and late game. This makes the health bonus from trees that much more useful and penalizes the people who clear cutted too much early on. Any other thoughts on this sort of thing or simliar issues?

5) Starting position: This is one huge thing which unbalances the game as is. If you start the game by a few flood plains along a river with some hills in the outskirts you are in a prime position. You can shoot for pottery and then put cottages on your flood plains. These squares will give you 3 food and multiple commerce after a few turns (and even more if your financial). The hills provide for production and you are all set with a capital city that has extremely high food, commerce and production output. Compare this with a guy who starts next to a lake intead and has mainly grasslands, plains and only forests for production (no hills). Everything about his city is inferior and his lower yields set him back significantly,, especially this early in the game. I dont want to take out randomness from the starting city, just balance a few things out. So far ive pushed back cottages to monarchy so that you cant go commerce crazy that early on and get way ahead on tech. This gives the inferior starting capitals more time to balance things out. This change alone I believe helps out significantly but I would love to hear some other insight....

6) Buddism and hinduism dominating every game: Its obvious why,, they appear the earliest and every game is dominated usually by these two. I think any of the religeons should have an equal chance of becoming the dominant one. I havent thought about what to do with this much. I might alter it so the later religeons like islam and christanity have a higher spread rate but Id like to do something a little more involved.... not sure what though.



Im posting here because id love to see some ideas that i havent thought of yet,, so let me hear em on these above issues or others that seems to unbalance and take strategy out of the game, especially against human opponents or AI level of monarch or higher.

RE 4)... Try moving the lumbermill from replaceable parts to machinery. I find that one of the problems with forests is they are usually inferior to most other improvements for a long time (until lumbermill). Perhaps even give an extra boost at repalceable parts (+1 commerce or hammers, maybe.) Another thing you could do is perhaps improve environmentalism a little. Maybe give an extra +1 happy or healthy to forests/jungle, maybe even +1 food... that would be pretty strong.

RE 6)... Simple answer is to give more free missionaries the higher the religion is in the tech tree. Probably 4 should be the most with Islam/Christianity.

Wrong Forum.

I do not believe this is the wrong forum. I was looking for insightful ideas and advise from people who know the game well,, there is no better place than the strategy forum. The general forum in the mods section hardly gets looked at and is mainly for modders seeking help with programming or XML issues. Ive already had a few good ideas from people who've private messaged me here so I think this post here is achieving its goal.

Re 5)

Early cottages can become too strong indeed, so here is an idea. What if you link their growth with certain techs? Let's say you can't have a hamlet without masonry and a village without construction. That is assuming you keep them at pottery.

This may not be right for your mod but I would love to see fish hatcheries available to coastal cities. The city building would improve say two coastal ocean tiles from having no fish to having either clams, or fish. Also beside having extra bread for the tile it would also have extra commerce.

1. Labor civics. Be careful because you are going to make emancipation even more powerful and unbalanced (check the topic on this subject). I tend to think that the unhappiness effect of emancipation should be a property of the tech and not a civic - that way there would be more options in the late-game labor civics.

2. National units. Maybe, but I have no experience from multiplayer. In single player I don't think they are needed.

3. Wonders. True, there are overpowered and underpowered ones, but not at a point where the game is hopeless for the others. Maybe the Pyramids should get some extra cost. But to give their power in spiritual civs would make these civs FAR too powerful.

4. Chop. I agree with you, something must be done with it. The health negative seems a good idea.

5. Starting position. Extremely true. For a starter, make everybody's starting tile a hills plains (this is one of the most weird decisions of the game, to give so much benefit to hills plains for city building). Consider also the case where a civ starts with fishing in the middle of a pangea (this is obviously worse than mining on this occasion). But avoid the pitfall of making the game "too same" in all cases - different starting sites call for different strategies. And put some extra stone everywhere - it isn't that difficult to find stone in our planet (especially if you consider that Pyramids were built in about the only place of the world where it is difficult to find stone). I like the "delayed cottages" idea very much - it creates interesting possibilities.

6. Religions. Maybe give, if that is possible, the later religions a chance to spread to a city that already has a religion. This is what happened in reality - the new religions were replacing or coexisting with old ones, and weren't only spread to atheist cities. In this way the newer religions will eventually "catch up" with the older ones in popularity.

But I would suggest to pick also some ideas from the Ideas & Suggestions forum. Some of them are extremely good. My personal "want to" would be some more balanced slow speed games.

To me the thing that needs the most adjusting is the culture model. Of all the victory conditions it seems to be the one that you MUST decide you are going for in the first few turns of the game.

For Diplomatic, you can sort of wait until you have met all the civs to decide how to treat everyone, and you can always get backdoor victory by controlling enough population.

For conquest or Domination, you just have to be miltarily strong which can be done at any time, early or late.

For Space, you don't even start worrying about it until you get up pretty high on the tech chart.

So I would like to see culture victory be adjusted in some way. I know there are probably many players who would say you should decide on your victory condition of choice before you even start the game, but I feel that the early portion of the game should be used as a "testing the waters" time where you could take a stab at any victory condition, but not really decide until a bit later. Currently it feels like if you don't get those three legendary cities down early and focus on Great Artists, and cultural buildings reall early you are left without the option of going for that condition of victory.

actually what you need for cultural victory are the buildings and civics that multiply culture. the first 200 turns of less than 100 culture is a drop in the bucket compared to the last 100 turns of 400+ culture. in other words, if you don't win cultural victory by the time you can build rock and roll, hollywood and broadway, then make sure you rush them in two of the three cities that need them. the third city should already have the Hermitage national wonder. of course, free speech is the other main factor to boost your culture output. also consider sistine chapel, eiffel tower/broadcost towers, and 7 different cathedrals. if you're really close to victory, slide culture rate to 100%.