Game balance

Civsassin

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One thing we learned from CiV upon release was that the game was unbalanced. There were issues with:
- happiness (hence the luxury resource nerf in a subsequent patch)
- ability to generate gold (hence the trading post nerf)
- ICS (hence the three tiles vice two between cities)
- RA (hence the change to the RA mechanic)
- Science generation (hence the changes to Academy and National College yields among others)
- Production (hence the production nerf)
- building yields (percentages lowered in favor of a set amount of gold/science/production yields)

You get the point. Now they are introducing quite a few new game mechanics that in themselves may be unbalanced and may cause unbalancing to some of the existing game mechanics. For example, there has been quite a bit of discussion about happiness and how in G&K there provides a greater opportunity for happiness (new luxuries, adding the +1 happiness back to luxuries, happiness through religion, etc). Is this going to now permit players to settle more cities than they normally would? Without some offsetting mechanic, I would think so, but so far, none has been discussed.

Faith is now being added, and Stonehenge now provides faith rather than culture. Will an already difficult culture win now be more difficult, or are they adding other opportunities to increase culture.

Obviously, with the change to the HP system, we now have a 100 point scale vice a 10 point scale. The opportunity to have an unbalanced combat system exists.

These are just a few examples of the potential to unbalance the game, but on the other hand, the developers may have learned their lessons from the shape the game was in upon release. It may also be that there are other game mechanics and changes that have not been released that will help to keep the game balanced. For example, I don't recall seeing how city attack / defense is going to change as a result of the modified HP system.

Thoughts? Comments?
 
The new combat system is actually meant to balance the ******ation that arose from allowing 10 warriors to defeat a GDR.
 
The new combat system is actually meant to balance the ******ation that arose from allowing 10 warriors to defeat a GDR.

In that respect, I agree, but there is much more to combat than just that aspect of it.
 
We won't know till we find out, but i suspect Firaxis, 2K and co will be looking to recover some of their rep after all the modification that was needed for vanilla.

There will of course be imbalances, i just think they will be to a lesser extent than we saw before. We may see a swing in the opposite direction too, as they overcompensate to avoid nerfs and instead require buffs
 
adding the +1 happiness back to luxuries

Was it from the German website playing Dutch screenshot? AFAIK it was figured out that they were playing at settler level.

I don't really like how all of the officially approved teasers said nothing about enhancing cultural VC. We already know that it's one of the least favored VCs as it is, G&K Piety doesn't reduce SP costs anymore while temples have switched from +culture to +faith, Espionage possibly adds a new tech but nothing about culture, lesser cultural CS due to the addition of the 2 new CS types, etc. It's very possible to have a large empire playing cultural VC - some vanilla Deity LPs have demonstrated it plus frequent wars lead to lesser or no RAs thus the only other way to win if you don't achieve domination would be cultural. These are not very encouraging signs for cultural VC.
 
I think the two things that concern me the most are happiness becoming too easy and culture becoming too hard. Everything else looks fine. Religion can be helpful, but it's meant to be helpful. Espionage looks fairly self-contained.

I don't think luxuries produce five happiness. That appears to have been the difficulty level. However, given all things, they probably should have three now - give more luxuries per map, but require you to trade with your neighbors to get them.
 
Balance is of course relatively subjective. What is easy for you is not as easy for others, so there will never be a situation where everyone is satisfied.

The fact that everything interlinks in this game so much is also a big problem for balance, but i think a certain element of imbalance is good. I play pokemon and i love how extreme the imbalances are.

I find it funny how the goal always seems to be to win, and not enjoying the journey you take your civ along on the way.
 
I may be wrong,but it's possible that the Great Prophet spawn could be affected by the number of the cities . If so,then there will be about 5 approaches in the beginning of the game,which are:

- Focus on Expansion(REX approaches);
- Focus on offensive(Early Rushes and DOWs approaches);
- Focus on defense;
- Focus on Faith generation;
- Focus on Culture production;

All of them can receive a support from a Pantheon . With the exception of few cases,like getting "Monument of the Gods" Pantheon with Egypt,this thing seem balanced . If not,then there will be many patches,fixes and mods to solve such problem .
 
