Getting Started

Burrito_X said:

PS - one more request: could you make a balance mod that ups the Artist specialists to 2 culture instead of 1? they are useless as is.

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I'd also like to point out the engineer specialists are pretty underwhelming as well.

1 hammer? That's it? They are no better than a regular unassigned citizen!!!

Thalassicus said:

I completed a gradual research mod. It took much longer than anticipated as there's limited information on what SQL commands are available to us. If you try this out for a game or two, I would love feedback on how you feel this makes the tech progression. Too small, just right? I chose rather small values to start with, and it curves upwards.

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Definately will try out the research mod in the next game. I keep getting mech infantry in the mid-late 1800's. Infact in my last game it was only taking me like 5-6 turns to research the last few modern techs and that was on King.

Gonna play my next game on Emporer.

Gorey said:

I'd also like to point out the engineer specialists are pretty underwhelming as well.

1 hammer? That's it? They are no better than a regular unassigned citizen!!!

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True, but with enough time you get a guaranteed great engineer (unlike in civ4 where if the GP pool was mixed it was never certain) that can insta-build any wonder.

It's not necessarily insta-build. I tried to Engineer my Cristo during the last culture game I played, and it only completed about half of it. That's 500 hammers on standard.
Which means that each GP point is the equivalent of 500/(Cost) hammers. Since GP cost gets quite high, this doesn't amount to very many hammers...
Even taking the GP points into account, engineer specialists seem very weak. They really only are worth assigning at all if you take some specialist-improving policies and/or Statue of Liberty, and even then you probably will assign them only after your other specialist slots are used up.

Thalassicus said:

I've been very careful about tweaking culture settings on buildings, specialists or improvements as I haven't played many cultural games. Feedback in one of the other threads seemed to indicate even +1 to landmarks made them overpowered for cultural victories, so I changed it back and have been avoiding further adjustments in the realm of culture.

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Culture victory needs an overhaul anyway, in my opinion.
The penalty for building more cities is just too severe, and the fact that a culture victory requires you to keep a small empire seems to be so contrary to the way the game is meant to be played. It's the only victory type that can become practically impossible because you expanded too much.
But this probably isn't the place to discuss solutions for that... it seems to be outside the scope of this mod!

@ Burrito_X & MasterDinadan

How more population means more gold? It's pretty simple, and has very little to do with specialists: more population equals more workable tiles. Those farms will net you more citizens to work over other production&wealth tiles, such as mines and water. More wealth tiles worked (such as coasts) is pretty straightforward, but more production aswell means faster building of wealth increasing structures (markets etc), which, in turn, will net a big income increase much earlier than the AI.

The AI shortcoming in this department is, as far as I can see, that it somewhat takes into account the new balance, yes, but doesn't consider this exponential gain at all. It just choses the improvement that best fulfills its IMMEDIATE need. AKA, if it needs money, it will build the trading post that will net it those couple gold coins per turn right now, not the farm that would represent 10 times the gold gain thanks to this domino effect, but in 100 turns.

The issue with happiness isn't an issue at all: if you are expanding, actually mostly ignoring happiness is one of the easiest ways to rushwin the game through conquest even in vanilla. The faster rate at which your population increase, and as such your production, makes it even easier since you'll crunch out settlers first and military units then much faster, to grab those new luxuries that will keep happiness still somewhat under control (not to mention how it's already the best idea to just RAZE & RESETTLE the conquered cities in vanilla, with boosted farms it gets 10 times better).
For more conservative games, such as when you want a culture win, it's still pretty easy to keep happiness under control even with higher population: you have more gold and production; with those you can buy - or build - happiness wonders and buildings faster, you can buy tiles towards that luxury faster, or even just buy it from an AI civilization.




As you pointed out, even in vanilla at mid difficulty levels you tend to gain a huge advantage over the AI since the middle ages: it's for these very same reasons (not a coincidence that the gap becomes so evident right after the first techs which boost farms and production). By making food and production tiles more valuable in the long run, the issue gets worse since the AI isn't capable of planning ahead taking "the long run" into account. As long as you can keep 'em at bay in the first stages of the game (not difficult thanks to the 1 unit per tile mechanic and the suicidal behaviour the AI loves to keep), that's it, you've won. There's not even any real reason to expand once you have some cities and some chokepoints to control: you can just defend for a while, and then conquer everything without any effort a bit later when you'll be an era ahead of everyone else.

