Has Firaxis finally learned to balance the game?

Don't mean to pick at your post specifically bud .

kozzer said:

Well, any time there are differences, there is zero-percent-chance that they'll be perfectly balanced. All I'm saying is that some of the UU's are more powerful than others, some of the UA's are more powerful than others, etc. But when you look at a civ, you can't just determine their relative effectiveness based on only one aspect of their unique properties. Also, an individual's playstyle (including/especially the victory condition they tend to go for) will cause the balance to change for each individual player. Bottom line is that we're all speculating til we get to play the game. I was just repeating what the people who are making the game are saying.

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Let's agree that unique factors are not more powerful than each other but just situational and flavourful .

kozzer said:

Edit:How about this as a speculative scenario: ships are really expensive and take a long time to build, so getting free naval units is extremely beneficial. Also, barbs are present much later in the game than in previous Civ's, therefore the Ottomans' opportunity to gain free naval units extends into the Industrial era or later. This would allow the Ottomans to field a much larger navy than they otherwise would. So long as you're not playing on a pangea map, I can see this being a very nice ability.

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And if you are on a pangea your unique units will own so it all balances out.

Scaramanga said:

Don't mean to pick at your post specifically bud .

Let's agree that unique factors are not more powerful than each other but just situational and flavourful .

And if you are on a pangea your unique units will own so it all balances out.

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No problem, agreed, and agreed!

I've been wondering about balance for a while too. But multiplayer is such an important part of games by now that CiV cannot get by without good mp, and good mp means balance. So they will have to balance it. It's too early to judge how well things are balanced and if they will balance them. I think that naval will be a MUCH more important part of CiV now that units can embark themselves, civs will be harder to attack head on due to large armies and fortifications, and ships have ranged attacks they can use to fire at ground targets without getting hit back.

As for the Ottoman power, raising it to 100% would actually make them decent provided there are a moderate amount of pirates (sea barbs). The Jannissary and Sipahi are both incredible, especially the latter. Crazy pillaging awesomeness. Basically, the Ottomans seem like they will be an excellent all-around warring civ. I also think that if Germany's power was raised to 100% they would be one of the stronger civs in the game.

I think that every civ should be able to excel in a certain strategy. Firaxis should make the civs relatively balanced, but flavor is more important then a small degree of versatility or balance. Who knows- maybe the Ottoman UUs and ability will generate an insane naval pillage/bombard/invasion strategy?

It has been said before, but you can't judge the game without playing it. There have been so many massive overhauls of systems that the entire game has pretty much changed, it's ridiculous to judge a power by civ perspective. For example: the Romans have an incredible power by Civ 4's standards- but now that buildings and units cost more maintenance, this means they will also have a more strained economy. Faster production is an amazing benefit but it will sacrifice some safety and versatility for speed and power, since their treasury will not be as full as a nation like Arabia. Meanwhile, the Arabians can spend gold on whatever they want, but they don't have the bang for their buck that the Roman military has.

So stop judging CiV by CIV standards!

Its impossible to tell at this stage just how certain things will play out, the Ottoman UA is one of the biggest wildcards so far. It could end up just giving you a few free galleys... or if barbarian sea units are presented as pirate privateers in the late game, they could establish a massive disruptive pirating empire at the same time as their two unique units come into play. We just dont know.

On a bigger balance note, I think its been said enough times, a game like this can never be balanced. You could have someone with an ability that gave them free GDRs from turn 1, and have it prove utterly useless because there's no uranium on their whole continent. It adds to replay value to have assymetric 'balance' that lean more towards allowing different strategies on different playthroughs.

Re: Barbary Corsairs: It's been mentioned that barbarians are on the tech level of the most advanced civ, as opposed to previous games where they were on the level of the least. You won't see the Galley navies in 1000 AD anymore, so the units you steal from barbarians will be relevant to your tech level.

And if there are truly egregious balance issues (Companion Cavalry/Phalanx rush!), there's always the option of patches.