The new combat system is actually meant to balance the ******ation that arose from allowing 10 warriors to defeat a GDR.

It's going to be very interesting to see how much less damage stronger units suffer when attacked by weaker units. Will we see units of a tier below doing only 1-2 damage or will they be doing 7-8 damage and the new combat system may not make as much of a difference as people believe.
 
Has that actually ever happened?

They don't have to be warriors. Attacking any unit with 10 other units in one turn will instantly kill it.

It's the 1 damage per combat rule.


It's one of the reasons why Britain is an incredibly frustrating civ to play against until Artillery rolls around. This dumb rule essentially hugely undervalues higher-tiered units until the industrial era, as a human is smart enough to exploit it towards their advantage. (Or they can be disadvantaged by it, in the case of an inept AI playing Britain)
 
Actually, it would be 10 Archers. Tie goes to the stronger unit in melee, but this doesn't apply to ranged units. The best unit against GDRs are Chu-ko-Nus.
 
Balance is of course relatively subjective. What is easy for you is not as easy for others, so there will never be a situation where everyone is satisfied.

The fact that everything interlinks in this game so much is also a big problem for balance, but i think a certain element of imbalance is good. I play pokemon and i love how extreme the imbalances are.

I find it funny how the goal always seems to be to win, and not enjoying the journey you take your civ along on the way.

Balance isn't necessarily subjective. Some people will never be satisfied no matter what you do, but most will when the game is balanced correclty. Unbalanced games permit the exploits we've seen in the past - REX, RA, etc. A balanced game makes other strategies nearly equally effective, which really permits folks with different playing styles to enjoy the game without the compulsion to take one expoitive path or another. There will always be dominant strategies, and our best players will find them, but other strategies should be equally viable in a balanced game all things considered.
 
I think the two things that concern me the most are happiness becoming too easy and culture becoming too hard. Everything else looks fine. Religion can be helpful, but it's meant to be helpful. Espionage looks fairly self-contained.

I don't think luxuries produce five happiness. That appears to have been the difficulty level. However, given all things, they probably should have three now - give more luxuries per map, but require you to trade with your neighbors to get them.

I agree. Happiness and culture were the first to come to mind, but with the new combat arrangement, I am also concerned there may be some imbalances - too easy to take cities or too hard. Right now, in the early game, I will see a preponderance of enemy units with an early DoW, but I can usually repel it. With units living longer, the potential to take a city in the early game increases if city attack and defense haven't been addressed proportionately.
 
The difference is, given what we know, there's no reason to think there will be an imbalance for combat. We've seen cities increase in strength, we have a good idea of what the new unit strengths are, and nothing stands out. Different, yes, but not necessarily imbalanced.

With culture, we have to hope there are things we haven't seen, because it looks harder otherwise.
 
The difference is, given what we know, there's no reason to think there will be an imbalance for combat. We've seen cities increase in strength, we have a good idea of what the new unit strengths are, and nothing stands out. Different, yes, but not necessarily imbalanced.

With culture, we have to hope there are things we haven't seen, because it looks harder otherwise.

I didn't notice increase in city strength, but it's reassuring if they did. Did they also improve city defense?

I am hopeful that they have rounded the game out well wherever they've made changes. There will always be a post expansion patch to fix flaws, but hopefully, they are only minor flaws.
 
Defensive buildings now also increase the maximum hp of cities (+50hp for walls, at the very least).
On the other hand, spearmen have 10 strength, horsemen 12, swordmen 14, and catapults have 8 ranged strength and +200% against cities (thus 24 ranged strength).

I don't think we know much more about city combat, but you can get the global image with this data.
 
hmm, but spears at 10+100% will still be imba vs. horsemen, if it hasn't changed.

Or the Rifle that has +100% vs. mounted due to an upgrade. Makes the horse line pretty useless if they're around.
 
Don't the devs playtest the game? They must have playtesters right? Or do they just create it and slap it on a plastic lunchbox and sell it, without any regard to game balance? I doubt it. :lol:
 
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