Balance - Great Person Abilities

This component has been combined into the Balance - Improvements modcomp. This thread will no longer be updated.


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This improves the strategic value of Great Person tile improvements compared to their other abilities. The immediate bonuses are still better if you have something valuable within a dozen turns or so after getting the Great Person. Otherwise, it's better to create an improvement or start a golden age.

This mod is now available in the Civ V Mod Browser (Main Menu > Mods > Browse Mods, search for "balance - ").

• Academy
  8 1 (from 5). Now takes approximately 50 turns (down from 80) to break even with a university compared to lightbulbing average medieval era techs.
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• Citadel
  +2 +2 (from 0). Slightly more valuable as an actual tile. Realistically, this represents the increased trade citadels receive, and their innate production capabilities (blacksmiths, etc).
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• Customs House
  7 (from 4). Now takes approximately 100 turns (down from 190) to break even compared to trading post, trade mission, market and bank in the medieval era.
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• Landmark
  4 2 (from 4). Offsets cost of not having a trading post, and slightly more valuable for non-culture players.
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• Manufactory
  4 (from 3). Now takes approximately 170 turns (down from 230) to break even with a windmill compared to rushing average renaissance era world wonder. Longer return on investment time compared to other special buildings since the base hammers can be used for non-Wonder construction, engineers cannot complete full wonders in late game, and factories provide a late-game bonus.
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Keep in mind early-game gains amplify exponentially in civ to late-game benefits, thus turn estimates alone are only an approximate guideline of value.

In the default game, these improvements are typically worse than the golden age or immediate bonus alternatives. Further rationale and math behind these changes is explained a few posts down. Times are on epic gamespeed. On different gamespeeds the times will be larger or smaller, but techs and other costs also proportionally change so the overall relative strengths remain similar.

The cultural improvement is difficult to balance because the culture bomb provides no social policy culture, cannot end unrest in a city, and typically only can gain 3-4 tiles. I haven't studied cultural games in as much detail, so suggestions there would be welcome.

Also makes sense. Bonus from these where tiny.

Just a question, will these changes show up in the screen? For example, if I look at the great person and look the academy improvement option, will it still say 5 instead of 15? Just wondering. Same with your engineer tech mod which improves lumber mill and mines, will it show up in the tech tree when I look at the engineer tech?

Also, can you say anything about this affecting the AI? Will it affect them making these improvements compared to vanilla? How about the lumber mills/mines?

Are you taking into consideration libaries/universities/pubic school houses/observatorys/research labs (did I miss any for increased Science yield?), that will increase the science yield on the original 5 science yield improvement, which will provide a larger bonus than merely 5 per turn, meaning a larger bonus per turn and thus an already shorter ROI compared to those stated which was your reasoning behind the "balance". The same applies with the Gold increasing building's and the production increasing buildings.

Suffice to say, I doubt this does much to balance anything at all .

Yeah I'm not sure I agree with these changes. Honestly I use those great scientists to plant tiles rather often. It only takes 160 turns to make up for itself, and most games tend to last 300-400 turns on standard speed. On top of that you can spam them all at your capital and build the national school there for a very early 7.5 per tile bonus.. later with universities, schools, and labs this can get to 15, 22.5, 37.5 from the single tile. Although typically at this point I just use them to pop techs, the long term use of these tiles is phenominal.

However I agree the merchant and engineer could use a boost. 12 is probably too much though. 7-8 would be alright. The engineer might be okay at 6, probably 4 or 5 would be better though considering how rare production is.

If you prefer slightly different yields the files are very easy to alter, simply load up the XML and tweak the values I put there. I'm just getting the ball rolling and formatting things nicely so others can alter values to their personal preferences without much hassle.

However, do consider my reasoning, as I did quite a bit of number-crunching from the internal files:

Early-game gains have an amplifying effect on late-game potential. It's why paying minimum payments on a credit card is so bad in the long run. The score curves of Civ games are nearly a pure exponential line, and these calculations do not even factor this effect, since the rate of inflation is difficult to determine yet in Civ V (no score chart). Therefore, these estimates are low-end figures and in reality the improvements are less useful than what's indicated.

Regarding scientists, the cost of tech goes up dramatically in later eras, making default academies a net loss to your empire in both late and early game. The estimate only applies to medieval era techs or earlier. Return on investment lengthens faster in the industrial-modern eras than science buildings provide, and eventually extends past the cutoff point of remaining turns in the game. For example, in the early modern era the average ROI for a default Academy is still 200 turns with a university, public school and research lab. You cannot recover that loss before the game ends. Civ IV countered this by lightbulbs providing only partial techs in late game, but in V it's always a full tech.