ShaqFu said:

And if there are truly egregious balance issues (Companion Cavalry/Phalanx rush!), there's always the option of patches.

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That would such to have as a patch. Imagine you're employing a particular strategy using your UU, you stop playing for the night, and the next day when you update the game automatically, your UU is weaker, and the strategy you were going to use isn't worth it anymore.

Well I can definitely state even now that Civ5 will not be balanced for MP. Why? Because to many of the civ traits are only good against the AI civs/barbs etc, which are completely useless in a human vs human game. So the Civs that don't have AI related bonuses will be the huge favourites in MP.

Civplayers Leagues already has plans for a MP balance mod, and we will be building a list of balance tweaks from day one as MPers get to know the game and what works for us and what doesn't.

Then we can make a mod that replaces the useless traits/UU/UB etc with stuff that matters to us, and balance the other traits as needed until we can get as close as we can to every civ having an equal but different set of characteristics.

This is nothing new to us, our Civ3 league players have been making balance mods for 9 years now, and have many mods to deal with balance in all eras and mod specialties. Unfortunately with Civ4 MP mods are so problematic that mods were dead on Day 1, I'm certainly hoping that with Civ5 MP mods return to the level of user friendlyness that Civ3 had.

CS

ilikepies said:

I've been wondering about balance for a while too. But multiplayer is such an important part of games by now that CiV cannot get by without good mp, and good mp means balance. So they will have to balance it. It's too early to judge how well things are balanced and if they will balance them. I think that naval will be a MUCH more important part of CiV now that units can embark themselves, civs will be harder to attack head on due to large armies and fortifications, and ships have ranged attacks they can use to fire at ground targets without getting hit back.

As for the Ottoman power, raising it to 100% would actually make them decent provided there are a moderate amount of pirates (sea barbs). The Jannissary and Sipahi are both incredible, especially the latter. Crazy pillaging awesomeness. Basically, the Ottomans seem like they will be an excellent all-around warring civ. I also think that if Germany's power was raised to 100% they would be one of the stronger civs in the game.

I think that every civ should be able to excel in a certain strategy. Firaxis should make the civs relatively balanced, but flavor is more important then a small degree of versatility or balance. Who knows- maybe the Ottoman UUs and ability will generate an insane naval pillage/bombard/invasion strategy?

It has been said before, but you can't judge the game without playing it. There have been so many massive overhauls of systems that the entire game has pretty much changed, it's ridiculous to judge a power by civ perspective. For example: the Romans have an incredible power by Civ 4's standards- but now that buildings and units cost more maintenance, this means they will also have a more strained economy. Faster production is an amazing benefit but it will sacrifice some safety and versatility for speed and power, since their treasury will not be as full as a nation like Arabia. Meanwhile, the Arabians can spend gold on whatever they want, but they don't have the bang for their buck that the Roman military has.

So stop judging CiV by CIV standards!

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CanuckSoldier said:

Well I can definitely state even now that Civ5 will not be balanced for MP. Why? Because to many of the civ traits are only good against the AI civs/barbs etc, which are completely useless in a human vs human game.

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What SAs only work in regards to AI civs? All I can think of is Hellenic League and Father Governs Children, both of which affect city-state relations, but since more human players ≠ fewer city-states, I don't see how that's an issue. And since more players also ≠ fewer barbs (and since barbs are apparently a much greater threat for a much larger stretch of time), I don't really see how you're coming to this conclusion.

All I can really think of is that you saying more of "humans will be able to partially negate some of the SAs with clever planning," but it really doesn't look like that's what you meant.

Lyoncet said:

What SAs only work in regards to AI civs? All I can think of is Hellenic League and Father Governs Children, both of which affect city-state relations, but since more human players ≠ fewer city-states, I don't see how that's an issue. And since more players also ≠ fewer barbs (and since barbs are apparently a much greater threat for a much larger stretch of time), I don't really see how you're coming to this conclusion.

