User comments about changes made in new builds (such as the fact Crossbows no longer deal with mounted defenses outside cities) help me determine balancing decisions, and tweaks to be made in updates. This is particularly important given we are aproaching the end of the beta stage in development (1 or 2 more full builds before the mod comes out of beta), and once this mod comes out of beta there will be no more balance tweaks made for many months if ever. Just letting you guys know that feedback on new builds is vitally important in the development process, and without it I'm not really sure if some changes (particularly the medieval era unit changes) are working as intended, and/or improve gameplay
I actually have many balance requests. Some, I consider important, some less. Some related to LoR, some would be equally valid for regular BTS. I don't expect you to agree with all of them as each player has a different idea about balance. However, I'm one of those players that thinks that game balance is very important, so I'll list some of my requests and balance issues now. Please don't view it as criticism.
I was also wondering why you might not balance the mod after version 1.0? I think that mods that reach the 'finished' or 'polished' state typically attract more players and thus more balance issues will be detected after a while. Some balance issues regarding regular civ4 were also only detected after many players played the game for quite a long time. Perfect balance is probably a utopia, but it is likely that better balance can be achieved and recognized only once the game has reached the 'finished' state for a while. Especially the late game balance issues won't be recognised until the mod has been around for a while.
Issue 1: Ranged bombardment can kill units while regular attack by siege units or bombardment from the sky cannot. In my opinion, ranged bombardment would be far better balanced if it also had a damage cap. Without a damage cap, regular attacks aren't needed anymore as you can bombard everything into nothingness.
Issue 1b: Non-combat units (workers, executives, missionaires, etc) are immune to any form of ranged attack (bombardment by artillery and air and guided missiles) except nuclear attacks.
Issue 2a: Special forces are a fun unit that allows some very special moves. I'm just afraid that their combination of commando and invisibility to most units will make them a game element that is great for the human player but extremely hard to counter for the AI. The unit can move through enemy terrain at a rate of 10 moves per turn while at war. Workers, for instance, can easily be destroyed in large numbers by this unit and I wonder if the AI will understand what is actually happening to its workers and counter with detection mechanisms. However, I haven't been able to test the game mechanic yet.
Issue 2b: Similar to 2a, stealth destroyers are extremely hard to detect. They are actually harder to detect than submarines and can't even be seen by planes (except UAV) which is weird. The only sea unit that can see them is the supercarrier. The civilopedia entry wrongly says that they can be seen by stealth destroyers.
The unit shouldn't have the escort AI as they can't protect anything in a stack as they are rarely even detected by the enemy stack and thus don't defend.
I think the unit would actually function better without the stealth feature. With its ability to carry a scout aircraft, good vs subs, good detection abilities and high strength, they are useful enough. And the 2 first strikes and high retreat odds are enough to symbolise their stealthiness.
Issue3: Archers aren't useful as city defence in the classical age. They can't cope with the combination of swordsmen and the ability to remove defensive bonuses.
Issue4: The serfdom civic hasn't been improved. Many might think that adding an ability like using food to build units is an element that strengthens the civic, but it's not. 1
is worth a lot more than one
. Whether you use slavery to convert food (population) into hammers or caste system to build powerful workshops, you'll get a far better conversion than 1 to 1 and it can be applied to everything, not only units.
Whenever you use food to build units, it will be an inefficient use of food.
It's a fun concept, but not balanced.
Removing the benefits that the civic used to give (faster workers) and adding bad elements (1
) of course doesn't help things.
Issue5: Because crossbowmen ignore knights when attacking, there exists no contemporary unit that can protect your stack against attacking crossbowmen. No unit has better than 50% odds on flatlands.
Issue6a: Late game tile improvements: you can build ectreme climate versions of cottages and farms but not of workshops on tundra, ice, desert. It's not really a balance thing, but I don't see why one tile improvement is allowed in bad terrain and the other not. It's especially weird that it is impossible to build workshops in terrain that is good enough to farm. Is there a philosophy behind this game design?
Issue6b: Late game, the special resource improvements like plantations, camps, wineries and (oil) wells are very poor because all the other improvements have gotten bonuses but they have remained the same. I've always thought this as an oversight in game development of basic civ4. Especially oil wells should be a good improvement which they aren't.
Issue6c: Forests should be able to be planted. This can easily be done without unbalancing the game by requiring the forest to grow for a long time (like cottages) before it can be used. There are other mods that use this idea.
Issue7: Bronze working is still a hugely powerful technology. It allows the powerful slavery civic, the powerful chopping of forests, the visibility of copper and the production of axemen (and indirectly spearmen).
If the visibility of copper would be moved to mining and the slavery civic to masonry, then the balance would be improved. Bronze working would still be very useful, but less overpowered.
Issue8: The espionage cost for changing civics and religions is independent of the size of the civilisation which you influence while the damage that you inflict (both in forcing worse civics and in the potential anarchy cost of reverting back to better civics) is related to the size of the civilisation that is harmed. These missions are also fairly cheap, only slightly more expensive than starting a 1 turn revolt in a single city. These 2 missions are badly balanced.
Issue9: It's very hard to balance corporations because their value depends on the actual map that is used, the amount of resources that are available on that specific map (I'm aware that changes were made to the corporations). This results in some corporations which are better than others. It would be very nice if all of the corporations got their use on a map. Culture corporations in border cities while food and hammer corporations would be used in core cities and gold and science corporations would be used in the Wall Street and Oxford cities and other well improved commerce cities. However, that is not the case, some corporations are just better than others on a map.
If the corporations were capped in their output (and cost), then it would be much easier to balance them against the state property civic and against eachother. If the founding of a corporation would also allow the creation of branche headquartors by other civilisations (national wonders that allow the building of executives but don't offer gold per city with the corporation), then these corporations would maybe be used in more than one civilisation.
Issue 10: The air assault unit is a bit weird. It's very powerful and historically I can't understand it. It's not an easy thing to capture and control a city by only using some helicopters or troops delivered by helicopters. The numbers transported this way just are not enough. They are useful in real life to capture key areas, but not to control large areas. In game, they function like normal civ4 tanks on steroids: city raider promotions on 4 move units. Removing city raider promotions from tanks in LoR was logical as tanks aren't so great in cities. But helicopters surely aren't any better!
Issue 11a: Limited air capacity in land based - cities versus unlimited on water. This is a BTS issue: the carries allows unlimited air units on water and coastal cities with 3 or 4 per carrier while cities can only hold very few airplanes. That's an imbalance at the very core of the combat mechanics and the AI can't cope with it while the human just adds some carriers to coastal cities to overcome the artificial limitations.
Issue 11b: Airports allow the transport of 1 unit per turn but can receive an unlimited amount of units per turn. I think that a limit to the number of units it can receive per turn would help limit the power of getting an airport on a foreign continent. Now when you have one, your amphibious operations can end and everything can be transported by air.
Not all players no this special feature of airports that they can receive unlimited airlifted units per turn.
I've probably forgotten to mention a few things, but this is it... For now.
Good luck with version 1.0!