Balance and Gameplay discussion.

If the North Korean special forces have the same training and selection criteria as the small groups of special forces in western countries and still half of their larg military consists of these forces then their country must consist of super men. :eek:

;)

You're using 2 different definitions of special forces.

Maybe- but the military officially designates them as SOF as well. Even though they have a ridiculous proportion to conventional forces. My gripe about the upgrades is based on US training standards- that conventional training and unconventional training are simply too different to realistically represent an instant cross-train by using a little money.
 
I have a question about the enlightened trait. It was nerfed from 15% to 10%, but I am having some trouble seeing the balance issue. It might be due to my play style (generally that's what I find), but in comparison to financial:

On a plot with no gold, they are even.
On any plot with more than 1 gold financial wins (50% increase in a 2 gold plot to 10% in a theoretical 10 gold plot).
Each plot with only 1 gold is a .1 advantage for enlightened. However, the number of these in an 'average' city is not likely to result in more than a +1 beaker increase - offset by a single 2 gold tile.

Anything that generates pure beakers (specialists) will benefit from the trait, as will the base 8 gold from the palace (+.8 from the start of the game).

Is it a case where playing with a bunch of settled scientists breaks the game, or is there another component that I'm missing? Financial has the additional advantage of being flexible - culture, espionage, gold, or science...
 
Well theres lots of reasons that enlightened is so good. Most of it is how much it dominates the early game. Your above examples are also assuming your running 100% science. Alot of the time you wont be so, financial is actually a little worse than your example shows.

Financial takes a good while to start going. It is quite a while before you can even start making cottages and even longer till they mature. Right off the bat Enlightened is giving you 10% more science. So at the beginning of the game, when there are no other science booster buildings involved, you will have studied 11 techs in the same amount of turns it would take you to study 10 with any non-elightened trait. It gets even worse when you start getting enough population to start assigning scientists. Scientists are a huge boost early in the game, even better in than cottages.

Later in the game the extra 10% starts to get dilluted when you have other buildings like libraries and Universities. When you have those two buildings in a city, an extra 10% tacked on to their 75%, cuts its effectivenes by like 40%. But the damage is already done. By that time you can be 5 techs ahead by playing at the exact pace of a non-enlightened AI.

Straight science boosting traits have always been a problem. With financial you have to commit to building tons of cottages, so your lacking in other fields. With enlightned you can do whatever you want and still be ahead. Its the ultimate hybrid economy trait. And thats just its main ability. The culture part totally rocks. And you get a couple of cheaper buildings. It may not be the best trait, but its pretty damn close.
 
I have a question about the enlightened trait. It was nerfed from 15% to 10%, but I am having some trouble seeing the balance issue. It might be due to my play style (generally that's what I find), but in comparison to financial:

On a plot with no gold, they are even.
On any plot with more than 1 gold financial wins (50% increase in a 2 gold plot to 10% in a theoretical 10 gold plot).
Each plot with only 1 gold is a .1 advantage for enlightened. However, the number of these in an 'average' city is not likely to result in more than a +1 beaker increase - offset by a single 2 gold tile.

Anything that generates pure beakers (specialists) will benefit from the trait, as will the base 8 gold from the palace (+.8 from the start of the game).

Is it a case where playing with a bunch of settled scientists breaks the game, or is there another component that I'm missing? Financial has the additional advantage of being flexible - culture, espionage, gold, or science...

First of all, the financial trait shouldn't be the minimum to compare all other traits to. In every poll on this forum about the most powerful trait, it was voted as such, mostly with overwhelming numbers. Of course, I'm in favour of trying to equalise the traits. But if a trait cannot compete with one of its additions with the only effect of the financial trait, then that doesn't make it underpowered.

There are 2 main reasons that the enlightened trait is a lot better than you make it seem. One is mentioned by achilleszero: it has far more bonuses than just the +10% science. Especially the production bonus for building various science buildings is very powerful. It means a lot of hammers that your science cities never have to spend on constructing these buildings and thus a faster development of your science cities.
The other is related to the sources of commerce. You make it seem that it's 99% based on 2+ commerce tiles which just isn't true. A small part is based on 1 commerce tiles, depending on playing style a small up to a huge part is based on specialists and a very significant part is produced by trade. All of this commerce and science is effected by the enlightened trait but not by the financial trait.

Achilleszero also has a good point that the enlightened trait will have its effect independent of the playing style of the player and this effect will kick in directly at the start of the game while financial requires that the player focusses on developing 2+ commerce tiles.

