Civ traits

These are definately not balanced if you ask me.


Overpowered: religious, industrious, organized, imperial, philosophical.

Weak: Expansive, deceiver, seafaring.


Opinions?

We didn't... *wink*

No, but seriously, they aren't really underpowered or overpowered. If anything they are now more balanced in many way.

Deceiver, for instance, gives bonus to hammer for a lot of good buildings, grants two promotions to all spy units, and with the +2 espionage per city should be able to get up enough spy points against opponents to use spy missions to good effect. Spy missions can be really beneficial to you, or detrimental to anyone you want to undercut. You'll, for instance, see if an enemy is building a wonder and simply sabotage his efforts when nearly done.

Expansive gives +2 health per city and a few. This is good for the early game as it offsets much of the early unhealthiness. Thus you can start growing your city way faster than anyone else, and as you build worker units faster you don't lose as much growth turns as others do.

Seafaring though I'd also see as weak. It should at least have faster production of water units or an extra trade route per coastal city, maybe both.

Religious, I take it you mean Spiritual?
It's not that good. Sure, less time in Anarchy is good, but the way I play I spend 3 turns in Anarchy the whole game through. On Eternal. Simply put I only switch when I go through a Golden Age, so I plan those wonders, and my Great People usage accordingly. Only one I don't is Tribal at Tribalism. That takes me 3 turns of anarchy.

Industrious is really good with it's +50 wonders production. But, really, that only helps if you are tied with several other nations in the tech race. If you are ahead you'll be finished building it before they are. If you're behind they'll be finished with it before you are.

Organized with it's reduced Civics upkeep cost is good for that extra cash. In C2C though it's not that hard to be several hundred per turn in the green even without Organized. Administration buildings costing less is a boon though, but it's not "all that".

Imperialistic's bonus isn't all that good either. +100% Great General emergence is not bad but it's not "all that" either. It really depends on how many fights you win. If you're behind in military techs and have a hard time winning battles you won't get more GG's anyway.
As for building Settlers faster: it's such a miniscule part of the game you are building them anyway so it doesn't change very much. One city specialized in food will build them fast enough anyway. Just need to plan for it.

Philosophical is fun, lots of great people. Though with other bonuses counting towards Great People points too you'll be way far off twice as many as anyone else, that and the increased costs for every one you've made.
Without Philosophical Trait Civics (not counting Pacifism) can get you 65%, buildings more. For this example I'll say +50% only. Philosophical then gets +150%.
100+200+300+400+500+600+700+800+900+1000=5500 points needed for 10 GP.6600 for 11 and 7800 for 12.
With 3000 GP points base:
Non-Philosophical get 4500, which equals to 9 GP's.
Philosophical gets 7500, which equals to 11, almost 12, GP's.
Not that big a difference after all.

Cheers

Expansive gives +2 health per city and a few. This is good for the early game as it offsets much of the early unhealthiness. Thus you can start growing your city way faster than anyone else, and as you build worker units faster you don't lose as much growth turns as others do.

Completely useless.. Compare imperialistic to expansive:+2 health is really nothing only helps prehistoric a little bit. +25 worker production is nothing considering they are usually built in 2 turns anyway.. Settlers take ALOT longer to build and its a bigger bonus. They get +100% great generals which is huge. Expansive gets faster build time of aqueduct - useless building, harbor - useless building. There is no comparison between the two, one is 3x better than the other.

Philosophical gets double speed university and other useful building aswell.. this alone is better than expansive.

Remember there are ALOT of national wonders in c2c - Industrious get the bonus for those aswell. Also all the double production speed of buildings which are all nice buildings.

Organized gets double speed factory and double speed assembly thingy the two most important buildings when you get to modern era, the town hall etc is just a nice extra but cheaper civics is a very big deal since this is what will cost the most money.

Spiritual get the +1 happy on all those buildings and don't they get +1 health on them too? Faster production of buildings including DOUBLE production of some buildings like graveyard, together with maximum 1 turn anarchy...

Sure planning and strategy can offset some of the disadvantages of a particular trait but there is no doubt that some are better than others. I think expansive should be more like +5 health and double production of workers. Even then it would only be average, imho.

Seafaring needs like +1 commerce on river tile and +1 movement on ships or something to bring it up to par.

Deceiver needs something like 10 free spies each era advancement or something.
Not sure about other traits off the top of my head. I think aggressive on the weaker side, creative isn't bad just coz of the double speed library and the +1 happy from library.
Charismatic is on the weaker side but not as bad as aggressive.

I really think balance team should look at traits to re-evaluate. They are all the same as RAND, but this is completely different game.

I was looking at Realism Invictus and they had negative traits too for their leaders. Perhaps we should think about applying a 3rd negative trait to each leader. Might help balance things out.

The more involved the traits the better I think, they are really cool. Wish they were more complex that'd be awesome

I'd lik to see a system where each Civ has a set of leaders (with differing traits), and your leaders die off and are replaced by successors as the game goes on, so you get stronger and weaker leaders at different times. Ideally the traits would not be cast in stone, but perhaps set as the 'base level traits' for each leader, and get modified by your civilization's 'cultural values'. The kind of thing I have in mind is a 'score' for each trait, which is initially set to all 0s. Over time the civics you are in slowly adjust your trait scores (so spend a lot of time in militeristic civics and the militaristic trait score boosts up for example). As each leader dies off (one per era maybe??) another is randomly selected from your civikization's pool. The base traits of the new leader are then adjusted by your current civilization trait scores to give the effective traits for your new leader.

