Civilization Changes

Since the Civilization changes we made in GEM are still basically applicable in Brave New World, and apart from one or two Civs the sometimes boring and often mismatched vanilla effects are still present, it would probably be okay to implement them sooner rather than later - but it would be good to discuss them before implementing them.

For example - it seems strange to me that the Bazaar is still a market replacement when Arabia, centred on trade, could really use a Caravansery replacement.

As far as the new Civs go, we will definitely need to play them more before doing anything, but already I can see the Shoshone needing a strong nerf.

Well, having both a market and a bazaar might seem strange. it does make sense however.

I'd like to give Germany a World Congress ability (Bismarck was known to be a shrewd diplomat), and move the extra units abilities to Sweden. The Kaffehaus should be better at generating Great Artists, Writers and Musicians and there's quite a few more.

The Shoshone of BNW clash strongly with the Russians and Americans of BNW, but I agree they could be changed. They'd fit with a "double yields from Natural Wonders", or is that too much of a clichee? Need to play them first though...

A combat related UA I'd like to see would be: "Free experience to all current and future units per social policy/tenet adopted". That is a versatile one, AI-friendly, strongest in the late game, but helpful from the start. It was first proposed for Vietnam, but I'd say it fits as well with another civ Also, a warrior replacement that can build farms, mines and villages.

I think that combat UA fits Poland pretty perfectly and does away with Poland's current powerful but utterly boring UA.

Leaders changes in GEM were not just fiddling with UU and UB stats but often required new lua effects for the UAs. I think a bunch of them could be done in a couple of hours from looking them over but implementing the whole batch, and finishing off some that were not done earlier, will take time. A proper debate can proceed as that happens of course. There's several older civs that haven't really ever settled on a set of appropriate effects (Germany being one of main contentious ones), and things like the trade routes and World Congress or tourism will give some new choices on how to boost them uniquely and flavorfully. Plus a few GK ones.

Venice is probably the most curious one for balance though, on paper.

Well, to be honest, the discussion on leaders was one of the most in depth and lengthy disussions this mod has had (Leaders: Part 1 with ~11,000 views has more views than any other non-stickied thread, and Leaders: Part 2 has another 8000) and to have to repeat the whole thing again after only just starting to implement it into GaK is a bit of a slap in the face, especially when most of the effects are still just as balanced and relevant.

You are correct in that some Civs could now be enhanced with the new features though.

albie_123 said:

Well, to be honest, the discussion on leaders was one of the most in depth and lengthy disussions this mod has had (Leaders: Part 1 with ~11,000 views has more views than any other non-stickied thread, and Leaders: Part 2 has another 8000) and to have to repeat the whole thing again after only just starting to implement it into GaK is a bit of a slap in the face, especially when most of the effects are still just as balanced and relevant.

You are correct in that some Civs could now be enhanced with the new features though.

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Yeah, I'd start from the GEM design in most cases.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487154

Obvious ones where the GEM version probably aren't appropriate are France (the BNW tourism model seems interesting and so we shouldn't immediately reject it), Arabia (an obvious candidate for trade routes), anything that affects culture (Greece, Japan, polynesia).

The Shoshone of BNW clash strongly with the Russians and Americans of BNW, but I agree they could be changed. They'd fit with a "double yields from Natural Wonders"

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Natural wonder bonuses is weak and a bit lame.
I don't think they really clash with the GEM Americans, which is quite different to the vanilla version. [BNW Shoshone is massively >>> Americans.]

Ahriman said:

Yeah, I'd start from the GEM design in most cases.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487154

Obvious ones where the GEM version probably aren't appropriate are France (the tourism model seems interesting), Arabia (an obvious candidate for trade routes), anything that affects culture (Greece, Japan, polynesia).


Natural wonder bonuses is weak and a bit lame.
I don't think they really clash with the GEM Americans, which is quite different to the vanilla version. [BNW Shoshone is massively >>> Americans.]

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For some Vanilla leaders Gem changes are good, (America,Germany) However, BNW changed a few like with France and Arabia.

I think we should take Thal's very nice spreadsheet that contains basically all results from the previous discussions as a start.
Then we should divide the Civs in 2 groups: Those that have nice, well-working, flavourful concepts and those that haven't (either because they've never had one or because BnW changed things too much).

If we focus our discussion on the second group and take the first one as mostly granted, we should save a lot of time.

Thal, maybe you should make this split? You have both the biggest authority and also the best insight which effects are more or less hard to implement into your current mod. I don't think you need to waste more than 10 minutes of thinking on it, we just need some starting point that isn't a blank sheet of paper.

I think we should take Thal's very nice spreadsheet that contains basically all results from the previous discussions as a start.
Then we should divide the Civs in 2 groups: Those that have nice, well-working, flavourful concepts and those that haven't (either because they've never had one or because BnW changed things too much).