Well theres lots of reasons that enlightened is so good. Most of it is how much it dominates the early game. Your above examples are also assuming your running 100% science. Alot of the time you wont be so, financial is actually a little worse than your example shows.

:confused:

This is an argument to show that financial is stronger but in some weird logic step, you make it seem to be an argument to show that enlightened is stronger.

Financial applies to the base commerce output of tiles. A 1 commerce gain can be fully applied to science (if you so desire). It's not so that if the science slider were at a certain percentage that it would have to remain at that percentage when more commerce is produced. The slider can be shifted so that an equal amount of commerce is used for gold and the extra commerce is used for science.

Enlightened only applies to the science output so it depends how big share of your commerce you can use for science. If 50% goes to science, then the effect on total commerce output is just +5%.
 
:confused:

This is an argument to show that financial is stronger but in some weird logic step, you make it seem to be an argument to show that enlightened is stronger.

:lol:. That was part of an edit at 1 AM in the morning. Now that I read it it doesnt make much sense in a post where I was trying to show the superiority of enlightened. That should have been its own paragraph and had 4 more sentences folowing it. Just ingnore that part of my post.
 
Hi,

I play random civs and I cringe when I get Iroquois because of longhouses. Culture on a barracks is great, and so is the priest, but the spy is horrible. It adds so much micromanagement to the early game that I can't stand the civ at all. I know fans of scientists probably think the same thing about priests, but I personally don't mind them because you see them early on with temples anyway. Adding an early priest doesn't create as much additional micromanagement as adding an early spy. Plus I'm a fan of priests, both for their usefulness in vanilla and because the jump to Monarchy is so important in RevDCM.

I suggest simply removing the spy. Longhouses are fine with just the culture and priest in my opinion. You could also add something to make an early Great Spy more useful, like letting them create an additional special building that decreases RevIdx in all cities by like... 4. That'd be nice for early warmongering. Of course this will all be moot when/if BULL is merged with RevDCM, since we'll be able to easily prevent the city governor from using spies.
 
Of course this will all be moot when/if BULL is merged with RevDCM, since we'll be able to easily prevent the city governor from using spies.

O.o. There is going to be something to disable the adding on of specialists? Awesome :). I've always wanted that (and don't know why Firaxis didn't incorporate it).
 
O.o. There is going to be something to disable the adding on of specialists? Awesome :). I've always wanted that (and don't know why Firaxis didn't incorporate it).
That's my understanding. I'm not 100% sure, since the BUG team has been pretty quiet about features.
 
Hi,
I play random civs and I cringe when I get Iroquois because of longhouses. Culture on a barracks is great, and so is the priest, but the spy is horrible.

Well what about the people who want the spy specialist? Its not fair to remove that just because you hate spies and like priests. Spies have thier uses.

It shouldnt be about wether you like them or not, but more about whether two types of specialists is too powerful (no idea if it is or isnt). Less micromanagement is a good thing But Super spies is part of the mod and you need to have the option for more spies somewhere.
 
:lol:. That was part of an edit at 1 AM in the morning. Now that I read it it doesnt make much sense in a post where I was trying to show the superiority of enlightened. That should have been its own paragraph and had 4 more sentences folowing it. Just ingnore that part of my post.

Been there, done that. Some things are just far more logical at 1 AM.. ;)
 
Well what about the people who want the spy specialist? Its not fair to remove that just because you hate spies and like priests. Spies have thier uses.

It shouldnt be about wether you like them or not, but more about whether two types of specialists is too powerful (no idea if it is or isnt). Less micromanagement is a good thing But Super spies is part of the mod and you need to have the option for more spies somewhere.
My point is that the added micro required outweighs the benefit of the spy. Obviously the building is technically better in the mid/late game with the spy, but I think it makes the civ much less fun to play.
 
My point is that the added micro required outweighs the benefit of the spy. Obviously the building is technically better in the mid/late game with the spy, but I think it makes the civ much less fun to play.

I agree with Achilles that it's nice to have the option for the spy, but I see where you're coming from, too. If it bothers you quite a bit, you can always do this:

Go into the LoR mod folder, then: Assets -> XML -> Buildings -> Civ4BuildingsInfos.xml. Do a search (ctrl + f) for longhouse. Under that entry find and remove:

Code:
				<SpecialistCount>
					<SpecialistType>SPECIALIST_SPY</SpecialistType>
					<iSpecialistCount>1</iSpecialistCount>
				</SpecialistCount>

This should, I believe, get rid of the added spy.
 
