v152.11 Balance

[Txurce]

The mod is working really well at this point. I played Korea with four cities (23-30) for science, due to a query in another thread about tall science. I won in t287 on Emperor, with science peaking at about 3700bpt.

It was an odd game in that there were a lot of militaristic civs. As a result, there were only three AI civs left at the end: Songhai, Spain and Denmark. They are all doing better, playing aggressively with strong mixed armies, but tend to go broke. Late in the game first-place Denmark had -1200gpt! I was buying RA's by paying for both sides.

Using a build-GM strategy, I controlled all the CS for most of the game. This indirectly led to my finishing with over 2100cpt, and 5+ trees finished. I bring this up because it reminded me again that it's just too easy to rack up culture. (Great Works only worsens the problem.) If this mod is supposed to be about choice, then I shouldn't do so well in Culture when focusing completely on science.

How about making CV's harder by just reducing the output of all culture buildings as well as SP's, each by a little bit?

[Seek]

Originally Posted by Txurce

How about making CV's harder by just reducing the output of all culture buildings as well as SP's, each by a little bit?

That could work, but may disturb the tenuous yield equality balance that I think we have achieved to a large degree.

Other alternatives:

• Raise the culture cost exponent as I suggested in other threads (would affect later policy costs much more than early ones)
• Make Piety and Enlightenment exclusive again - I'd bet most regular players (whether going tall or wide) pick both almost every game, I certainly do! This is one change that would increase the importance of choice (which is probably more important than just "more choice") and make the game more interesting.

[Zaldron]

Originally Posted by Txurce

Using a build-GM strategy, I controlled all the CS for most of the game. This indirectly led to my finishing with over 2100cpt, and 5+ trees finished. I bring this up because it reminded me again that it's just too easy to rack up culture. (Great Works only worsens the problem.) If this mod is supposed to be about choice, then I shouldn't do so well in Culture when focusing completely on science.

My only question here is that if you're making 2K CPT and a great work is 1K, how many great artists are you getting that it speeds things up more than 2-3 turns? I think great works are woefully underpowered in the current version compared to GM, GS, and GE "bulbs".

[Seek]

Originally Posted by Zaldron

My only question here is that if you're making 2K CPT and a great work is 1K, how many great artists are you getting that it speeds things up more than 2-3 turns? I think great works are woefully underpowered in the current version compared to GM, GS, and GE "bulbs".

Agreed.

[Txurce]

Originally Posted by Seek

That could work, but that may disturb the tenuous yield equality balance that I think we have achieved to a large degree.

Other alternatives: raise the culture cost exponent as I suggested in other threads, or to just make Piety and Enlightenment exclusive again - I'd bet most regular players (whether going tall or wide) pick both almost every game, I certainly do! This is one change that would increase the importance of choice (which is probably more important than just "more choice") and make the game more interesting.

Something should be done, because it's very easy to have a head of steam snowball into an across the board dominating performance (I also had over 14000g in the bank, thanks to SP-boosted multiple GPs.)

Although I rarely even dip into Piety (and didn't this game), I am all in favor of mutually exclusive trees. In this case more choice = less strategy.

I used to think that raising the exponent would make the game less interesting, but having seen how much culture I've been piling up lately, agree that it's probably the simpler approach.

Could you explain why toning down all the culture producers a little bit would upset a balance?

[Txurce]

Originally Posted by Zaldron

My only question here is that if you're making 2K CPT and a great work is 1K, how many great artists are you getting that it speeds things up more than 2-3 turns? I think great works are woefully underpowered in the current version compared to GM, GS, and GE "bulbs".

I don't know how much culture GA's give you earlier in the game, when I didn't have 2K cpt. But to your point, I didn't say Great Works should be nerfed - just that they contribute to the problem... which they do. (I also don't think GWs should be nerfed.)

[Seek]

Originally Posted by Txurce

Could you explain why toning down all the culture producers a little bit would upset a balance?

Not to be pedantic, but I said "may" not "would". In any case, lowering culture producers would make culture more valuable relative to other yields, thus potentially unbalancing it (I'm not saying that having culture be more valuable would necessarily be a bad thing, though). Then there's the case of deciding where to lower the yield and by how much, which might unbalance policies or buildings in terms of power. It just seems like a complicated method of slowing culture while raising the exponent would achieve the same effect, I think (especially since you were making such high CPT but didn't take Piety!). Next game I'll give a 2.4 exponent a whirl and see how it is, perhaps you may want to try it as well?

[Txurce]

Thanks for the explanation. I always have a hard time with the real-world application of supply-and-demand, because in Civ I'm not sure it works the same way. But raising the exponent is definitely the way to go first. Tell me how I could raise it to 2.4, and I'll try it in my next game.

[Seek]

In the Policies folder open VEP_General.xml, the policy cost exponent is the the third entry.

[Thalassicus]

I've applied Seek's suggestion.

Originally Posted by Txurce

Late in the game first-place Denmark had -1200gpt!

I wonder how it could get so low? I might need to add the counterpoint to the AI purchase system... an AI sell system. It seems like the vanilla code doesn't manage gold well at all.

[Txurce]

That looks good, Thal. Slowing it down more later makes particular sense, given how many positive modifiers there are by then (and how powerful those policies are).

Regarding the AI gpt gold issue, they all seem to slip into the negative at times, but then so do we. The problem seems worse with militaristic civs, who probably have less income, but more importantly blow wads on soldiers. Note that Denmark was in the lead in my game, and we were in the 250+ turn range. By then his army was probably insanely big. And because they were all militaristic, no one had any gold with which to bu something one of them would try to sell, anyway!

[gdwitt]

Yes, by turn 200, all the AI in my latest game were -200 or more GPT.
It was a result of their huge standing armies. I had a larger army than usual, but they had a unit on every tile in their zones.
True of even Harun..
Darius was the exception with 22,000 gold.
He couldn't spend it after CAtherine stole all his bases.
It was odd, I offered to sell him cities, and even founded new ones for him.
He would only give me 45 gold for a size 2 city.
Then at the end he gave Catherine all his money for a peace resolution. I missed the negotiation on that.

I like the policy exponent solution. I feel it should be easier to get policies early. It's too hard now. I build 3 teams of 4 scouts and run around killing barbs with honor to keep up with Darius's culture advances.

[Txurce]

Most civs offer something negligible for a size-2 city. The trick is to sell it, then sell one that's contiguous. The sale price goes up exponentially, and continues to do so with each succeeding city. I like it because it makes sense (to a degree).

[Txurce]

I'm looking forward to v153.2. My opponent in a hotseat game using v151.x won a CV in 190 turns on Emperor, reaching only Archeology on Industrial.

[Thalassicus]

Speaking of hotseat games, is there anything I need to do to help with that?

[Seek]

Gedemon's Custom Advanced Setup Screen is currently compatible with VEM, so aside from inclusion I don't think there's anything needed. Txurce has more experience than I, he might have some suggestions.

[Txurce]

I just tested Gedemon's mod playing Single Player.

It loads via his custom screen, but the game plays as a normal VE game otherwise.

Also, reloading works from the main screen, as in VE. When actually playing Hotseat, reloading must be done from desktop, and the save file is in its own custom screen.