All I can really think of is that you saying more of "humans will be able to partially negate some of the SAs with clever planning," but it really doesn't look like that's what you meant.

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There are two things that we know of now that will never be seen in competitive MP games, Barbs are always turned off, and so will city states(which are really just possibly friendly barbs), just like Vassalage was never seen in Civ4 MP.

So there are 4 leaders right off that are going to be seen as weak, and therefore useless(no MP player wants to start with a handicap).

Germany with Furur Teutonicus,
Ottoman with Barbary Corsairs,
Siam with Father governs Children, and
Songhai with River Warlord.

So of the bat 4 of 18 civs, 22% of the civs, are not balanced for MP. And this is without knowing much about the rest of the civs and the bonuses they have with the UU and UB's. So there could be some other very weak civs because of UU or UB's that are not applicable very well to a competitive environment.

And this is just the glaringly obvious issues, it will take a month or more of testing the game to discover if there are bad balance issues as well.

CS

Polobo said:

Infiltrator: you keep claiming Firaxis lacks knowledge or ability with respect to balancing yet all you have done is picke 3-4 specific examples of imbalance - in a game with 40+ civ/leader options. In Civ4 every leader has 2 traits and so some should be weaker than others so that a leader with a strong trait can have an offsetting weaker trait. Plus, given that there were two traits it made sense to try and create leaders with all the possible combinations of traits - even though some of them were going to be disadvantaged. Firaxis may have been able to provide more control and meta-data about the relative strengths of the different Civs but for those people who really care they always had access to the advanced game options. Against a lower-level AI a player with the weakest Civ is still likely to beat the stronger Civs; but the added flavor of playing with toward the specific stregths of the weaker Civ - or even just role-playing - is IMO what Firaxis was aiming for with their "balance" attempts.

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I think the imbalances are fairly obvious. Should I really make a list of everything I deem imbalanced to make a point? Anyone who's played the game for awhile knows what are good and poor choices, nation, leader and unit wise. I've already made some examples where people can screw themselves over by just picking a leader with 1 bad and 1 mediocre trait rather than 1 excellent and 1 good trait, for example. What's the point of the explorer, for example? He's useless. You get him by the time you've already done your scouting. Cothons? What a joke. Again, it's just stupid for me to keep saying whats good or bad when you and I both know that there's a lot of imbalance. The fact that the game has 40+ civs means nothing as they are 90% the same material with some altered numbers. Balancing 40+ UNIQUE civs would be a nightmare I admit.

In short, you are making judgements and obserations about Firaxis without first understanding their goals. At the same time you are not clearly explaining how you would define balance and what effect balance has on your desired gameplay (which is also undefined). Also, what specifc "things" about game balancing do you think is lacking.

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Perhaps I don't know their goals. When I say balance, I mean MP against other humans who know what they are doing. That means people who know the (meta)game and will abuse it as much as possible to win. Specific things I've gone over already and I really think there's no need for me to keep counting them as there are too many.

You do mention SP vs. MP but the thing there is that many of the goals for an SP game and incompatible with the MP game; and thus a game balanced for SP will not be balanced for MP - which is exactly what you are observing. But from all accounts the SP market is much larger than the MP market and thus the SP balance gets released. What you would find if you tried to balance a game for MP is that some aspects of the game do not warrant bonuses while others mandate them; and the "Civilizations" of the game no longer have "personality" but are simply grouped into "rock-paper-scissors".

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Very big disagreement here. SP is based on AI which can be tuned by difficulty. If the game is balanced for MP you just need to tweak the SP difficulty sliders. Since the game is going via steam and handling MP there I am pretty certain they want to make the game a lot more MP oriented than it was. I respectfully disagree that personality of the civs would be washed off with balance. Like I said, civs aren't that different at all. When Blizzard can balance 3-4 COMPLETELY UNIQUE races is it too much to ask from Firaxis to balance 20ish rehashes of the same skeleton? Again, personality can very well be maintained, I am a firm believer that, with a competent team, more unique units and buildings per civ could be balanced pretty well. Not perfectly, but pretty close to it taking map variation in account.