Hi,

I play random civs and I cringe when I get Iroquois because of longhouses. Culture on a barracks is great, and so is the priest, but the spy is horrible. It adds so much micromanagement to the early game that I can't stand the civ at all. I know fans of scientists probably think the same thing about priests, but I personally don't mind them because you see them early on with temples anyway.

I have played Iroquois and found the longhouse very intresting. It give you the option to play a few early great spyes, and since they are really effective BEFORE democracy is discovered, the sooner you have them the better. In fact, I would like a 2-spy longhouse qith no priest, but this will nerf the longhouse since it leave her flexibility.

A note about the Iro. UU: it is a nice one, but it have some problems: first it die pretty fast if you play with "minor civs". Second his spec forces upgrade is never useful - you can't simply produce 12 of them and then park somewere until laser is discovered... just for saving some "special" promotions.

It could be an idea to remove the upgrade and give him woodsman and guerrilla I, maybe at the expenses of morale?


Another thing that bugs me to no end - Scout can now attack. this mean that sometimes you keep your worker undefended because "there's nobody aroud" and suddenly a scout pop out of nowere and kill him. Now, protecting workers is a must, I usually do it, but there are times when you must choice between defenting that pasture-gold-iron-something and your worker.... but the AI alwais know what is defended and undefended [it cheats, amen].
 
Here is my thinking behind your issues. Please feel free to poke holes in the logic, because if it is flawed, I will change it. This is merely to convey the purpose behind them:

Re Mohawk Sentry:
This is designed to be a unique unit like the fast worker. It is not designed to gain you power in the conventional sense. Instead you have the ability to scope out anyone anytime, so long you are not in declared war. It is virutually a spy immune from getting caught, it's reason for not being able to upgrade is so that you may build it up until the end game and be able to keep survailance on rival SoDs at all times with impunity, an ability no other civilization has.
I am aware of the issues with start as minors. I see two solutions to this. The first would be to make it invisible as a covert unit, like special forces, but this brings along with it many issues. The issues are numerous and suffice it to say it would take significant SDK modding to get around, too much for me to consider viable. The second idea I think I will implement is to give the Sentry a +100% defense against Warriors. How does this sound?

Re Scout can attack:
This is just simply to make the early game more interesting, and to put the human at the same disadvantage as the AI has in defending against worker steals. Yep you need to defend your workers. And in old ancient times empires couldn't just send off massive work parties to build roads without military escorts either. Of course gameplay trumps realism, but in this context, the fact it forces humans to defend workers just like the AI has to seems like an improvement in balance.
 
I just noticed something...

"Abu Bakr" is in the list of Great Prophets, which is a little weird. Abu Bakr happened to be in my game, and I was momentarily confused when it said, "Abu Bakr (Great Prophet) has been born in a far away land!"

Also, just in my opinion, I'd give Abu Bakr more Muslim-sounding music (rather than just using Saladin's) since he was a very prominent figure in the Islam religion.
 
I just noticed something...

"Abu Bakr" is in the list of Great Prophets, which is a little weird. Abu Bakr happened to be in my game, and I was momentarily confused when it said, "Abu Bakr (Great Prophet) has been born in a far away land!"

Also El Cid is in the great general list. Thats the problem with having so many leaders. We cut into the list of great people. Like I know berenthor is adding Sargon, he too is a GreatGeneral. It would be nice to replace all the leaders in the GP lists.
 
Hi

I'm playing in the modern era now, and i've just hit corporations in LOR for the first time. I'm trying to figure out the differences between regular and LoR.

The bonus given per resources have changed, and are shown in the pedia. These seem good changes, im running cereals at the moment. The change from 0.75 bonus per resource to 1 seems balanced. I did a count of the resources avaliable on my standard pangea map and decided not to wait for Sids.

What about the minus gold per corperation? Is this new, or just the way it is represented? The -gold which is shown next to the bonus resource doesnt seem to add up with the extra maintainence, where is this deducted from?

Can anyone explain this or am I missing something?
 
I cant recall if coporations have been changed, but I do know that corporations have always scaled with map size in BtS. You'll get a lower bonus per resource on larger map sizes. Could this be what your seeing?

And by minus gold per corporation, do you mean the initial gold it costs when you found a corporation in a new city? Thats always been there too (subtracted from treasury).
 
