Balance patch discussion and goals

^This. I do not want it taken as a whole. I want to take what changes were useful and made the game more interesting, and see what we can do with those. We have more tools and perspectives here than just the communitas folks. The advantage though of a community that set out to try to mod in interesting and strong choices shouldn't be discounted as a "meh", whatever just because it was never used.

Simply because it may not require us to reinvent the wheel every time we want to rebalance something instead of having a 20 page thread. We can reach a rough consensus a lot faster based upon changes that were already run through a 20 page thread several times. That's the reason I post change lists, is to mine them for ideas for things we may or may not want to see changed. CEP usually had a pretty good overall goal of not changing things for the purpose of change, but to seek out more interesting choices by tweaking and improving with some modification. It did not always succeed in that goal, and I think many of us quickly recognize when it did not.

And yet. We've seen some things get accepted or endorsed actively and near universally and some pushed back. That's okay. I don't expect this to be CEP+. I don't want it to either. But I do want us to get through the process of knowing what we want to or need to change quickly. And usually we were able to identify what needed to be pushed, and what did not. Even if the precise mechanics of how to push it aren't to everyone's liking.

One aspect I think we should focus on goal wise is what I call "minimal implementation"

Because this is a balance patch first and foremost our goal should be balance with the minimum of gameplay impacts.

In other words, we should start with number tweaks with the current subsystems then move to brand new systems if balance cannot be die.

I think we all (myself included) sometimes Jump to the new and shiny of a brand new system...but ultimately I think the goal is better served if we can do the job by tweaking the tools we already have

Agreed. The only reason I made the happiness system was that the existing model lacked an elegant means of balance for tall/wide empires. If what we seek to introduce is not an optimization or natural extension of existing gameplay features, we should seriously question its value.
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Most of the stuff I would want to use from CEP follows that design, balance by numbers or adjustment of promotions. The exceptions from CEP could be wonders (fun/historical), and leaders (fun/historical). But this is basically because there are elements of both that are weak, weakly related to the civ being reflected, poorly designed for coherence, or broken.

Policies may fall into the same category, but there is less that I would want to borrow from CEP and some that can be "fixed" with some numbers or re-arranging of effects. Religion is definitely in that category, but there's almost nothing CEP did to fix it. I'd rather we just start from scratch on what to do there or borrow from other religion mods.

I will probably put up the threads for policies, wonders, and leaders this weekend so we can start digging through those quickly (policies won't be that quickly). Some progress appears to have been made on units and tiles/buildings. We need some further adjustments on happiness buildings, and the religion debate will proceed apace alongside what to do about Piety.

I tried out the balance patch and i was surprised at how slow gameplay was. All the AIs were also more or less permanently broke so i couldnt trade luxuries, and new cities took forever to get started (especially without the free monument). Infact there was no incentive to trade luxuries considering that they were stuck at +1 happiness per luxury (the tooltip said it would increase if i hit a certain pop, but that number just kept increasing forever and it was stuck at +1 per luxury).

Turn processing was also noticeably longer for some reason, even though it was the usual early game, and killing just one barb camp with two warriors took FOREVER as the barbarian kept healing. City state quests were also broken and the name of the quest was replaced by some error string. I found myself hitting end turn for 30+ turns just trying to get enough culture/gold to do something...

Question said:

I tried out the balance patch and i was surprised at how slow gameplay was. All the AIs were also more or less permanently broke so i couldnt trade luxuries, and new cities took forever to get started (especially without the free monument). Infact there was no incentive to trade luxuries considering that they were stuck at +1 happiness per luxury (the tooltip said it would increase if i hit a certain pop, but that number just kept increasing forever and it was stuck at +1 per luxury).

Turn processing was also noticeably longer for some reason, even though it was the usual early game, and killing just one barb camp with two warriors took FOREVER as the barbarian kept healing. City state quests were also broken and the name of the quest was replaced by some error string. I found myself hitting end turn for 30+ turns just trying to get enough culture/gold to do something...

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Sounds like you didn't follow the install instructions. If you aren't running CSD and/or Civ4DF, you have to disable support for them in the CommunityOptions.sql file. If you don't do that and/or you fail to adjust the lua files as noted in the 'How to Install' page, you'll encounter bugs, errors and other such problems.

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I'd recommend you invert the default setting for CSD and C4DF compatibility, it's a bit confusing to new users

[to_xp]Gekko;13430396 said:

I'd recommend you invert the default setting for CSD and C4DF compatibility, it's a bit confusing to new users

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I'd recommend that new users actually read the post

[to_xp]Gekko;13430396 said:

I'd recommend you invert the default setting for CSD and C4DF compatibility, it's a bit confusing to new users

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Agreed. Even as someone who has used mods since the release of Civ 5, the following is less than obvious, if not downright confusing:

No other files are required - just install, enable and play!
Enable/Disable Support for CSD/Civ IV Diplomacy: To disable support for these two mods, change the appropriate value in the CommunityOptions.sql file. You will need to download these mods separately if you plan to use them alongside the Community Balance Patch. If you do not want CSD's changes to the top bar, drop the TopPanel.lua file from the Inactive folder into the Active folder in the LUA subdirectory, and overwrite the TopPanel.lua file in that folder.

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Though I think these sub-mods should be disabled by default, if nothing else, please make this more clear, G!

