Has Firaxis finally learned to balance the game?

I don't think it will be that hard to get the basics of balance down. Yes fine tuning all the civs is always a long debate even among MP players.

1. Balanced maps/starting locations and resources are the answer to this just like it was in Civ4.

2. Natural Wonders will be turned off.

3. City states will be turned off.

4. Barbs will be turned off.

5. Wonders are not that often a factor, except for specific ones for a specific scenario/era start, we do ban specific wonders in these situations if they are unbalancing. But in general when you are trying to expand and build an empire so you have the resources to go to war if you want, wonders generally waste hammers unless they have a very good benifit.

6. This is hard to tell at this point, we will have to wait til the demo and test the happiness vs expansion in the early game.

The most important thing for MP is that we start talking about balance right away so we can do a mod before Xmas hopefully. But this has always been the case, it took a few months to delve into Civ4 when it came out and make game changes that were needed.

CS
 
Well then you're not complaining that the game is not balanced for MP, you are complaining that the game is not balanced for non standard settings. A game can never be balanced for both standard and non standard settings; that's why those standards are non standard. If you decide to play an always peace game, in either MP or SP, then a huge number of the civs will be underpowered/useless. But that isn't really the point, if you make a decision to play the game under very specific circumstances, then you should expect it to be unbalanced.

But I understand your point that you are not so much complaining as stating that MP is a very different game. But I think thats more because MP players want something very different out of a game compared to SP players. Its not the fact that its MP per se that unbalances it.
 
Well what is "standard" is of course a matter of opinon. What I have stated is the Standard for competitive MP. So yes in that vein the game is not yet balanced.

Yes this is also the case for any number of sub-games as you have stated. But like OCC for MP, we just make special rules or even a mod and all is good.

CS
 
Standard is not a matter of opinion, it is what the game is designed to handle. It is the game without any of the advanced settings checked.

But yes, being able to mod the game to shift the 'centre of balance' to be with different settings and effectively create a new 'standard' is the fairest and best way to do things.
 
Lord Olleus said:
Standard is not a matter of opinion, it is what the game is designed to handle. It is the game without any of the advanced settings checked.

But yes, being able to mod the game to shift the 'centre of balance' to be with different settings and effectively create a new 'standard' is the fairest and best way to do things.
Click to expand...

Well in my experince as a beta tester, IMHO what you describe is the "default" setting, not a standard game, I and very confident that if you ask Jon Shafer or any other dev about what the "standard" game is they will tell you there is no such thing, that the civ experience is what ever the player wants it to be, and that is what makes Civ different from other games, it does not shoe horn players into playing the game the way the designers envisioned it, but can be played the way each individual player wants it to be.

Yes game mechanics frame this experience, but in Civ is is much less restricting than other games, and whether or not a check box is checked or unchecked by *default* in no way is a statement by the designers that one settings is a standard that a player should or should not follow as a path in the game.

CS
 
CanuckSoldier said:
Well in my experince as a beta tester, IMHO what you describe is the "default" setting, not a standard game, I and very confident that if you ask Jon Shafer or any other dev about what the "standard" game is they will tell you there is no such thing
Click to expand...

Just playing with terms. Some settings break balance (barbarians, Pangaea, lack of city-states), some - not (map size, speed). That's it.
 
stealth_nsk said:
Just playing with terms. Some settings break balance (barbarians, Pangaea, lack of city-states), some - not (map size, speed). That's it.
Click to expand...

Not really, in fact what we are really discussing is the metagame, and there is no right or wrong answer to that. And for that matter what breaks balance is a matter of what game you as an individual are playing. For me as a MP player, playing without barbs, for example, doesn't break the balance it improves it, for a SP player it may effect balance but that also depends on the individual players expectations for the game, and that is as individual as fingerprints are......

CS
 
CanuckSoldier said:
And for that matter what breaks balance is a matter of what game you as an individual are playing. For me as a MP player, playing without barbs, for example, doesn't break the balance it improves it, for a SP player it may effect balance but that also depends on the individual players expectations for the game, and that is as individual as fingerprints are.....S
Click to expand...