Here is my thinking behind your issues. Please feel free to poke holes in the logic, because if it is flawed, I will change it. This is merely to convey the purpose behind them:

Re Mohawk Sentry:
This is designed to be a unique unit like the fast worker. It is not designed to gain you power in the conventional sense. Instead you have the ability to scope out anyone anytime, so long you are not in declared war. It is virutually a spy immune from getting caught, it's reason for not being able to upgrade is so that you may build it up until the end game and be able to keep survailance on rival SoDs at all times with impunity, an ability no other civilization has.
I am aware of the issues with start as minors. I see two solutions to this. The first would be to make it invisible as a covert unit, like special forces, but this brings along with it many issues. The issues are numerous and suffice it to say it would take significant SDK modding to get around, too much for me to consider viable. The second idea I think I will implement is to give the Sentry a +100% defense against Warriors. How does this sound?

Re Scout can attack:
This is just simply to make the early game more interesting, and to put the human at the same disadvantage as the AI has in defending against worker steals. Yep you need to defend your workers. And in old ancient times empires couldn't just send off massive work parties to build roads without military escorts either. Of course gameplay trumps realism, but in this context, the fact it forces humans to defend workers just like the AI has to seems like an improvement in balance.

I have played a bit more scouting around with the Mohawk Sentry. It usually ends with a few "must" and a few proper game issues.

1) Micromanagement is now enforced on it. On auto-scout it simply kill himself parking on a flatland near an enemy city/warrior/barbarian. The problem here is that the game pathfinding algorithm, amen to that.

2)Both him and my workers usually die when I gave them an order and then soon thereafter an 1-square-a-turn-enemy move nearby. Sometimes they stop working and give me the control back, sometimes they continue as nothing happened - and die horribly. Never understood why this happens only sometimes.

3) It is estremelly powerful and well thought, it is probably the only scout that I never built out of the starting one.

4) For the civpedia it upgrades to explorer or special force, but in the industrial era I can upgrade it to cavalry [800 gold, LoR_Light]. It is normal or something went wrong? [No, I dind't put any marmalade in the xml files :)]

---

In the end I think the Mohawk Sentry is quite good as it is now. My problems with it were from a willing design that you explained, and once one start to be used to it and look at it as a precise choice from the developers it works fine.



I have some other feedbacks that gave me some thought.

First: the rev sistem make oversea cities a pain unless you give them heavy garrisoning. This is usually not a true problem, but on some maps [arcipelago, terra-like or islands] it make almost impossible to keep them. Do mind, I'm not speaking of oceanic colonies [which I feel is normal] but extremelly nearby ones, like Crete or Sicily or Ireland. I feel the problem lies in the standard-bts colony system, which react in the same way. Of course I don't think it is a needed change, but if you have some info on "how" it works overall the sistem it might be usefull. Simply building stuff to keep them quiet sometimes works and sometimes increase the "colony" penality. Sometimes I have a colony penality to a 2-coast distance from my capital, sometimes none on a fartest continent. And nor Versailles or forbidden Palace help with that. It is possible to make those wonders to work as "capitals"? Thus making such tactical decisions... undestandable? :D

Second: I really like the new steamships and use them often. But I also feel that there are a bit too much of them, it feels... crowded. Usually one end building a lot of stuff that need istant upgrade to the next model. True, it is historically accurate, but gamewise it annoying. Maibe it could be viable to remove a couple of them? The problem begun with Ships of the Line [which one almost never use, along with the ironclad gunboat] and end right before the modern ships [destroyer, battleship]. In-between of them there are a lot of "patchwork fleets"...

Third: submarines. I don't know in multiplayer, but I almost never find them useful in single. Am I wrong or it is a common problem? Also, It's really nice to have scout planes on sea, or some kind of air superiority, but in the end modern fleets are built around battleships... instead of carriers. Most fleets are built only of battleships and destroyers. True, only a few years ago the americans whould have killed for a nice battleship in the arabian gulf for inland bombardment, but for more than 50 years the war at sea was fought... in the air. In civ this never happens. Carriers are a waste of time for the most part - just build destroyers and you're safe from those weak and pesky planes that pose no real treath to your ships. Of course the "very modern" sea wars are accurate once again. Miss'le the enemy to his doom and you're sound and safe.

Fourth and not an actual gameplay thought but a request: in some mods [TAM, for example] there is a desert-promotion that work like wood and hill ones. Usually there are not a lot of deserts in a random game, but in the world replicas there is a LOT of desert. It will be nice to have special troop promotions that works on it. This might be extended to the ice - there is not a lot of tundra and ice usually, but a ice-tundra promotion might be useful on Arboria games or cold settings, let alone man-made scenarios. It will be hard to implement such promotions? [I'm not actually able to do that alone. I can tamper with actual promotions but when it comes to new ones all crash in multiples "somewhere" and no matter how hard I try to fix it it only worsen.]
 
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