- Joined
- Aug 7, 2010
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Updated Feb 25.
There has been a *lot* of discussion in the last few days regarding the overabundance of gold, happiness and culture, among other things. This discussion was spread over a number of threads with many excellent suggestions by everyone! (What a great community we have here!) In my experience it's rare to have a VEM game last to turn 300, I can usually forget about whole aspects of the game (such as gold or happiness) after a certain point and overall it just feels like decisions don't have a lot of weight after the Medieval era - It seems apparent that a lot of VEM users agree, and find games a little too easy with yields and resources so plentiful. What we have is, as Txurce put it, "a creeping inflation of benefits" pure and simple.
Since my initial proposal to alter Specialists' yields was not met with much enthusiasm by Thal or the community, I'm dropping that idea. Also, rather than pull out the nerf bat (well, maybe a little), which I don't think anyone wants, I think the best place to start is to adjust and rebalance costs first and foremost. I've culled what I think are the best ideas from amongst these discussions in the Opportunities, Specialists and Yield Balance threads and compiled what I think should work, taken as a whole:*
*Some of these ideas are mine, but many are not. I'm not going to give credit to each person individually because of time restraints, but you know who you are - Thank you all!
Science
So that's what I have so far, I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on these proposals (am I nerfing gold too much?) as well as other suggestions and ideas!
There has been a *lot* of discussion in the last few days regarding the overabundance of gold, happiness and culture, among other things. This discussion was spread over a number of threads with many excellent suggestions by everyone! (What a great community we have here!) In my experience it's rare to have a VEM game last to turn 300, I can usually forget about whole aspects of the game (such as gold or happiness) after a certain point and overall it just feels like decisions don't have a lot of weight after the Medieval era - It seems apparent that a lot of VEM users agree, and find games a little too easy with yields and resources so plentiful. What we have is, as Txurce put it, "a creeping inflation of benefits" pure and simple.
Since my initial proposal to alter Specialists' yields was not met with much enthusiasm by Thal or the community, I'm dropping that idea. Also, rather than pull out the nerf bat (well, maybe a little), which I don't think anyone wants, I think the best place to start is to adjust and rebalance costs first and foremost. I've culled what I think are the best ideas from amongst these discussions in the Opportunities, Specialists and Yield Balance threads and compiled what I think should work, taken as a whole:*
*Some of these ideas are mine, but many are not. I'm not going to give credit to each person individually because of time restraints, but you know who you are - Thank you all!
Science
- Raise tech costs by a flat 25% (or more) across the board. The tech tree just flies by, 'nuff said.
- Update: Should probably be done like other tech cost increases with gradually increasing percentage increases through the ages.
- Update 2: Scientists' science output halved for v131.1 beta, so the above may not be necessary.
- Raise policy costs to account for tech cost changes, so the Culture Victory is not available too much earlier than other options. Reverting to the 2.3 exponent that was in place from v117.2b - v124 would be a good place to start I think.
- Update: Artists' culture output halved for version v131.1 beta, so the above might not be necessary.
- Move the Archeology tech back to the Industrial Era to slow culture rates, making Autocracy and Order available to more Civs. Thematically I don't foresee many people having a problem with this (archeology "developed ... during the 19th century" according to Wikipedia) but it may make Scientific Theory too easy to beeline, so this might require some further adjustments.
- Have culture from City-States be added *after* modifiers - it quickly spirals out of control because small empires will often have many modifiers and always lower policy costs.
- Update: Another alternative could be to have CS culture and food limited to a percentage per city, somewhere around 2/3-3/4. See kc_bandit's win time (t169!) for an example of how unbalanced CSs are for small empires.
- Update 2: Thal makes an excellent point that if the AI were more likely to be competitive for CSs this exploit would be dulled, so the above suggestions may not be necessary.
- To balance their worth with Merchant specialists, Villages should lose some of their yield (as it is now, it's never worth working Merchants because unless they're on desert, villages grant 2 more yield than Merchants). I think that -1 and/or -1 is a good place to start. Thal mentioned getting rid of the tech tree +1 on Economics, but I personally like the tech bonuses, so would prefer a change that was persistent throughout the game.
Research Agreements' cost should be raised by a significant amount, starting them at ~400 in the Classical era and scaling up by era to >1000 in Industrial/Modern eras. Since they are so desirable, this will help increase decision-making a great deal, I think.- Update: RA costs altered in v131.1beta.
- Lower AI values of luxury resources by 25-50%. The money earned in GPT will become much more important.
- Update: While I still think this could be a good idea, it hasn't seen much enthusiasm in responses. What we could do instead is slow natural border expansion significantly and raise tile-buying costs (they are excessively cheap now) which will slow luxury acquisition and therefore sales. Regardless of people's opinions wrt lux sales I think this would be a good idea anyway.
- Update 2: What would be ideal, of course, is if the AI valued resources appropriately, valuing them differently in different eras and/or would only give full price when a) at Friendly status and b) needed the resource. (I suppose this is obvious, which is why I didn't originally mention it, but AFAIK it's not possible to do with the current modding tools.)
- Update 3: Ok, one more idea: Lower AI gold bonuses. If the AI doesn't have as much gold, the player won't have as much gold. I recall seeing someone post recently saying that they find King *harder* than higher difficulties because there is so much less gold available. While that's probably an exaggeration, it is a great point: If the AI doesn't have 45k in the bank it can't give it away in a peace deal, if the AI doesn't always keep a decent savings luxury sales and RAs won't be so automatic, etc. But again, Thal's working on getting the AI to spend more of it's cash, so we can look foreword to that.
- If nothing else, costs for Opportunities (Events) should be raised to some degree to meet the levels of benefits gotten from them.
One thing that could be implemented to allow more flexibility would be to give price/reward options, like Events in Civ4 - one could choose a high benefit for a large cost, a middling benefit for a moderate cost, or a free selection with a small benefit.[Rejected by Thal] Another idea (which may not be possible to implement) is to make Opportunities' benefits and costs era-dependent, so for example an event in the Classical era would cost 50 and give 1 while an event in the Industrial era would cost 200 for 4. - If possible, have Great Merchants'
gold returns from trade missions depend on distance from Capital (like Civ4) and/or[Rejected] give some turns worth of CS benefits c5food:, , or units) right away, lowering the gold and influence a bit to compensate. Could give them extra movement to reduce micro hassle as well. - Make rush-buy costs more consistent in the late-game (in other words, raise the cost for rush-buying units and buildings in the Industrial and Modern eras).
- Update: One suggestion worth thinking on is to raise units' rushbuy multiplier (maybe gradually increasing through eras and/or excluding Vanguard units)
- This is tricky, but I think that there is too much happiness from Social Policies in general, especially since Piety and Enlightenment no longer block each other. I think these changes are reasonable:
- Aristocracy: -33% from population in the capital (from -50%).
- Mandate of Heaven: Remove monuments from the list.
- Cultural Diplomacy: +1 for each CS friend and
+2 for eachally [1/CS is plenty] (from +2/friend, +3/ally). - Humanism: Remove Libraries from the list.
- Monarchy: I would like to see the happiness from Wonders here behave like happiness buildings and be limited to population, but IIRC this isn't possible.
So that's what I have so far, I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on these proposals (am I nerfing gold too much?) as well as other suggestions and ideas!