Proposed Balances

I

Iberian

Prince
Joined
Aug 14, 2004
Messages
484
I like BNW. What I would like to do is make it better. I am hoping as a community of players come up with some future patch suggestions to submit to Firaxis. Obviously they listen to us and that is a great credit to them.

*Last thing we want here is posts that are either inflaming or argumentative. Constructive is the goal here.


1. Trade Routes-- An awesome addition. Can we make them easier to defend?
- Make it take 2 turns to pillage OR
- Cannot plunder if a combat ship is in range (ex. a 6 movement ship within 6 hex)

2. Warmonger Penalty-- Good tool to help the AI identify who is starting to runaway.
- Lower penalty for retaliatory actions
- Base the calculation on score/military might ratio or a combination thereof

3. Tech Penalty per City-- This is an artificial construct to allow small empires to be equally viable. I don't like this concept. If you can build a large empire you deserve the awards. I am from Civ 1 so I have no sympathy for small empires. Large empires win games and generally works the same in real life. No one is worried if El Salvador is facing economic issues. If China is or Germany people care, governments care.
- Remove the penalty

4. Early Aggression-- Helps control the human player. Removes some fun from the game because of the predictability of the action. In BNW it seems to be really low.
- Add more aggressive traits to several AI's. Not just Shaka but others as well.


There may be some other little tweaks needed like +/- from some buildings gpt/cpt but on a large scale these are some things I think could use some patching.
 
#1) I am against this. I think trade routes are easy to defend.

#2) I think diplomacy simply needs more transparency (at least it's slightly bit better than the days when the AI give zero indication of what it was thinking at all. That was the stupidest thing ever), but I don't think "retaliatory" should matter in the slightest. Taking a city is taking a city, and treating it any other would would just lead to having to do silly things to trick the AI into starting the war.

#3) I like the per city penalty.

#4) I think AIs could stand to be more aggressive in regards to city states (either diplomatically or militarily).
 
I will only comment on 1. I disagree, you have the tools to defend them. On land it is quite easy. In the ocean they should be much harder to protect. We still have pirite issues in this day and age!!
 
I don't care for the science, despite being more of a builder than than a fighter. I think there's already plenty of incentive to stay small and complacent.
 
Cymsdale said:
#1) I am against this. I think trade routes are easy to defend.

#2) I think diplomacy simply needs more transparency (at least it's slightly bit better than the days when the AI give zero indication of what it was thinking at all. That was the stupidest thing ever), but I don't think "retaliatory" should matter in the slightest. Taking a city is taking a city, and treating it any other would would just lead to having to do silly things to trick the AI into starting the war.

#3) I like the per city penalty.

#4) I think AIs could stand to be more aggressive in regards to city states (either diplomatically or militarily).
Click to expand...

This, people... THIS!!!!!
 
1. No, they should be weak and there by require either a lot to defend or better planning. They are a huge source of gold and has to have some drawbacks.

2. Never really ran into any warmonger issues unless i purposely cause it.

3. No, the tech penalty is fine and was kinda needed. Now your not really hurt if you stay small.

4. Can agree a little though I think a lot of it has to do with the removal of gold at the start. AI's could be a little more agressive at times.
 
I think the tech penalty should stay, but maybe with less than 5%. I haven't had a chance to try it though, as my current (and first BNW) game has been Portugal with four cities the whole time.
 
I agree with #1, not so much because it's hard for a human to defend the routes, but mostly because the AI seems to struggle with this. I often see 'friendly trade-route plundered!', and rather than have to go out and baby-sit some other civ's trade-routes, I'd prefer them to be smart enough to defend their own, and a change to how routes are plundered would help (make it impossible to plunder a route when within two hexes of a unit from that civilization, perhaps).
 
I am against 1-3 but 4 is good. There has to be more negative modifiers, consequences and risks/rewards.
 
Anyone have any ideas of their own to share?

Rebuttals:

1) They are easy to defend it is just annoying. If I have military units I want to use them actively not passively. Some people won't mind this but really how many people will miss having to defend trade routes vs how many will appreciate the time savings and added fun from actively using their units?

2) Maybe we don't need to change the mechanics just have more transparency

3) This is very much based on preference. I still feel like artificial barriers to expansion is lame.

4) I think a lot of people are on board with this one. Early game is too Sim City-ish at the start.
 
Number 1 has one thing I do hate: The fact that upon a DOW, your trade route with that civ is auto-destroyed. Let the ship/caravan return to the city and if it makes it back, allow re-assignment at least.
 
Loucypher said:
Number 1 has one thing I do hate: The fact that upon a DOW, your trade route with that civ is auto-destroyed. Let the ship/caravan return to the city and if it makes it back, allow re-assignment at least.
Click to expand...

This would be a nice change, and more realistic than "woops that caravan disappeared" like we have now.