As for the MP player gimping themself...they just need to become a better player so that they can beat someone who is using a better civ; or just throw away the special abilities/uniques and play on equal footing.

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That's true, but I am talking about 2 skillful players around the same level. The guy that picks a Financial / [anything] will always win against the guy that is Protective / [anything].

CanuckSoldier said:

There are two things that we know of now that will never be seen in competitive MP games, Barbs are always turned off, and so will city states(which are really just possibly friendly barbs), just like Vassalage was never seen in Civ4 MP.

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Ah, that's very different than what you said the first time around. Thanks for the clarification!

If people want to turn off aspects of the game because it's not "competitive" otherwise, that's certainly their prerogative. Not the same as saying that the ability has no effect on multiplayer. Still, I think that it's just a teensy bit early to say that barbs and particularly city-states, which no-one either than previewers and testers have even played with, will always be turned off. Seems more like your argument is that some abilities are map settings dependent, not MP-unfavored.

Lyoncet said:

Ah, that's very different than what you said the first time around. Thanks for the clarification!

If people want to turn off aspects of the game because it's not "competitive" otherwise, that's certainly their prerogative. Not the same as saying that the ability has no effect on multiplayer. Still, I think that it's just a teensy bit early to say that barbs and particularly city-states, which no-one either than previewers and testers have even played with, will always be turned off. Seems more like your argument is that some abilities are map settings dependent, not MP-unfavored.

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Well barbs and city states might see light in cooperative MP games or the diplomacy style MP games played at Apolyton etc, But I've ran a competitive MP league for 9 years now at Civplayers, and I can say for a fact what will be popular in competive MP and what will not.

It's not really a matter of perogative in turning off parts of the game, in MP it is critical that all player have an equal chance of winning. MP players want to win and lose solely based on the players skill, not random events in the game. So things like barbs, city states, natural wonders, and even "goody huts" will be turned off. It's bad enough that sometimes starting location can be the decisive factor, not skill, but we don't make it worse by introducing other game imbalancing factors.

The last thing I want to do is lose a game because I got rushed by barbs early when others did not, or another player had two city states close to either conquer or milk for tech when I did not, or discovered 3 natural wonders that gave them a huge production boost early in the game etc.

So I'm sure you can see why those 4 civs are dead in the water for competitive MP, we need a fair equal playing field above all else. In civ4 we play in mirror maps/balanced resources etc, anything to eliminate random factors from deciding the game, skill is the only thing we want to decide a game between humans.

CS

So really the question would be:

"For the base game has firaxis finally decided to cater to the minority that play competitive MP - and just want to see who is the best at conquering the world - and balanced the civs accordingly?"

From CanuckSolider the whole concept of city-states is going to be left out of MP games; but for SP games they are a driving factor and civs that can really leverage them through traits gain some powerful advantages.

We can banter on forever but in the end there is no "right" answer; particularly if you look at the end-result and not the entire process behind getting there. You disagree with the decisions that were made but I challenge you to show to me where the process and assumptions that led to those decisions were flawed - as opposed to disagreeable.

For me, an SP player, I'd prefer that there not be "true" balance between civs so that within any given difficulty there will be inherent challenge and experience variations - driven not only by geography but by opponents and my own choice of civ. For you, in MP, you want everything to be as equal as possible so that skill level of the opponent + geography has the largest effect on the outcome. AI personality and effectiveness would be the main impact - then - of difficulty levels.

My main concern is that the variances between the strong and the weak are not too large; but I also do not need (or necessarily want) them to be zero either.

Official or otherwise a MOD is the best place to adapt the game to be "optimized" for MP; leaving the base-game optimized for the casual SP gamer. The question to ask is whether or not Firaxis should make an official MP mod for CiV and how to deploy it if they do? Then, let people play the MOD in SP and get feedback to see whether or not the MP mod in SP mode is more or less enjoyable than the normal SP game (and how many people couldn't tell the difference).

