A real try at some new traits.

OK, so I fiddled around with these a few weeks ago. But now I'd like to see what would happen if the following traits could be added to the game.

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Diplomatic:
+2 relations with all civilizations.
Double production speed of the United Nations wonder.
Double production speed of missionaries.

Spying:
+10% in all cities.
Double production speed of Intelligence Agency and Security Bureau.

Scientific:
All buildings except Monasteries that supply a percentage bonus receive an additional +5%.

Agricultural:
+1 to all tiles producing 4 or more until Biology is researched.
Double production speed of Grocer and Supermarket.

Entertaining:
+5% slider for free. (Cannot send the total of sliders over 100%; cannot adjust the slider until Music is researched.)
Colosseum provides +1 per 15% .
Double production speed of Broadway, Rock & Roll, and Hollywood wonders.
(This trait would work best if sliders can be set in increments of 5%.)

Draconian:
Slavery produces +25% .
Under Nationhood, each city may draft a second unit per turn, for +4 and -1 population.
Double production speed of Jail.

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Obviously Diplo does almost nothing in a multiplayer game, but it could sure give an early-game boost against AI's, which can domino into good relationships with more AI's. Entertainining may resemble Creative, but just like the differences between Financial and Organized, these two traits differ as well. I'm trying to figure out the whipping bonus for Drac; currently I have it set at 33 1/3%.

Aggricultral & Scientific make sense since they were in Civ3

I miss a Sci guy for Germany

Those are really well thought out and could have been implemented into the game in a balanced way. I assume that there are no modders around here who can make the AI know how to use new traits such as these? Like, I don't think the current AI will use Draconian properly very often.

Lay_Lay said:

Those are really well thought out and could have been implemented into the game in a balanced way. I assume that there are no modders around here who can make the AI know how to use new traits such as these? Like, I don't think the current AI will use Draconian properly very often.

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Half of them seem useless, and the other half overpowered. I appreciate the efforts, but I don't find the result balanced. It add traits that would be good, like agricultural, but I don't really want to see the effect in game. Especially "Diplomatic" (summary : you have only one trait), and "Draconian" (summary : you instantly create an army of any size immediatly after you won liberalism race)

Draconian would be overpowered. 6 rifles/turn from drafting for 10 turns = 60 rifles?

Why don't you create them, playtest them, and then balance them?

For what it's worth the current test build of LoR has two added traits (the official release only has enlightened so far). Both the traits seem balanced, and useful, and it's entirely in the DLL with XML tags, so doesn't require python fiddling now that the atributes are set up. Which brings up a new point, to create a well made trait, you must do some actual coding. And in some instances you must do some dll editing (my prefered method as then other mod modders, and yourself have easy access to setting stuff in the XML), but many traits available are done entirely in Python. Tsentom's Python Traits are a good example of traits done entirely in python.

The traits I have come up with, that are balanced and have a unique flavor are:

Enlightened:

• Non State still produces
• +10% in all cities
• Double production speed of Monestaries, Observatories, and Laboratories

Strategic:

• Units can be upgraded outside of national borders
• Spy's start with Logistics Promotion
• Double Production of Spys
• Double Production of Stables, Intelligence Agencies

Like I've said I've found from playtesting these are balanced. Though people consider Enlightened to be one of the stronger traits, up there with Finacial. The +10% bonus to science doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. I was surprised Strategic ended up being balanced, I thought it would be highly dependent on gamespeed and end up overpowered, but it seems good from all testing I've done.

TheLazyHase said:

Half of them seem useless, and the other half overpowered. I appreciate the efforts, but I don't find the result balanced. It add traits that would be good, like agricultural, but I don't really want to see the effect in game. Especially "Diplomatic" (summary : you have only one trait), and "Draconian" (summary : you instantly create an army of any size immediatly after you won liberalism race)

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kossin said:

Draconian would be overpowered. 6 rifles/turn from drafting for 10 turns = 60 rifles?

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Hmm, didn't see that one. I guess because I rarely use Nationhood. Lemme see if I can tweak it down a bit.

If Diplomatic really is that weak, perhaps it should give a +2 relations with all AI's?

Most of them seem reasonably balanced, although I think the real benefits of a few may come too late.