Right now I'm back after a game played this time with a setup similar to yours, Burrito_X: Valkyronn's Economy mod, the freshwater farm balance mod, the Great Persons balance mod (that one is just perfect, it makes 'em useful while they still are too rare to really affect too heavily the wide balance), and a single small modification by me that just gives +1 to mines after Dynamite, so that they can compete with lumbermills. Main difference is, this time I left out both the modded buildings and wonders.
The issue is still there, not as big, but still there.

I guess I'll try a different approach: leave the improvements as they are, and boost only the resources. Wheat, animals, strategic resources etc. At least on those the AI will always build the right improvement as I would do. Only obvious shortcoming of that approach is, though, that luck becomes much more important and starting points would become more of a win or lose scenario: you get the wheat, you've won, you don't, you're in for a world of hurt >_<


P.S. BTW, MasterDinadan, if you can tell me where I would have said that "the mod is broken" I would be sincerely grateful. I love science fiction.

All very true points Kadath. I really like your thoughtful and detailed feedback, this will help me when I start working on improving/balancing the AI.

The difficulty is a fundamentally flawed AI... rather than limit the potential of the game to make the AI seem better however, I'd prefer making the AI better directly. Interesting choices like you describe reward a player for thinking things through, and end up being more fun. Take building maintenance, for example. It's a passive effect that limits your gold supply, and gold can be used for a wide variety of choices now: tiles, units, city-state influence, etc. High maintenance is easier to code an AI for, so if you reduce maintenance and increase decision-making the human naturally gains an advantage, even though everyone is mathematically still on an even playing field. I prefer to counter this by improving the AI's logic and reasoning. AI's can frequently have thousands of unused gold lying around, for example, even in the vanilla game, when it's generally better to spend it and get some benefit.

Along these lines, once I'm out of ideas for direct gameplay balance I'll sit down and thoroughly look around the AI files.

Regarding happiness, it's a realm I'm avoiding for now. The happiness effects are one of those core, critical gameplay problems in CiV that can't be solved with just a few slight adjustments. It's not even clear if the developers intended us to be able to ignore this mechanic of the game, or if that capability is an unintended consequence of other factors. Something I saw in another thread highlights the problem really well: it seems odd to be able to build the Utopia Project after millennia of -50 anger, which is entirely possible with the current mechanics.

How about slowing research down in the industrial and modern era?

If you'd like to give it a try, my Gradual Research mod does that Silver44Guy.

Silver44Guy said:

How about slowing research down in the industrial and modern era?

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Thalassicus said:

If you'd like to give it a try, my Gradual Research mod does that Silver44Guy.

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It was a match made in heaven.

Thalassicus said:

If you'd like to give it a try, my Gradual Research mod does that Silver44Guy.

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I'm trying it out right now. Doing a France, Standard size/speed Emporer game.

Liking it so far. Im in the medieval era, and already i notice it's taking alittle longer to hit the techs. I made a huge bulb to get civil service, which would have taken me quite awhile to get in the midst of this war im in which is setting me back. Washington decided to attack me early on when i wasn't prepared yet.

Your update to ancient ruins is brilliant. You keep rolling these out and reinventing the wheel daily.

Im afraid to start a new campaign and miss some other balancing trick you find.

God bless ya. If you ever need coding help or anything, ANYTHING. Lemme know. You make Civ 5 playable ; A;

I have all the balance mods installed, but when I built a granary in my capital city, it did not produce 2 more food. The building does have 0 maintenance. Also, the 50% growth increase did not increase my cities food production. It is at 3 currently, 2 base +1 for tradition policy. Neither the granary nor the growth % policy increased it's food production. Suggestions? I have no other mods running but the clock and luxury resource counter.

hawktaken said:

I have all the balance mods installed, but when I built a granary in my capital city, it did not produce 2 more food. The building does have 0 maintenance. Also, the 50% growth increase did not increase my cities food production. It is at 3 currently, 2 base +1 for tradition policy. Neither the granary nor the growth % policy increased it's food production. Suggestions? I have no other mods running but the clock and luxury resource counter.