CanuckSoldier said:

In civ4 we play in mirror maps/balanced resources etc, anything to eliminate random factors from deciding the game, skill is the only thing we want to decide a game between humans.
CS

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"Skill" is a very generalized term. Adaptation is a "skill" that humans have that allow them to deal with randomness. You mostly negate that skill by reducing the amount of randomness found in the game.

Anyway, I get where you are coming from and find it good that Firaxis has put many of those settings into the advanced setup area. But I personally would not try to institute such balance into an SP game as it would lose a lot of the fun-factor that I get from dealing with the randomness; and the replayability it adds as well. The default, unmodded, game gives us this and is likely exactly what the game is being imbalanced towards.

Polobo said:

"Skill" is a very generalized term. Adaptation is a "skill" that humans have that allow them to deal with randomness. You mostly negate that skill by reducing the amount of randomness found in the game.

Anyway, I get where you are coming from and find it good that Firaxis has put many of those settings into the advanced setup area. But I personally would not try to institute such balance into an SP game as it would lose a lot of the fun-factor that I get from dealing with the randomness; and the replayability it adds as well. The default, unmodded, game gives us this and is likely exactly what the game is being imbalanced towards.

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Oh don't worry we MP players are not trying to force our game on the SP players, that is why there is all those check boxes, you can never have too many options.

But I think you will find that most SP players want the Civs to be reasonably balanced as well, otherwise there will never be a reason to try some civs and the game replayability is diminshed. There are lots of options for randomness else were in the game mechanics for sure.

And as for MP being a minority, that is only because Firaxis has never made MP an equal priority when developing their games. Which is sad really, MP takes nothing away from the already successful SP game, but could add so many people to the genre, not to mention a tonne of cash in 2K's pockets....

CS

Infiltrator said:

Like I said, civs aren't that different at all. When Blizzard can balance 3-4 COMPLETELY UNIQUE races is it too much to ask from Firaxis to balance 20ish rehashes of the same skeleton? Again, personality can very well be maintained, I am a firm believer that, with a competent team, more unique units and buildings per civ could be balanced pretty well. Not perfectly, but pretty close to it taking map variation in account.

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Your solution would be to have them add more content rather than polish what they already have? Keep in mind that real civilizations have never been balanced. Some entities are inherently weaker than others: there is a reason why the European empires were able to conquer the Americas, and there is a reason the Mongols were able to take China at a certain point in their history but not at other points. It would not make much sense for all nations to be evenly balanced because they were not in reality. While Civilization V is a game, it is also a game about history, and so the inherent quality of the Civilizations being based on history means that they won't be equal. Given their historical resources and technologies, the Roman Empire would have probably flattened the Iroquois Confederacy, for example. Additionally, Civilization V is nothing like Starcraft or Warcraft or any other Blizzard game. Firaxis is not Blizzard. They are completely different companies with completely different goals in their game and relatively different target demographics (though Civilization fans may also like Star Craft games, they probably aren't looking for the same experience in both games). In short, Civilization isn't meant to be perfectly balanced, because history itself is not perfectly balanced. Besides, wouldn't you rather enjoy the challenge of starting with a handicap once you've gotten really good at the game? It would provide a wonderful kind of challenge.

Polobo said:

"Skill" is a very generalized term. Adaptation is a "skill" that humans have that allow them to deal with randomness. You mostly negate that skill by reducing the amount of randomness found in the game.

Anyway, I get where you are coming from and find it good that Firaxis has put many of those settings into the advanced setup area. But I personally would not try to institute such balance into an SP game as it would lose a lot of the fun-factor that I get from dealing with the randomness; and the replayability it adds as well. The default, unmodded, game gives us this and is likely exactly what the game is being imbalanced towards.