Regarding the merchant, consider a trading post is 2, which lowers the net value of a customs house. In the medieval era, a trade mission nets 450 gold + the gold/influence ratio to the city-state. Better if you have Patronage social policies. The time to recover the loss of 600-1000 gold (depending on era and policies) while only earning a net +3/turn vs a trading post (market and bank) is astronomical, and likely not even possible with exponential inflation of early value.

Arksa said:

Just a question, will these changes show up in the screen?

Click to expand...

They do show correctly in the civlopedia, I can't get the world editor open to place great people and check the order icons. However, in the first version or two I put out there were some minor bugs, so it's best to update to the latest version.

Arksa said:

Also, can you say anything about this affecting the AI? Will it affect them making these improvements compared to vanilla? How about the lumber mills/mines?

Click to expand...

The AI favors great-person improvements, I've seen them occasionally spammed around AI capitals. Therefore, it will actually boost the AI in some situations. As for the lumber mills, I've seen them build those quite often too, and same with mines.

Long time investments should net more profit because you can even loose tile improvement sometimes. So i agree with OP. But what with culture improvement. Is it ok and dont need tweak?

(1) Are all your balance mods going to be merged or is each separate?

(2) if not, can I load all your balance mods at once?

Thalassicus said:

Customs House
12 (up from 4). Now takes approximately 53 turns (down from 525) to break even compared to trading post + trade mission in the medieval era (gold plus gold-influence conversion).

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Did you remember to take into consideration that the original improvement is in effect +2 gold (as trading post already gives 2)?

Thalassicus said:

Academy
15 (up from 5). Now takes approximately 53 turns (down from 160) to break even compared to lightbulbing average medieval era techs. Academy increases in effectiveness before this, loses effectiveness after.

Click to expand...

Academy might actually be a meaningful consideration now; I've usually just saved my early great scientists for a renessaince beeline/slingshot. With this change, saving them is most likely (according to very short napkin math) to saving them, which is IMHO a good thing.

Thalassicus said:

Manufactory
6 (up from 3). Now takes approximately 133 turns (down from 267) to break even compared to rushing average renaissance era world wonder. 250% longer return on investment time compared to other special buildings since the base hammers can be used for non-Wonder construction.

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This one might actually be too good; because as you note the hammers can be used for non-Wonder production. On the other hand, it isn't overpowered for warmongering as you only need a small amount of units.

Thalassicus said:

I avoided the cultural improvement because I haven't played enough cultural games to know for sure if it's worthwhile. The culture bomb appears very useless however, as it provides no social policy culture and cannot end unrest in a city, therefore the improvement isn't so bad in comparison.

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The cultural improvement seems to work pretty fine for cultural games; you might want to give this +2 gold (to match the trade post it would replace) so that it is viable for non-cultural strategies.

As for their special ability; it will give you a maximum of 6 unclaimed tiles, usually only 3, at a very steep diplomatic penalty. Net result is usually 1 strategic or luxury resource claimed. Not sure if it's possible to change, but I think a good idea (which is actually how I misread his ability in the first place) is to use it in a city to expand the borders one tile out.

One issue I've noticed, is that riverside plains or hills are the best place to put these super improvements, as you will get golden-age bonus then. Might be worth putting a single gold on all of them to not make them lose out during golden ages?

@wapamingo

The mods are separate so people can pick and choose what they like most. You can use just a few or install them all. I do it this way so each mod is highly focused, and it works great with Civ V.


@Tarkeel

Indeed, the +2 net compared to trading posts is one reason why the customs house is so incredibly weak by default. There's some in-depth discussion of it a few posts up.

I like your idea about adding a single gold to each improvement so you have more placement options. One difficulty about expanding city tile borders is, what if you bought tiles in a narrow strip off to some vital strategic resource? I think checking if players have bought tiles might require the C++ part of the sdk, though I haven't looked too extensively into the lua aspect yet.

I think everyone has reasonable points about the Manufactory, since production is so scarce, will change it to 5. That already seems relatively powerful, and it actually makes sense to put it next to rivers (for 1) as that's where major factories always went. Doesn't feel like there's a need to add that commerce to it explicitly. Cultural one would make sense as 4 2, possibly more culture if the culture bomb ability is improved. Great artists are currently just an automatic golden age for me. One point about not having gold on the academy is it encourages gold city vs research city specialization choice, something that seems to be lacking in CiV. Games are series of interesting choices... still, it makes sense to offset the cost of not having a trading post.

