What balance changes are you hoping for?

I'm also a bit surprised at the suggestion of liberty being too weak, I'm still opening with it on deity for the worker, do lots of people think tradition is better?

stii said:

It is almost trivial to take AI cities even on deity if they don't have oil/don't build planes. It is so much easier to attack a city with ten bombers than it is to get ten other units into place.

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Even if they do have oil and planes, outmaneuvering them is just too easy. AI can't grasp the range concept at all. No matter what kind of ranged units you use, it's doomed. And obviously, the stronger they are, the faster it dies.

The Pilgrim said:

Frankly, I don't know how anyone can say bombers are weak. In AI hands - of course, but everything is weak in AI hands. Given a reasonable tech level when controlled by humans bombers pretty much mean game over.

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Yep, I'm well aware how untouchable double attack heal every turn bombers are, but this is certainly not the first time I've seen complaints about how weak bombers are. I mean I do get it... bombing raids completely trash cities in actual warfare, so seeing your bomber squad go out and do like 7 damage feels rather underwhelming. Of course when you are attacking a billion time per turn, they could do 1 damage and I'd still use them

AI sucks at using them, but they are game-finishers in human hands.

My list:

1. Would like to see not rushing tech as a legitimate strategy. Right now no matter what your strategy, it's tech hard first, every other consideration later
2. Ranged is a bit too strong, especially Composite Bowmen and Artillery
3. Military buildings are never worth the bother, even when going domination

pilot00 said:

I seem to remember the SDI from older civs, but in essence it was a glorified nuke shelter. Problem with nukes is that it requires a lot of effort, money and luck to build them in order to completely invalidate them with a defense system.

Perhaps the council will be the answer to this. I seem to remember in CiV 1, that they were ganging you if you had the tech and you didnt share because you were a 'threat'. But the biggest stopping factor to using nukes in older civs was the environmental problems. So yes I might have nuked the US to the stone age but I have 3 more civs to deal with and my capital has sunk dammit!!!

So another suggestion here: Bring pollution/environmental collapse back!

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What about an SDI that reflects a country's in/ability to successfully defend against incoming missiles. Like early versions would offer a 25% chance of knocking a missle down once per turn, and each successive upgrade building it would go up to 33% chance and twice per turn, and finally 50% chance of knocking a missle out and 3~~unlimited times per turn?

Matthew. said:

Yep, I'm well aware how untouchable double attack heal every turn bombers are, but this is certainly not the first time I've seen complaints about how weak bombers are. I mean I do get it... bombing raids completely trash cities in actual warfare, so seeing your bomber squad go out and do like 7 damage feels rather underwhelming. Of course when you are attacking a billion time per turn, they could do 1 damage and I'd still use them

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I think part of this is due to people remembering a single SB with insta logistics thrashes a city in vanilla. Now 2-3 SB's is not enough to clean a continent, you need to double this amount. The effect is the same though. And again, it's not the OP'ness of certain units is the problem, but the difference in ability to capitalize on their strength between AI and humans. Not something that can be balanced out without major code rewriting.

Horseshoe_Hermi said:

We know that some of these (liberty change) are not going to occur, sadly. I believe the genesis of the military problem is in the entire strategic resource system.

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I believe it is possible to fix the strategic resource system. The first change would be to increase all strategic resources by a factor of 5. For instance, Horses would yield between 10 and 20 of that resource, and Iron would yield between 10 and 30. By doing this, it makes unit resource costs much more flexible.

Requiring a strategic resource for catapults, or, swordsmen only with G&K changes, defines one player cannot make war if those resources are out of reach. Yet catapults for all, leads to odd looking war parties.

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To help even out the strategic disparity between civilizations, in addition to the standard-sized strategic resource tiles (10-30), every civilization's starting region gets one minor deposit of each strategic resource that they otherwise lack access to, providing anywhere between 6-8 units of each resource. This would be enough to allow each civilization to own at least one Catapult (see below).

And as you say, swordsmen are pointless as it is.

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Different units could have different resource costs. For instance, the Swordsman would cost 3 Iron to train, while the much more useful Catapult would require 6 Iron. Perhaps the Swordsmen would become more desirable if they were only half as expensive (resource-wise) as Catapults.

Obsoleting warriors for swordsmen is an annoying bottleneck that makes no sense, and the limit of horses is something the game handles like this: Some UUs don't require the strategic resource, which is just wonked. They can have many UUs, and have possibly a ton of these horse archers despite never obtaining any horse land. But so long as the game just counts up the strategic resources 1-by-1, there's no way out of this situation. Egypt and Attilla can amass horses.. that.. they don't use. Caesar and , whoever... Harun, can twiddle their thumbs with their game just removed by the city placement. It needs a visionary change that might be beyond Civ V.