#1- As to defending trade routes, they should have a unit command that is "follow and protect that trade route" so that the player doesnt need to move the frigate with the cargo ship every turn. As is, defending sea trade routes is tedious and unnecessary.

#2- I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. Have the AI assign more negatives for warmongering and any civ that gets extremely large? I've seen the AI use the World Congress successfully to hurt large warmongering civs (embargoes, banned resources) so I'm not sure I see the problem.

#3- I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, something aside from slower social policy attainment needs to bring down large empires a bit, because in G&K large empires were extortionately better than small. I'd rather see "Distance from Palace" costs like in Civ IV, because that seems more realistic than a science penalty.

#4- There is definitely less incentive to war early in BNW because of trade; I havent found it as profitable to dow another civ early as I usually do, so I cant blame the AI for being more passive. As YZman said (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=502647), an easy solution is have the AI move trade routes to civs that it does not intend to war, and to consider cash on hand. As human players we can do this easily enough, but the AI seems to struggle with it.

Also, making it easier to defend your trade routes with other nearby civs through a "guard" command would lessen the chance that war would destroy other trade routes.
 
Iberian said:
I like BNW. What I would like to do is make it better. I am hoping as a community of players come up with some future patch suggestions to submit to Firaxis. Obviously they listen to us and that is a great credit to them.

*Last thing we want here is posts that are either inflaming or argumentative. Constructive is the goal here.


1. Trade Routes-- An awesome addition. Can we make them easier to defend?
- Make it take 2 turns to pillage OR
- Cannot plunder if a combat ship is in range (ex. a 6 movement ship within 6 hex)

2. Warmonger Penalty-- Good tool to help the AI identify who is starting to runaway.
- Lower penalty for retaliatory actions
- Base the calculation on score/military might ratio or a combination thereof

3. Tech Penalty per City-- This is an artificial construct to allow small empires to be equally viable. I don't like this concept. If you can build a large empire you deserve the awards. I am from Civ 1 so I have no sympathy for small empires. Large empires win games and generally works the same in real life. No one is worried if El Salvador is facing economic issues. If China is or Germany people care, governments care.
- Remove the penalty

4. Early Aggression-- Helps control the human player. Removes some fun from the game because of the predictability of the action. In BNW it seems to be really low.
- Add more aggressive traits to several AI's. Not just Shaka but others as well.


There may be some other little tweaks needed like +/- from some buildings gpt/cpt but on a large scale these are some things I think could use some patching.
Click to expand...

Trade routes are quite easy to defend most of the time. Just promote few of your ships to extra sight & put them on alert.

Agreed with the aggression point.

I disagree with science penalty. A slight reduction in penalty would make sense but completely removing it would be a step backward.

And to elaborate my point, the penalty isn't there to keep small empires viable. Rather it is there to stopping you from becoming a runaway. If you focus on developing your empire while expanding at the same time, you won't feel the penalty at all. On the other hand pure warmongering would hurt your science due to over-extension. This is realistic. Previously in G&K, even pure warmongering would result in you becoming a tech runaway.


Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 4 Beta
 
I only want to comment on the one about science... I didn't know this was a penalty until I saw it here. But it does make sense. Empires that get too large do get stagnant in terms of science and culture. Look what happened to Russia... great for a bit, and then decline. Right?
 
I just want an "escort" option available for caravans and ships, canals, and a limit to plane stacking
 
Let's put this additional science in context. Also note that the your capital does not increase tech costs.

Lasers costs 8894 normally (civilopedia online says 7700 but game contradicts this).
Each extra city the cost rises~ 445.
With three extra cities the cost rises 1334 to 10,228.
At 20 extra cities, costs double.

While this is not an insubstantial increase, it doesn't take a lot of additional science from that city to cover its costs. Yes, it slows the game down, but large empires still produce substantially more science (even taking into account cost increases) than small. It definitely puts a strain on someone conquering cities, though, since those will take awhile to get going and puppets will probably be a drain, but it's not as onerous as it seems.

A bigger contributor to slower finishes is probably that the science required for techs has increased. I assume the 7700 was from G&K, whereas that tech now costs over 1200 more in BNW.
 
Losing trade routes can be an equalizer in the game, only if there are enough wars and plunderings going on. If they make it so that it would be harder to lose trade routes, then it truly becomes Sid Meier's Trading: Caravans and Cargo Ships.
 
And they need really really need to fic city tile acquisition. If I'm playing as Brazil, I want the nearby jungle tiles so I can set up my camp, I don't want the cattle that's 4 tiles away and my city can't work anyway. This also applies to any Petra city, and Morocco.
 
I've got issues with the whole way trade is handled -- I'm very happy it's included, but ... it needs work. I'll save that rant for another thread, though ...

In the mean time, I don't think you should be able to "plunder the route." I think you should have to capture the trade unit (ship or caravan) much like you do a settler or worker. If you can do that, then you get the booty. Otherwise, the route should remain intact.
 
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