I'm saying about a little different thing.
1. What exactly we balance? We balance specializations. (there is map balance as well, but that's out of this discussion).
2. Specializations rely on different aspects of the game.
3. There could be settings affecting these aspects, making some specializations more or less useful.

So specializations are balanced only in subset of settings.

If you want specializations to be always balanced, you have 2 ways:
1. Do not touch areas affected by settings. Don't rely on sea, barbarians, etc. This way includes removing a lot of abilities like Aztec (relies on barbarians for early development) or Roman (relies on number of cities).
2. Limit the settings, so player will not be able to switch barbarians off, for example.

For me both ways are much more painful than just having some set of "standard" settings, for which the game is balanced.

Also for hardcore players I'd add "Remove UA, UU and UB" setting. Just for perfect balance. But this surely could be done with a mod.
 
CanuckSoldier said:
Well in my experince as a beta tester, IMHO what you describe is the "default" setting, not a standard game, I and very confident that if you ask Jon Shafer or any other dev about what the "standard" game is they will tell you there is no such thing, that the civ experience is what ever the player wants it to be, and that is what makes Civ different from other games, it does not shoe horn players into playing the game the way the designers envisioned it, but can be played the way each individual player wants it to be.

Yes game mechanics frame this experience, but in Civ is is much less restricting than other games, and whether or not a check box is checked or unchecked by *default* in no way is a statement by the designers that one settings is a standard that a player should or should not follow as a path in the game.

CS
Click to expand...

Fine.
The game should be balanced for default settings. Anyone playing non default settings should not expect it to be perfectly balanced, as it is impossible for the game to be simultaneously balanced for all non default settings.
 
CanuckSoldier said:
Not really, in fact what we are really discussing is the metagame, and there is no right or wrong answer to that. And for that matter what breaks balance is a matter of what game you as an individual are playing. For me as a MP player, playing without barbs, for example, doesn't break the balance it improves it, for a SP player it may effect balance but that also depends on the individual players expectations for the game, and that is as individual as fingerprints are......

CS
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure people have just been making the argument that checking no barbarians unbalances the game because the germans and ottomans would have gimped UAs.

You're contradicting yourself. Balance has nothing to do with expectations. Balance is a state of game in which the winner is determined solely by skill. Hockey is a game which is almost perfectly balanced (as are most sports).

Re: standard settings. I'd assume that the default settings are how the game is intended to run considering two civs have UAs entirely dependent on one of the boxes not being checked.
 
Lord Olleus said:
Fine.
The game should be balanced for default settings. Anyone playing non default settings should not expect it to be perfectly balanced, as it is impossible for the game to be simultaneously balanced for all non default settings.
Click to expand...

Or you could just select civs carefully to fit your settings. No England, Songhai or Ottomans if you play Pangaea or Archipelago, no Americans if you disable goody huts, no German, Ottoman, Songhai or Aztecs if you disable barbarians.
 
CanuckSoldier said:
3. City states will be turned off.



CS
Click to expand...

If you do that, nobody would be able to win a diplo, because every civ votes for itself.
So, when you would turn city-states off, diplo victory would be automatically been disabled.
If that's right, probably turn off city states option won't exist?:crazyeye:
 
generalwar said:
If you do that, nobody would be able to win a diplo, because every civ votes for itself.
So, when you would turn city-states off, diplo victory would be automatically been disabled.
If that's right, probably turn off city states option won't exist?:crazyeye:
Click to expand...

It does exist. it's confirmed
 
stealth_nsk said:
Or you could just select civs carefully to fit your settings. No England, Songhai or Ottomans if you play Pangaea or Archipelago, no Americans if you disable goody huts, no German, Ottoman, Songhai or Aztecs if you disable barbarians.
Click to expand...

Yes just because they designed some Civ leaders with AI centric traits doesn't mean the game as a whole was designed to require you play with those settings to be balanced. It is just an option the player has.