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In the same vein as above, Unique Units that replace resource-consuming units should, where applicable, require a smaller quantity of that resource. For example, the Chariot Archer would require 5 Horses, while Egypt's replacement, the War Chariot, would require only 2 Horses.

kingchris20 said:

What about an SDI that reflects a country's in/ability to successfully defend against incoming missiles. Like early versions would offer a 25% chance of knocking a missle down once per turn, and each successive upgrade building it would go up to 33% chance and twice per turn, and finally 50% chance of knocking a missle out and 3~~unlimited times per turn?

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I think its a tad bit too complex that way but on the right track.
I think of something that would give you a low amount of chance to knock it off (after all you have the shelters to minimize damage) and with limited uses per turn as you say.
On the other hand it had to be pretty much on the end of the tech tree.

Yet again I am convinced that extreme reprecautions and ecological contamination will balance things out more than any hard counters.

- lower cap on the number of airplanes in a city, as 20+ is freaking ridiculous to deal with from across the seas
- Fighter line gets xp for interceptions and air sweeps just like ranged and melee units

Two changes I'd like to see:
-Siege Weapons have no combat strength when being melee'd, so they basically would just die
-Archers recieve a penalty vs cities

digrosz said:

Two changes I'd like to see:
-Siege Weapons have no combat strength when being melee'd, so they basically would just die
-Archers recieve a penalty vs cities

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The first one would get pretty much annoying pretty soon.
I agree on the second.

On the suggestions department I would like science take a bit of a backseat. I mean OFC it should be a priority but other factors should play an important role as well. We need more options not a science victory disguised as something else.

And a faith victory would be awesome IMHO.

ThisNameIsTooLo said:

I believe it is possible to fix the strategic resource system. The first change would be to increase all strategic resources by a factor of 5. For instance, Horses would yield between 10 and 20 of that resource, and Iron would yield between 10 and 30. By doing this, it makes unit resource costs much more flexible.

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I foresaw these very suggestions right after my post, and deposited them in the Creation forum.

Another balance change:
I... sort of want bulbing to go back to vanilla Civ V. Great Scientists and Research Agreements, at the least, should work differently. I propose making GSs back to giving beakers proportional to your current tech level (your point in the tree), as contrasted with your beaker output. Then Great Scientists can "stand on the shoulders of giants", leaping ahead where the civilization is on the cusp of revolution, and likewise, unconstrained by the scientific slalom of beaker output.

Research Agreements having switched to beaker output boosts is for the best, I think. The use of RA chains was quite gamey. Now we have Scholar's Circle WC resolution. G&K RAs are about right.

As to what exact measure of 'current tech level' for GSs, clearly they should not give a free tech, but how odd would it be to make them do what the original RAs did? Either would have the 'gamey' exploitative usage, but there are many possibilities. Beakers equal to some large fraction of your most advanced tech? Beakers averaging the extremes of your tech level (opposite of the median)? Any change at all in this way, would help to nerf the already OP scientist specialists and reduce science snowballing. Science itself already snowballs, no need to slap the player in the face with it.

So... here's hoping Dev thought the same.

The balance change I want to see the most is the removal of the randomness of generating great prophets. Barring the removal of this ridiculousness, at least cap how far over the threshold we can go before one is generated to no more than 10% of the current cost.

I'm sick and tired of seeing the counter hit 250 to 300+ for the first one which only costs 200 on standard speed. Especially when I'm hitting these numbers with only 3-5 FPT. Either I finally manage to generate the first one and have to take one of the crappy founder beliefs or the AI takes the last available religion.

Speaking of getting stuck with the crappy beliefs when I'm the last one to found and/or enhance, I feel all the beliefs need a balance pass or three.

The other thing I'd like to see is either remove the strategic resource requirement from all the UUs or make all of them require a strategic resource. Nothing is more frustrating than to start a game with a random civ only to end up with one that has a UU that requires a strategic resource and not have any of that resource at least near enough for the 2nd city to hook it up. For instance, in the last two weeks of Turncast games I ended up with one of the civs that has a horse UU which requires horses. One time there was a whopping 1 source of 2 horses on the entire continent right next to an AI capital and the other there weren't any on the continent.

I'd like to see India and America pulled up from Roll Tier.

Monthar said:

Either I finally manage to generate the first one and have to take one of the crappy founder beliefs...

Speaking of getting stuck with the crappy beliefs when I'm the last one to found and/or enhance, I feel all the beliefs need a balance pass or three.

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Working as intended.