Did unit HP get adjusted or something? Units seem to take forever to kill now and even having a 10+ combat strength advantage does not help much. I had a economy way bigger than Siam, but he was spamming elephants faster than i could kill, even though i had level 3 muskets. When i got to riflemen, it still took 3 riflemen hits to kill a single elephant. It got so ridiculous that he was suciding elephants into fortified musketmen and completely stalling my attacks. By the time they had healed back up to full, more elephants showed up, and this was only on king.

The AI also seems far too fond of sucidal attacks. I saw Siam send one damaged elephant to sucide into a canon despite being surrounded by 3 musketmen that were going to kill it next turn.

World congress is also a total mess now that every civ can make proposals. Theres so many proposals now that every session has at least one silly proposal getting passed because nobody has enough delegates to block it.

Tradition is actually worse for tall empires now that the free buildings and +10% capital growth bonus has been removed, and talls empires got hit hard by the nerf to national wonders. I was building national wonders much later because of the min pop requirements.

The pantheon nerfs have also made early game much slower, thats a lot less early culture/production/food from resources.

World congress is also a total mess now that every civ can make proposals. Theres so many proposals now that every session has at least one silly proposal getting passed because nobody has enough delegates to block it.

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This sounds like a bug related to the fact that you aren't using CSD, but have CSD enabled.
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Theres also what looks like a game breaking bug when you get a empty steal technology screen and have no way to bypass it. In the espionage window its showing 12,945 turns to establish survelliance...

I only have the bug fix patch activated (not the balance patch) and have the CSD mod support turned off, and i can confirm that spying seems to include some non-vanilla changes. I am getting messages for stuff like sabotaging wonder construction.

But in terms of the balance patch itself i would say that it takes way too long to get started in the early game now and the fact that the AI seems permanently broke for most of the game indicates something is off.

Question, please post as a new thread or in the bug reports thread these kinds of issues. This thread was for overall goal discussion and progress on that work rather than problems with the game play. Overall goals might change because of problems we encounter in testing, but these are different kinds of issues than the sort that would.

These kinds of bug reports (or play testing gripes) will be more quickly noticed, or will have already been addressed, by being in other threads.

Question said:

Theres also what looks like a game breaking bug when you get a empty steal technology screen and have no way to bypass it. In the espionage window its showing 12,945 turns to establish survelliance...

I only have the bug fix patch activated (not the balance patch) and have the CSD mod support turned off, and i can confirm that spying seems to include some non-vanilla changes. I am getting messages for stuff like sabotaging wonder construction.

But in terms of the balance patch itself i would say that it takes way too long to get started in the early game now and the fact that the AI seems permanently broke for most of the game indicates something is off.

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I'll reiterate that I believe your install may not be functioning properly, as some of the problems (like the AI being broke all time) have never been a problem in the CP/CBP.
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I understand why the last update from Firaxis forces you to spend your faith. I often finished games in the past with 10000+ faith just sitting there. This new change eliminates that and makes me think about my faith purchases more. One request - I considered making it a mod myself but it's kind of small:

A notice ~5 days before an automatic faith purchase is going to occur. So you can spend your faith the way you may want.

Hambil said:

I understand why the last update from Firaxis forces you to spend your faith. I often finished games in the past with 10000+ faith just sitting there. This new change eliminates that and makes me think about my faith purchases more. One request - I considered making it a mod myself but it's kind of small:

A notice ~5 days before an automatic faith purchase is going to occur. So you can spend your faith the way you may want.

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I'm not sure I understand...forced change?

G

It used to be that if your cities where full of inquisitors (you could switch to inquisitors in auto faith purchase as soon as you finish your religion) it would stop buying them. Now it just goes on and on, buying more. I think perhaps did you enable no more civilian traffic jams be default perhaps, if it's not a firaxis change.

So, instead of buying another inquisitor or prophet I don't need, I'd like a heads up so I can go to the cities and make faith purchases myself.

I don't know if that clears it up?

Hambil said:

It used to be that if your cities where full of inquisitors (you could switch to inquisitors in auto faith purchase as soon as you finish your religion) it would stop buying them. Now it just goes on and on, buying more. I think perhaps did you enable no more civilian traffic jams be default perhaps, if it's not a firaxis change.

So, instead of buying another inquisitor or prophet I don't need, I'd like a heads up so I can go to the cities and make faith purchases myself.

I don't know if that clears it up?

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Ah, yeah, NMCTJ means that cities don't get blocked. There's really not an easy way to prevent that, aside from changing your auto-purchase and keeping tabs on it.

G

In the last several iterations I find that the AI will not sue for peace and will not try alternative ways to win except for conquest. Then somehow as a result (not really logical as I ask for peace several times) all the other AI say I am a warmonger and I get negative relations with them.(see attach.)

IIRC the AI would keep a core of cities and try alternative ways to win usually some sort of science win or diplomatic win thru city states. As it is now the game seems one dimensional.

Thanks.

Balerune said:

In the last several iterations I find that the AI will not sue for peace and will not try alternative ways to win except for conquest. Then somehow as a result (not really logical as I ask for peace several times) all the other AI say I am a warmonger and I get negative relations with them.(see attach.)

IIRC the AI would keep a core of cities and try alternative ways to win usually some sort of science win or diplomatic win thru city states. As it is now the game seems one dimensional.

Thanks.

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This is not the correct place to post this – you are looking for the bug reports thread.
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