I just thought about this, but if you compare the culture bomb to the cost of purchasing tiles... actually is worth quite a bit of gold. I guess I never looked at it from that way since the golden age option overshadows it, and there wasn't tile purchasing in IV thus no direct gold equivilant.

Hello, impossible to play solo, the mod will not start a single player game.

Thanks for pointing that out, accidentally hit a wrong checkbox when last updating.

I fixed that checkbox and re-uploaded version 3, should work now.

IMO, these are even more unbalanced than the originals in the opposite direction.

Some players might FEEL like some things are not balanced when ONLY looking at those individual items, but you always have to consider the whole.

As an example - I never see AIs build GP buildings. So in my (personal, unpublished) improvements mod I doubled all their yields. Then I had AIs building them - and one AI built 3 academies at one city. Obviously, doubling the value was TOO good. The AI calculates the value of GP use on-the-fly and suddenly felt like acadamies were too good to pass up.

IMO the GP improvements don't have to pay for themselves in some raw equivalency formula, because all of those formulas that I've seen fail to account for the "interest" factor.

For ex, if I put down a manufactory, I get a production boost forever. If that helps me build a workshop faster, I gain the benefit from the workshop earlier and IT TOO boosts me along faster. None of these formulas account for the effects of the things you get done earlier due to the benefit of the building. The same could be said of the landmark (SPs quicker, benefit from them sooner), or science (get techs faster, benefit from them earlier and longer), and even the custom house (more money to use on whatever the benefits you the rest of the game). It's kind of like "compound interest" in a positive way and it's never accounted for in the pure "bulbing vs beakers earned" formulas.

15 science for one academy is way, way over the top, as are the rest of these values.

Another thing to consider is that this game does things in small increments usually, so any alterations at all disturb the big picture and drastic changes radically alter the grand scheme of things.

I also believe in making changes in small steps, testing adequately, and then reflecting.

Doubling or tripling values across the board is not a good approach, IMO, especially for this game where things are done on a very tight scale.

Considering your calculations didn't take into account bonus from buildings, I think perhaps you need to rework them. Popping an early tech isn't always worth it. Civil service and theology being the exceptions, but if you've already got them you are probably better off dropping an academy that will make up for itself (probably sooner than 160 turns) and keep churning a profit afterwards as well. The customs house I agree is not worth it. Nor the manufactory, though only by a small margin. The change to the landmark was pretty pointless tbh. You would be better off simply increasing the tile yeild to +6 culture as anyone that doesn't care about a culture victory is simply going to use that artist to start a golden age.

@Zhaz I think comparing their usefulness to rushing a wonder or popping a tech does take the exponential gains into account. I'm just not comfortable with the calculations.

Zhahz said:

Doubling or tripling values across the board is not a good approach, IMO

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The creators of Civ and developers of games in general do use this approach. There's many great articles on the subject to learn about game balance, here's one example:

http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=119

If you feel you like the game the way it is, can simply leave it that way. Modding is here for those who like fiddling with things until it "feels right".

One reason I realized the turn times might seem long is I play on Epic speed. Standard games would have shorter ROI, but techs also cost less and everything progresses faster, so proportionally it's the same.

I agree that these changes are interesting, although considering both science and gold are easily multiplied (by markets, libraries, banks, etc), maybe slightly reducing would be a good idea. Since you've tripled the power of the other houses, it makes sense to do the same for the LandMark. After all, you have to compare it not just against the cost of buying tiles, but also the baseline of all GP, golden ages:

Custom House - 10 gold
Academy - 10 research, 2 gold
Manufactory - 5 hammers
LandMark - 8 culture, 2 gold

Hey Thal.. you mentioned you did calculations from the xml to determine say for example the return on a merchant for a trading mission.. where did you find those values?

Based on discussions here, I improved the landmark slightly and reduced the others slightly.

@ashmizen
You're right about improvements compared to golden ages, that's much more difficult to balance though, it depends on how many you've used and how large your empire is. That's why I just adjust compared to the immediate bonuses, which is more straightforward.

@Evalis
The merchant unit in CIV5Units.xml has the value for the direct gold income, 350 plus 50 more per era. City state influence-to-gold conversion rate is about 10:1 with Philantropy. Influence from a trade mission is stated as 30 by "MINOR_FRIENDSHIP_FROM_TRADE_MISSION" in GlobalDefines.xml (if that entry is not a red herring).

Is there anyway to get a older version of the mod back? I updated to Version 6 this morning and now none of my save games will load. They all say "enabled mods are incompatible with this game" even though all I did was update to version 6.