Another suggestion would be to rework the temple of Artemis. That thing is horribly OP at the hands of a human player. A desert city with no farms, no Petra and only food generating buildings can equalize and sometimes even surpass cities on grasslands filled with farm tiles food generating buildings and hanging gardens, WTF!?!?!

I agree that religion needs a rework as much as culture. They need to rework both the costs and threshold generation for the various bonuses and faith needs at least 10 choices more (in the belief system) of not so useless beliefs.

Light Cleric, wonderful post! And I agree with your entire list. I really hope Firaxis take those and other suggestions in this thread to heart.

Personally, I'd like to see some upgrade to the scout, a new unit or something, that can make it more fun to use once you've discovered half the world and are on the side of the continent. Perhaps they can become couriers or something, with some neat functions to diplomacy and espionage.

Irkalla said:

I'd like to see India and America pulled up from Roll Tier.

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Fluxx said:

Redo the American UA, its useless, anyone who says otherwise is fooling itself.

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Man am I going to have to do a Washington LP to get people to stop bashing America?

(well, this is the internet, that will happen anyway )

digrosz said:

Two changes I'd like to see:
-Siege Weapons have no combat strength when being melee'd, so they basically would just die
-Archers recieve a penalty vs cities

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I think a penalty vs cities is the only sane way to slow down a Composite Bow rush, but if that was done I definitely think Catapults would need a significant buff because they're just not worth it even if CBs were weaker against cities. Remember in Vanilla Archers had a penalty too and they were still a very potent early rush.

stii said:

I'm also a bit surprised at the suggestion of liberty being too weak, I'm still opening with it on deity for the worker, do lots of people think tradition is better?

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The issue becomes the 4th policy costing as much as the first 3 combined, which delays things significantly. Opening with Citizenship means you end up waiting a long time for Collective Rule, possibly too long for it to even matter. If you go Collective Rule, you have to wait a long time for the Citizenship worker which slows down getting your luxuries up in your newer cities. That can really delay growing your capital that extra citizen or two which can be really important(and is part of why I think the Dutch UA is underestimated).

Liberty has its uses and I still open with it sometimes but having to pick between the Settler or Worker is a pain in the ass.

Actually, the way I would handle the swordsman and long-swordsman change would be the addition of two units on the same tech as iron working and steel.

1. I would change the warrior unit from the start game to say a 'clubman' or some type of unit but keep the same strength (different visual and sounds).

2. Change iron working to 'Iron/Metal Working'. This would still reveal iron, but allow the production of a new unit (which could be the warrior). This new unit would have less strength than pikeman and swordsman. Maybe a strength of 12 or possibly 13. I would buff the swordsman to a strength of 15 or possibly 16. This would allow them to be comparable to a pike and give you the benefit of having iron to your empire. The swordsman is cheaper to produce than a pike so you would have that advantage as well. I think this would give iron the strategic bonus you want early game, while still providing you with an alternate unit if you don't have any iron. This means you could delay Civil Service as research in lue of something else if your empire had iron.

3. Change 'Steel' to do the same thing. Buff the longswordsman to be comparable to a musketman, at say 23 strength. They are still cheaper to build therefore giving the iron a good benefit. Add in a new unit, I'll call 'Mail Warrior', which would have a strength of 19 or so. The pike would then still be stronger against a mounted unit, and this melee unit wouldn't outstrip a knight.

I think those changes would negate the large risk of rushing iron working and getting no reward incase there isn't any iron nearby your empire. I also think that this would allow iron to give the benefit as a strategic resource one would be looking of for it.

I would probably also give the catapult a 25% increased damage (against units) if your empire has any UNUSED iron.

Monthar said:

The balance change I want to see the most is the removal of the randomness of generating great prophets. Barring the removal of this ridiculousness, at least cap how far over the threshold we can go before one is generated to no more than 10% of the current cost.

Speaking of getting stuck with the crappy beliefs when I'm the last one to found and/or enhance, I feel all the beliefs need a balance pass or three.

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I agree with both of these ideas. I feel like so many of the current founder, follower and pantheon beliefs are terribly imbalanced. I do not think having so many pointless/useless beliefs and being forced to pick through them, when not finding one of the first religions, is "working as intended".

Monado said:

I agree with both of these ideas. I feel like so many of the current founder, follower and pantheon beliefs are terribly imbalanced. I do not think having so many pointless/useless beliefs and being forced to pick through them, when not finding one of the first religions, is "working as intended".

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Certainly it is. If every belief was more or less equal there wouldn't be the race to found a religion like there is now.

Regarding the random chance to spawn Prophets, it's in place to prevent too many religions from being founded at the same time (eg, if three civs without faith bonuses go pottery first -> build shrine ASAP there would be three religions founded on the same turn).