Draconian, however, is absurdly overpowered. Any seasoned slaver/drafter would laugh just thinking about what they could achieve with those bonuses.

edit: I'd be hesitant about a trait that significantly improved either slavery or drafting, since used correctly they are already two of the most powerful tools in the game.

RedFury said:

Most of them seem reasonably balanced, although I think the real benefits of a few may come too late.

Draconian, however, is absurdly overpowered. Any seasoned slaver/drafter would laugh just thinking about what they could achieve with those bonuses.

edit: I'd be hesitant about a trait that significantly improved either slavery or drafting, since used correctly they are already two of the most powerful tools in the game.

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Wow. OK, I cranked down Drac a bit more; does it need to come down even more?

The new draconian seem less overpowered. Then again, thoses mechanics are borderline overpowered in vanilla civ4 so trait that augment them are alway at a risk of being either insignificant or overpowered. It may not have something in the middle.

Diplomatic's bonus to AI attitude cannot be really good, because most of the time the AI is either a desperate case or already a friend. It help only in some specific case, and it's more a floavor bonus than a real bonus. This trait will not come up good until you find something significant to add to him. Maybe a 25% bonus to search technologie discovered by civ you have already encountered, because your diplomatic skill help to approach scholar.

Draconian is going to be really tough to balance in such ways. I'd have to do math on Slavery, however the drafting aspect still seems too good and a bit off. 2 units for 2 pop and 5 unhappiness. So you get 2 units in 1 less turn and with 1 less unhappy penalty per city. So in order to draft 20 rifles from 5 cities you'd need:

Normal - 4 turns, 12 unhappiness in each city.
Draconian - 2 turns, 10 unhappiness in each city.

You are still effectively doubling the rate at which you can draft units while decreasing the penalty. Also Infantry+ already take 2 pop to draft, so this would be even more skewed with the current wording. If you want to boost drafting I'd say try to balance it so early drafting is not horribly destructive while late game drafting is once again useful outside of "oh holy hell WTH" type defensive situations.

Lansky said:

Draconian is going to be really tough to balance in such ways. I'd have to do math on Slavery, however the drafting aspect still seems too good and a bit off. 2 units for 2 pop and 5 unhappiness. So you get 2 units in 1 less turn and with 1 less unhappy penalty per city. So in order to draft 20 rifles from 5 cities you'd need:

Normal - 4 turns, 12 unhappiness in each city.
Draconian - 2 turns, 10 unhappiness in each city.

You are still effectively doubling the rate at which you can draft units while decreasing the penalty. Also Infantry+ already take 2 pop to draft, so this would be even more skewed with the current wording. If you want to boost drafting I'd say try to balance it so early drafting is not horribly destructive while late game drafting is once again useful outside of "oh holy hell WTH" type defensive situations.

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OK I have an idea for Drac:

-Can draft 2 soldiers per city, per turn.
-First draft works as normal: -1 pop, +3 .
-Second draft, if done, gives -1 pop and +4 . Or maybe it should be +5 ? Only thing is, though, if drafting in any city other than the one with the Globe Theater, the player is very likely to have to crank up the slider to keep from skyrocketing. Even Charismatic won't help much with that.

Alternatively, each city can draft twice per turn, both times producing -1 pop and +4 .

toll_booth said:

Spying:
+10% in all cities.
Double production speed of Intelligence Agency and Security Bureau.

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Why not. Does not underestimate the power of this beast, it may come up more powerful than expected.

toll_booth said:

Scientific:
All buildings supplying a percentage bonus receive an additional +5%.
Double production speed of Observatory and Laboratory.

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I really fear this is broken. A lot of bonus to science, and then observatory became dirt cheap. Creative / scientist and philosoph / scientist may do nasty thing with that.

toll_booth said:

Agricultural:
+1 to all tiles producing 4 or more.
Double production speed of Grocer and Supermarket.

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Need test. Maybe broken after bio, butit's very late and unhealthiness may just counter this. On the other hand, can sometime be real crappy. If you begin on a flood plain site or with numerous seafood, it's a godsend, if you have no much food source it may be weak.

toll_booth said:

Entertaining:
+5% slider for free. (Cannot send the total of sliders over 100%; cannot adjust the slider until Music is researched.)
Colosseum provides +1 per 15% .
Double production speed of Broadway, Rock & Roll, and Hollywood wonders.
(This trait would work best if sliders can be set in increments of 5%.)