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MP players have fun killing each other, that is the challange of another thinking human being, and most MP players rarely ever go back and play SP, it just loses it's shine after playing in this environment, the AI no matter how well programmed can never do that.

So while randomness adds fun to the SP game it takes away from fun in the MP game. Our fun is out growning, out building and out manuevering other MP players, and this is all skill based.

So yes you are right Adaptation is a key skill, we MPers just don't need random events to use that, we adapt to each other and find new strategies and tactics that no one has thought off, or just out right do something not logical to try and catch another player off balance etc.

But we don't need to build that randomness into the game, that is just handicapping a player, we have enough dynamic factors when you play 7 other humans in a Always War FFA, you don't need to have the game give you that, the people do that just fine.

CS

How many civ players are interested in multiplayer?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess a very small percentage. Previous Civ games were largely designed as a single player game because that was (by far) the most popular way they were played. Because of this, the game should be designed and balanced around creating the best single player experience available.

I realize that people on this forum are disproportionately civ fanatics, and are more likely to be interested in multi-player than the average civ player... but surely you can see that Civ aims to have the best single player game available for the same reasons that Starcraft II aims to have the best multi player game available.

The nature of the game determines what it is designed around, and in this case that is single player.

I can picture all of these UAs being powerful in certain situations, but some I definitely see as more "Universally" powerful. Like Financial in Civ IV, you always knew it was going to help you. Protective could be extremely helpful to prevent/survive invasion, but you had to play a certain way to enjoy it (get archer early, build walls, rush gunpowder). Financial was helpful no matter what, it always provided some benefit. Some traits demanded you modify your playing styles to take advantage of them, others were just automatically helpful.

Siberian riches will always be helpful. If you can build more units from less resources you can trade those extra resources without sacrificing army size and you get production bonuses on those tiles. Manifest destiny will always be helpful, there is no scenario in which you can imagine cheaper empire expansion not providing some benefit.

The Great Warpath could make the Iroquois amazing at early 1UPT combat, if you deploy your troops near forests and if you actually are fighting anyone there. Barbary Corsairs could be great if you have barbs turned on and encounter enough of them and enlist their help so you have a great navy. Sun Never Sets could be great on some maps. Father Governs Children could be good if you take the time to establish relations with lots of city-states so you can enjoy the extra benefits.

But here's the thing: even though some of the UAs lend themselves to specific styles of play, and some are universally useful, if you are willing to play to your strengths you'll probably find these strengths to be balanced. If you are willing to say "Okay, I'm Siam, I'm going to start sucking up to city-states THEN the gold/culture/units will probably be just as useful as the tile discount for America. If you say "I'm Aztecs and I have a lot of killing to do" then go out and do it, then the extra culture and jump on social policies will help you out greatly.

At this point, I'd say Persia, Russia, America, Japan and India will always have universally powerful abilities and everything else will be situational.

You will have a very hard time trying to balance this game for competetive MP.

1.Worst contender are luxery resources each giveing 5 happiness. Random placement on the map.
2. natural wonders, although not as bad as luxery resourses.
3. city states
4.barbarians.
5. wonders, whoever has the best starting position usually get them first.
6. happiness improvements does not come before classical age, so without luxeries and natural wonders you would stay on 1 city untill classical age. Better hope it was a good starting area.

You can stay on 1 city for longer in civ 5 because you can get 3 food tiles alot earlier and you get the +2 food granary and +1 food from tradition giveing you a huge early growth. So your limiting factor will be happiness and not growth.

The reason people used to citysprawl was because you could get more citizens that way. Now the reason for more cities is access to more luxeries/ strategic resourses/natural wonders and happiness improvements.

The most important thing to do if you want civ 5 to be competetive is to use randomized summetrical maps. luxery resourses, city states and natural wonders wont be a problem, if you do that.
You probably need to remove barbarians, so german and ottoman ua needs to be changed.
oh and you need to play 1on1, 2on2 and so on to prevent backstabbing!