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Check whether the food has simply been lumped onto the city centre tile. In almost all cases the default food output of the city tile would be 2. In some cases you could get 3 base by for example settling on top of a food resource like cows or wheat. So if you can see more than 2 or 3 on that centre tile, there's your explanation.

It's pretty confusing, but a lot of bonuses to city outputs in the game are simply added to the city tile. Maritime city states (that give food to your cities) do it that way as well.

Are there any plans for a unit maintenance balance mod? This would help the AI because I've seen them wreck their economy with units (probably why they are hurting to win at lower difficulties) by building a boatload of units. It would also be nice to be able to field a defensive army without dragging myself into the red.

hi there i'm new to civ modding and i have created a mod using most of your balance mods, some of Valkrionn's economy mod and the social policy update from Szpilman's savage lands mod, You have been credited in the mod description and i would appreciate your feedback on my efforts i have posted it on mod browser and it is called Big Balance Economy Mod, If you object me using your mod please let me know.

CraigM

@ Kadath - about farm yields

Ok I see what you are saying now, and I agree the AI does seem to always plan for the next ten turns instead of the next 100. You also hit the nail on the head, basically onc eyou have 5-6 cities you can just make some choke points with citadels and sit back and win. The AI has a hell of am impossible time sieging your citadels, etc with 1upt. But man, I hate the trading post spam, and the increase mine and farm yields DO make the AI do some different stuff... you know perhaps is the trading post graphic didnt suck so bad... its not all THAT different from cottage / villiage economy citys from civ 4...

You might be right on there - until the AI plans ahead better for game "balance" it might be better just to focus on modding up the resources to high levels, say +2/+2 or even more. I ahve never seen the AI build a TP on an Iron yet...

@ Thallasicus
try a game without your cheaper buildings and I think you will like the maintained 'tough decisions' about what to build to avoid going broke. Also makes a downside to puppeting becasue the stupid AI builds a million armories and pancake houses and pocket flan manufactories resulting in heavy gold losses.

ok i beg you PLEASE make a +2 culture Artist! I have tried cultural victory in every game only to have it bog down to a nightmarish crawl, give up, and then just conquer. I can get to about +400 culture per turn with wonders, broadcast towers and the + culture civics, but when you are needing 5000 culture for one civic and you need another 10 more to win and each one raises the cost another 20%...

and yes I only take 5 cities and stop (if each city increases the cost by 20% you will break even with your 5th but each additional one will only hurt you even with all culture buildings built)

BX

BTW you guys rock. you, valkyronn, aforess, the ROM team.. for many years.
will be making a amnesty international donation in your honor.

BX

Burrito_X said:

and yes I only take 5 cities and stop (if each city increases the cost by 20% you will break even with your 5th but each additional one will only hurt you even with all culture buildings built)

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Slightly off-topic, but it's a percent of the base amount (it's 30% on standard and smaller, but less on bigger maps), so if you can keep pumping out cities that are keeping up with the ones you already have, it's not going to slow down your policy rate. The advantages diminish as you get more cities though.
The bigger issue is that culture sources that can't be reproduced just by making a city will suffer from an expansive empire. I'm referring to wonders like Stonehenge, the Great Artist improvement, etc... but more importantly, gifts from cultured city states.
If you keep a single city and ally large number of cultured city states, you can pick up policies very efficiently.
I've never really tried a culture win with 5 cities, but from the sound of it, it's not going to go well. You said you were getting 400 culture a turn. In a recent culture game, I was earning that much with two cities (most of the culture was coming from city states).
I was lucky enough to start on a ton of silver though, so I could run a very efficient Mint and have the money to actually fund all of my alliances.

Excellent mods. Frankly I think the game designers should just include most of this in the next patch. I am playing a game with all these mods, and the game experience is dramatically improved.