Gameplay balance

klokwerk

Prince
Joined
Sep 3, 2006
Messages
433
Location
Paris
While I love the game (kudos to firaxis, I barely sleep, although it's a bit too easy to win right now), I think it needs some balancing. I'd change the following things :

- World Congress is too easily exploitable by the human. AI doesn't fight for delegates nearly as much. Being a powerful tool, you can basically win the game just buying city states (I play on emperor level and it's really too easy to take over the congress right now), which is hardly "diplomatic".

- either reduce the city states influence OR put a smaller number of city states in game (1,5 * number of civs instead of 2 ?). Basically you should NEVER have a way to have 37 delegates and another civ has 1 or 2, the absolute max should be your vote matters 100 % or 200 % more, otherwise YOU are the congress and it's not really a congress anymore. So nerf the tricks (wonders / policies / city states votes) that increase the number of delegates. Every vote should matter. You should never vote what you want all by yourself, especially since the congress is extremely powerful.

- maybe make a few more congress resolutions available, we're running a bit out of ideas in late game proposals.
- make diplomatic victory overall harder to achieve (or at least make it happen later), it seems every game is a diplomatic victory now.
- on the other hand, make domination a bit more likely (there's like zero AI domination victory chance right now), maybe by nerfing city defense a bit and making the AI build more siege weapons / improving in (early) city attacks (see my thread about tactical city attack AI)
- AIs should be able to vote for really good friends in host and not only for themselves (especially if it's unlikely they'll win the vote) and even diplomatic victory. You just need them to love you a lot.
- make gold donations less crucial in city states influence and world congress, OR reduce the gold available in game (1st solution seems better, diplomatic victory should never be an economical victory, quests should matter more)
- buff autocracy, which is a bit weaker than order and freedom, especially outside of military aspects
- defensive pacts : they don't work, you shouldn't be called a warmonger because you automatically "attacked" because of your defensive pact...
- difference between sea trade routes and land routes are too big. Make it maybe 50 % more instead or 100 % more. Right now cities without sea access are just bad. It could also help in the way there's too much gold in late game, making buying city states a bit too easy.
- reduce the gold from trades a bit globally, banks or markets are a bit weak now compared to big trade cities.
- nerf the food routes a bit maybe, it just looks too powerful to jump start a city with a food trade route right now.
- I'd make musicians slots available earlier, or musicians available later. You don't know what to do with them for some time right now.

Feel free to comment and add other ideas.
 
The AI should make a hard line on diplomatic alliances. My game right now had two camps: Germany vs. the rest of the world. Despite the fact that all the civs (save Germany) on my continent are Republics while those on the other are Catholic Communists, not one civ from the Communist camp have denounced me despite the fact that I'm at war with one of their members. I'm friends with everyone save America (whom I'm at war with) and Germany. This would help out with the World Congress Host vote which is pretty much in the hands of the player to choose since the AI will always vote for themselves.
 
Well, I'm already on emperor. I shouldn't have to play on immortal / deity to have a chance to lose.

I don't like the huge armies they send at you in immortal / deity because it breaks immersion. It feels more like Rambo 3 where I am Stallone and they are the stupid horde of enemies I slaughter.
 
Trust me i felt that way too, but with BNW i think its time to move up a level i just moved up to Immortal and won my first game ... diplo :p

The AI was competing for CS's but still not enough to make it too difficult for me ...

Whats good about Immortal for me is the military challenge, the AI is on tech parity or ahead of you and builds a lot of units ... so even while you are swimming in gold and coasting to an otherwise boring diplo win, you are forced to defend your lands from the AI.

Keeps you on your toes and makes for interesting gameplay. I had to quickly tech to flight and rush buy bombers to take out their invading naval force and then get to Artillery double quick. This finished my gold reserves and i was quite nervous for a while + also my trade route income plummeted from 200+ per turn down to 20 or so ...

I guess that's the only way to be challenged.
 
(That's hardly a meaningful thread title. BTW) Try Immortal then. But yeah you are right the Congress is gameable. On the first congress I always enact my world religion and buy all the votes during the first 30 turns. The diplo hit is minimal, and the AI rarely tries to repeal it, giving me a votes and tourism bonus for the rest of the game for the cost of maybe one tech that I could have stolen and a bit of money.

Its a completely different beast on Immortal with CS-flavour Civs like the Greeks or Siam though. They come into the 2nd congress with like 17 votes vs. your 4-5.
 
Number of city states is fine, it gets reduced in-game anyway, by Mongols, Austria, Venice and many other civs to lesser extent.
 
Ok thanks for the tip. I'll play immortal I guess... I just hope I won't spend hours slaughtering hordes of AI units wandering around.
 
Another thing I'd like to add is it shouldn't be possible to use several great musicians at once for a huge tourism bonus. It may give instant cultural win. You could limit concerts to 1 per 10 or 20 turns. You could also force players to use their great musicians on concerts immediately when they were born, or keep it for a great work of art later.
 
Check out CEP (http://civmodding.wordpress.com) as it massively improved the balance and decisions in Vanilla and Gods and Kings. The author is working on the new version (CEP) for BNW now and it's currently in beta. No changes to world congress yet, just adding in the excellent changes from his previous works that are still relevant. Once that is done we'll see more changes to the new aspects of BNW.

Also: The City-State Diplomacy mod makes the world congress feel a lot better.
 
Easiest fix would be to make the AI compete for CS more... particularly to have them start targeting allies of civs with a lot of delegates (ie actively try to trim the leaders).. This is assuming they have some big gold stacks.

As for balancing domination.. well part of that is AI v. AI, and I can see decreasing base city defense in the late game.

The other part is AI v. Human, and that largely needs to be weakening ranged units.
 
Well, I'm already on emperor. I shouldn't have to play on immortal / deity to have a chance to lose.

I don't like the huge armies they send at you in immortal / deity because it breaks immersion. It feels more like Rambo 3 where I am Stallone and they are the stupid horde of enemies I slaughter.

If you are a good player, that's exactly where you should play at. Playing lower than immortal, I wouldn't expect to have much competition since I know how to focus my efforts pretty well to win any victory condition. However, one of the criticisms from players like me is that we shouldn't be playing at that level consistently because there not much room to improve. That's why there are several that come up with immortal and deity challenges games just to offer difficult games beyond the norm. The key in making the game play harder at emperor or king is to significantly ramp up all civ's ability to win. That forces us to learn ways to beat them effectively. The rest of the players can play at the lower levels depending on skills.
 
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