CS
 
generalwar said:
If you do that, nobody would be able to win a diplo, because every civ votes for itself.
So, when you would turn city-states off, diplo victory would be automatically been disabled.
If that's right, probably turn off city states option won't exist?:crazyeye:
Click to expand...

lol, don't worry in MP diplomacy is handed in real time, not by a game mechanic, and no one wins a "diplomacy victory" in MP, even in full diplomacy FFA's the results are indicated by the alliances formed and wars won or lost etc, due to the diplomatic dynamics. It can be very rewarding but in the end it is not a victory condition it is a win or loss at the end of the game agree by all the players.

CS
 
StStutter said:
I'm pretty sure people have just been making the argument that checking no barbarians unbalances the game because the germans and ottomans would have gimped UAs.

You're contradicting yourself. Balance has nothing to do with expectations. Balance is a state of game in which the winner is determined solely by skill. Hockey is a game which is almost perfectly balanced (as are most sports).

Re: standard settings. I'd assume that the default settings are how the game is intended to run considering two civs have UAs entirely dependent on one of the boxes not being checked.
Click to expand...

Well I would agree that balance is skill dependant in MP, but I don't think your fellow SP players will agree that a balanced game is a requirement to show skill against the AI. If that were the case the devs would design the AI to always win and always beat the player if at all possible, and this has never been the case as clearly defined by Sid in his GDC presentation.

CS
 
stealth_nsk said:
I'm saying about a little different thing.
1. What exactly we balance? We balance specializations. (there is map balance as well, but that's out of this discussion).
2. Specializations rely on different aspects of the game.
3. There could be settings affecting these aspects, making some specializations more or less useful.

So specializations are balanced only in subset of settings.

If you want specializations to be always balanced, you have 2 ways:
1. Do not touch areas affected by settings. Don't rely on sea, barbarians, etc. This way includes removing a lot of abilities like Aztec (relies on barbarians for early development) or Roman (relies on number of cities).
2. Limit the settings, so player will not be able to switch barbarians off, for example.

For me both ways are much more painful than just having some set of "standard" settings, for which the game is balanced.

Also for hardcore players I'd add "Remove UA, UU and UB" setting. Just for perfect balance. But this surely could be done with a mod.
Click to expand...

Yes in Civ3 and Civ4 we had "Vanilla" mods in MP were all civs are equal so all you are chosing is a flag really.

And I agree that you can't balance the game for every specialized sub game. However, I don't consider MP a sub game like OCC is or a Vanilla mod etc, it is a game played by a significant group of Civ players, and therefore deserves at least some effort to make the core game balanced enough so it is fun for that group. And I do beleive that you can have a core game that is balanced for SP and MP within a reasonable window of features. This is why there is an Advanced Settings area after all.

CS
 
CanuckSoldier said:
Well I would agree that balance is skill dependant in MP, but I don't think your fellow SP players will agree that a balanced game is a requirement to show skill against the AI. If that were the case the devs would design the AI to always win and always beat the player if at all possible, and this has never been the case as clearly defined by Sid in his GDC presentation.

CS
Click to expand...

People still win in SP though and this is because they are better civ players than the AI. Occasionally it is because they chose civs with powerful traits and played against ones with weaker traits, this is an example of imbalance.

The devs don't design cut throat AIs because that would be less fun, not because it wouldn't be balanced. The AI has absolutely nothing to do with balance. A game that is balanced is one in which overall, no civ (due to its unique traits) has a better chance at winning the game than another. The fact is, civ puts fun gameplay ahead of balance.

Starcraft (2) is a game that has achieved fun through balance. One of the greatest things about that game is one could play 3 different races in completely different styles, none of which handicaps the player.
 
CanuckSoldier said:
Yes in Civ3 and Civ4 we had "Vanilla" mods in MP were all civs are equal so all you are chosing is a flag really.

And I agree that you can't balance the game for every specialized sub game. However, I don't consider MP a sub game like OCC is or a Vanilla mod etc, it is a game played by a significant group of Civ players, and therefore deserves at least some effort to make the core game balanced enough so it is fun for that group. And I do beleive that you can have a core game that is balanced for SP and MP within a reasonable window of features. This is why there is an Advanced Settings area after all.

CS
Click to expand...

Completely agree. I think the sheer lack of balance so far has led people to believe balancing a game for SP and MP is "impossible". It's not. In fact it's a lot easier than in games where races/nations are unique unlike here.
 
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