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From the GEM design: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487154
I would say:

Solid design:
Byzantium
Carthage
Huns
America
China
Egypt
Inca
India
Iroquois
Mongolia
Siam

Moderate design, but no urgent need for changes:
Austria
Celts
Maya
Aztec
Babylon
England
Korea
Persia
Russia

Need for changes or discussion (either to BNW values or something else):
Ethiopia (concept probably ok, but gold boosts need to be evaluated)
Netherlands (naval trade potential? East India Company now exists in BNW)
Sweden (gold from farms doesn't work for BNW)
Arabia (trade routes)
Denmark (culture from Jelling Stones is an issue)
France (BNW version is interesting)
Germany (consensus never reached)
Greece (culture per city issue)
Japan (culture from dojo re-examined; felt weak in GEM)
Ottomans (gold affected by economy changes)
Polynesia (culture economy issues)
Rome (there seems to be less conquest in BNW, vanilla UA might be better)
Songhai (no consensus on GEM version, vanguard issues?)
Spain (gold economy issues)

I haven't played any of the new factions enough to get a feel for them. Poland feels like it might be too strong though, if we boost policies.

I'd move one category up the Maya (even if they are strong, the design works), Aztecs (you think the culture is too much?), Babylon and Korea. The rest down to the other category, two are enough And keep the new ones off the table for the moment (even though I agree with the comment on Poland above).

I'd move one category up the Maya (even if they are strong, the design works), Aztecs (you think the culture is too much?), Babylon and Korea.

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I have them there because I think they're a bit boring or have poor synergy.

The rest down to the other category

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But I don't think Persia, Russia, England, Austria are particularly in need of changes. Save the bottom category for the actual problem civs.

Arabia got changed for the betterin BNW, it's UA got new parts relatingbtottade routes in it.

Well I'd disagree with the majority of your 2nd category but your 3rd category is pretty spot on.

Well I'd disagree with the majority of your 2nd category

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You disagree that they are basically ok to leave alone for now and think they should be changed?
Or you disagree that their design is only moderate and think they are awesome, and should not be changed?

Second, in almost every case. Korea is one of the most interesting and fun civs to play in GEM, in my humble opinion!

Only Russia, Celts and Austria I would agree deserve their spot but like you pointed out, they're not pressing.

Tomice said:

I think we should take Thal's very nice spreadsheet that contains basically all results from the previous discussions as a start.
Then we should divide the Civs in 2 groups: Those that have nice, well-working, flavourful concepts and those that haven't (either because they've never had one or because BnW changed things too much).

If we focus our discussion on the second group and take the first one as mostly granted, we should save a lot of time.

Thal, maybe you should make this split? You have both the biggest authority and also the best insight which effects are more or less hard to implement into your current mod. I don't think you need to waste more than 10 minutes of thinking on it, we just need some starting point that isn't a blank sheet of paper.

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Concur. I'd also agree that anyone who has to program the changes should weigh in on how fast or simple it is that they could make some of the adjustments. I can speak to some that are basically pure data edits, just strengthening or adding a unit or changing a building, but others are more complicated.

Ahead that, I'd say these are the ones that would need some work or adjustment because of changes in BNW

France, obviously. It's possible the UA we had in mind would work okay, but I'd like to see how the new one works out.
Arabs, obviously. The new UA is basically parts of the old GEM one made active instead of passive.
Germany, too many ideas were in motion, and prototypes are, basically, where the Terracotta came out. Panzer looks okay.
Dutch
Ottomans. With actual trade routes in the game, it might make sense to do something with those here instead of the tribute system (better routes with minor civs?, better internal routes of production/food?). I liked the concept, but it might be really hard to balance or implement?
Romans: They basically stole the conquest UA for a new civ anyway. Forum seems fine to encourage expansion. Legion seems fine. The old UA might work fine. But the conquest incentives were nice.
Songhai: I didn't really care for the gem design. It's possible that faster units is a good or decent UA in some way but I'm not in the camp that thinks so with ranged units.
Ethiopia: gold bonus wasn't really fleshed out.
Sweden: Seemed incompletely fleshed out on the university bonus (a few extra science per turn?), not sure how the farm bonus works with the new economy.

One or both of Sweden and Germany could maybe use a diplomatic effect. Dutch seems a no-brainer for a trade route effect.

America would have to actually conform to the listed design; there was always this renegade attempt to make them have excellent settlers.

Minor: adjustments to culture or gold from
Aztecs
Greeks
Danes
Spain
Japan*
Polynesia

*I'd point out that Japan's Dojo is listed as XP per turn. I'm not sure that's much stronger (basically means you'll have excellent archers and crossbowmen). "Better strategics" could mean lots of things (extra production or extra production and culture?, etc), and would be the part in need of looking into.