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Too focused on cultural win for me, and the coliseum boost is not enough to warrant a real usefulness. Industrious may just be better in all case.

toll_booth said:

Corporate:
-50% maintenance costs of corporations (does not hinder benefits, such as ).
Double production speed of Bank and Wall Street.

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Really way too late in the game. I simply think there is no reason for such a late trait, unless you make corporation begin with guild, and being replaced by stronger corporation when the time is right.

phungus420 said:

Enlightened:

• Non State still produces
• +10% in all cities
• Double production speed of Monestaries, Observatories, and Laboratories

Like I've said I've found from playtesting these are balanced. Though people consider Enlightened to be one of the stronger traits, up there with Finacial. The +10% bonus to science doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. I was surprised Strategic ended up being balanced, I thought it would be highly dependent on gamespeed and end up overpowered, but it seems good from all testing I've done.

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I've not used the mod in question, but I'm very much not surprised that people consider Enlightened to be one of the stronger traits. +10% science in all cities certainly would add up to a lot. It may not provide as much extra science from tiles as financial does, but the bonus would also apply to specialists and trade route income. And 9 cheap science boosting buildings on top of that? Very, very strong.

TheLazyHase said:

Why not. Do not underestimate the power of this beast, it may come up more powerful than expected.

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I really fear this is broken. A lot of bonus to science, and then observatory became dirt cheap. Creative / scientist and philosoph / scientist may do nasty thing with that.

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It probably depends on how its effects compare to Financial. If it surpasses it by a fair margin, cut the two build bonuses.

Need test. Maybe broken after bio, butit's very late and unhealthiness may just counter this. On the other hand, can sometime be real crappy. If you begin on a flood plain site or with numerous seafood, it's a godsend, if you have no much food source it may be weak.

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When I first thought it out, I proposed +1 for tiles with 3 or more . Obviously that was too low, so I went to 4, meaning only some resources could get the bonus pre-Bio. Perhaps raising the threshold to 5 food would solve it, but then it becomes too much of a resource-specific trait. And remember that Biology is pretty late-game.

Too focused on cultural win for me, and the coliseum boost is not enough to warrant a real usefulness. Industrious may just be better in all case.

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Possibly. I was thinking more in terms of border culture wars, as this is clearly a late-game-trending trait, as opposed to Creative which trends early-game.

Really way too late in the game. I simply think there is no reason for such a late trait, unless you make corporation begin with guild, and being replaced by stronger corporation when the time is right.

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Perhaps if there was some way for a "Corporate" civ to receive a free GP that can only found a corporation. And once Corporation is researched, that civ is guaranteed to get a special corporation. OR, if this isn't too powerful, that GP can pick from a list of all the not-yet-founded corporations, regardless of what other technologies that civ has researched.

Scientific.

One word: Monasteries

I miss Seafaring from Civ3

Lansky said:

Scientific.

One word: Monasteries

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Totally agree. It's the monastery abuse that would make this OP. It doubles the science bonus of these babies, and they were already as efficient in hammer/bonus ratio as most other science buildings (except libraries.) The modified version is almost as good as ordinary library/university/observatory/lab for 60 hammers each, and you can build 6 of them!

If a player gunned for about 4-5 religions present in their cities then build all the monasteries in key science cities, this would be huge!

edit: Also, there's no way this trait should be allowed to pair with financial, the synergy is just too great.

How about something that makes unit support cheaper? Or upgrading? Militaristic?

Something that increases the spreading speed of your state religion, and makes mssionaries cheaper too? Proselytizing?

For agricultural, I'd consider giving +1 food to the city square, instead of +1 food for every >4 food tile. That would be quite powerful at the start, but become less and less significant as time progresses.

RedFury said:

Totally agree. It's the monastery abuse that would make this OP. It doubles the science bonus of these babies, and they were already as efficient in hammer/bonus ratio as most other science buildings (except libraries.) The modified version is almost as good as ordinary library/university/observatory/lab for 60 hammers each, and you can build 6 of them!

If a player gunned for about 4-5 religions present in their cities then build all the monasteries in key science cities, this would be huge!

edit: Also, there's no way this trait should be allowed to pair with financial, the synergy is just too great.

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Ah yes. OK this is fixed now.