There are some civs that could receive an ideology related bonus on their UA:

- America(its UA can give a bonus on tourism generation,although simple and bland tourism or cultural pressure bonus should be avoided at all costs);
- China(its UA can give extra resistance against cultural pressure,like lower unhapiness penalties);
- Denmark(during the Cold war,they maintained a stable relationship with both sides);
- Germany(I'm not sure about which kind of bonus would work here);

I'm looking forward to creating leader bonuses connected to the new gameplay effects. I think something like extra diplomats at the World Congress is an obvious and interesting bonus that would allow the leader to dominate the congress for its first era (until citystates come into power). The most fun way to do it would reduce the "making introductions" time of diplomats lower than the standard 5 turns, allowing a leader to bribe more people on the congress.

I'm happy to see several of my favorite ideas from December as abilities for leaders now. The Shoshone have the extra-territory idea I came up with for Russia, Assyria has the tech-stealing concept invented for Rome, Indonesia's ability is very similar to Carthaginian unique harbors, and so on. I didn't ever get around to implementing ideas like those, so it's nice to see them done now. I might rearrange a few the bonuses to fit the historical research I've done.

There's room to create some similar, but different varieties of these. Indonesia's 2 free luxuries for the first 3 non-continent cities is similar to Carthage's unique luxury from harbors, but would play out very differently. It's easy to trade away the 3 luxury types as Indonesia, while Carthage would have more challenge with a larger quantity of a single type, though Carthage would have more of an advantage with a large quantity of trading partners.

One easy way to make Poland more interesting is a free Great Writer per era instead of a free policy. Great Writers can give us a free policy, or create a great work, giving us a choice. This is basically the UA I came up with for France last year. On a side note, I think the French Chateaus are fun. The french UA is dully passive, but the chateaus make up for it.

@Ahriman
Japan's defining characteristic in GEM is their troops earn experience in peacetime. I don't care how we implement that, so long as they get that unique feature.

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I listed below some leaders I had most difficulty designing, along with several ideas for BWN:

Germany - extra World Congress diplomats so we can dominate congress as a military leader (normally difficult)
Netherlands - sea trade bonus obviously
Celts - religion affects world congress voting influence?
Ethiopia - Spice Market gives some trade bonus
Ottomans - superior internal trade routes, representing their advanced administrative organization and vassal tribute (Yay! finally a UA I feel happy about for the Ottomans! I've been searching for something for them for three years now. )

The french UA is dully passive

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It's not quite so passive as it looks, because there can be some micromanagement in trading artworks to maximize the theme bonuses.

One easy way to make Poland more interesting is a free Great Writer per era instead of a free policy. Great Writers can give us a free policy, or create a great work, giving us a choice.

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I don't think that the problem is that Poland isn't interesting or is insufficiently flexible - you can use the free policies however you like, for any strategy, so they already have a lot of flexibility. The problem is that they're probably too powerful, getting a whole extra tree of social policies. They're already on the high side in vanilla, but if we boost up policy power by eliminating the duds then it gets even worse.

Japan's defining characteristic in GEM is their troops earn experience in peacetime. I don't care how we implement that, so long as they get that unique feature.

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I had thought they still had culture on luxuries from the dojo.
But peacetime experience still isn't very interesting, and military civ/peacetime bonus isn't very useful.

The other problems with Japan are:
a) When they changed the combat system to halve the damage penalty for being injured, Japan's UA went from a significant combat advantage to a trivial one.
b) UU strategic resource units are something of a problem, and the Samurai wasn't actually that much better than the Longsword.
Maybe we could give them one of the unique Kris abilities or something, rather than a generic promotion that doesn't help at all if you upgrade from a warrior or swordsmen that already has shock?
We couldn't do that before because of the hardcoded limit on promotions meant we didn't have space, but now we do.

Celts - religion affects world congress voting influence?

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Not sure that this is very flavorful. The problem with celts wasn't their UA, it was the lackluster UU and UB.

Ethiopia - Spice Market gives some trade bonus

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Maybe, but I think we need to be careful about having too many trade civs. Morocco, Arabs, Netherlands, Venice already have trade route bonuses.

Ottomans - superior internal trade routes, representing their advanced administrative organization and vassal tribute

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I could see that working, I like it. Hard to balance though!

Samurai was up to 30 in GEM. Longswords were ~22-23? I'd say they were fine strength wise. Plus promotions on the Samurai for free (granted, you'd often upgrade to them and the free promotions would be useless).

A unique promotion should be an interesting effect if that's the remaining issue.

I do like internal trade route bonuses for Ottomans as an idea. The trade-off of not getting gold from outside is already something to balance it against. I suppose the worry would be wonder hogging.

Writers would tone down the Poland power issue on policies.

Concur the problem on the Celts was more the UU/UB. Somebody having a strong religion interaction on the WC sounds like a promising effort, but it doesn't make much sense for them.