The idea here is to make your civic choices influence your historical progression, and give you something extra to think about in making those civic choices. Other things could also influence your cvilization trait scores too (random events maybe), though no one influence should be too large.

The main thing that would need to be done would be changing the trait mechanism to be weighted rather than just on or off for each trait, so that instead of just being 'militaristic' you'd have a 1-10 scale (perhaps in that case giving a probability of unit production exp bonuses say).

something like that?




I don't know if the RIFE team have it completely working but apparently it will be finished soon.

Sounds very nice koshling, I would still love a small little work over of the current traits. Your idea sounds like it might take awhile. I think a few little tweaks to the current traits would go along way.

Koshling said:

I'd lik to see a system where each Civ has a set of leaders (with differing traits), and your leaders die off and are replaced by successors as the game goes on, so you get stronger and weaker leaders at different times.

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The Mongoose mod has something like that. When you enter a new era, your leader is sometimes replaced by the next leader of that Civ.

Koshling said:

I'd like to see a system where each Civ has a set of leaders (with differing traits), and your leaders die off and are replaced by successors as the game goes on, so you get stronger and weaker leaders at different times. Ideally the traits would not be cast in stone, but perhaps set as the 'base level traits' for each leader, and get modified by your civilization's 'cultural values'. The kind of thing I have in mind is a 'score' for each trait, which is initially set to all 0s. Over time the civics you are in slowly adjust your trait scores (so spend a lot of time in militaristic civics and the militaristic trait score boosts up for example). As each leader dies off (one per era maybe??) another is randomly selected from your civilization's pool. The base traits of the new leader are then adjusted by your current civilization trait scores to give the effective traits for your new leader.

The idea here is to make your civic choices influence your historical progression, and give you something extra to think about in making those civic choices. Other things could also influence your civilization trait scores too (random events maybe), though no one influence should be too large.

The main thing that would need to be done would be changing the trait mechanism to be weighted rather than just on or off for each trait, so that instead of just being 'militaristic' you'd have a 1-10 scale (perhaps in that case giving a probability of unit production exp bonuses say).

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AIAndy said:

The Mongoose mod has something like that. When you enter a new era, your leader is sometimes replaced by the next leader of that Civ.

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Now this sounds perfect to me, how long or more to say, how much time would it take to implement something like this

strategyonly said:

Now this sounds perfect to me, how long or more to say, how much time would it take to implement something like this

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Not too long for the DLL part. A few days, maybe a week including testing. However, the XML part would probably fall to you (making sure each civ had a pool of leaders to draw from). I guess if it can't find a leader for that civ it cann just draw an unused leader randomly from any civ?? Or maybe a better way to do this might be for each leader to have multiple alternate names defined. Thus the same leader DEFINITION could be reused, and we just take different nmes from its name list each time (saves you work in defining leaders). We could then add random adjusts (small) to the template's traits when generating each new leader, so they'd still vary, but be centered around the template values for that leader.

Another thing I'm not sure of is UI. If traits are going to vary it'd be important to be able to see them fairly easily. Where do they show up in the UI currently (if at all apart from the leader's civilopedia entry)? The UI area is not something I can estimate as I don't really have skills in that area.

If someone is prepared to take on UI, and someone prepared to make sure there are enough leaders defined (and/or everyone is happy with the name-list suggestion in which case it becomes 'prepared to add names'), then I would be happy to take on the DLL work for v22.

There is a bug option that will show the trait if you hover over the flag, like it was presented in Civ IV.

Edit: The idea of traits that grow and change is awesome. But for some traits you cannot scale the benefits. I have been thinking about the traits as well, and my idea is that you set goals for every age (like killing animals, or exploring, or building improvements in prehistoric), and for every of those goals you succeed in accomplishing, you unlock a trait that you can choose when anew age dawns (like if you made the hunting goal, you unlock a trait that gives bonuses to something related to hunting). These traits will be unique to that age (meaning that every age have different goals and a different trait list), and you can pick only two*. This means that as the game progresses, you will collect more and more traits (2 for every age) but some might have diminishing returns, while others simply obsolete. In this way, you don't have to worry about scaling traits. You can choose only traits you civ have unlocked, so it is similar to what is happening in RIFE. And, it brings some of the fun from leveling that is so addicting in role playing games. And, since there are different goals every age, each age will be that much more unique and fun. And, it adds to the re-playability.

*If you do not succeed in accomplishing two or more goals, there will be default (ie not as good) traits available, so every civ gets something when they change ages.

Koshling said:

If someone is prepared to take on UI, and someone prepared to make sure there are enough leaders defined (and/or everyone is happy with the name-list suggestion in which case it becomes 'prepared to add names'), then I would be happy to take on the DLL work for v22.

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I have that on my list but not till v22 but some asked it they wanted more LH's done, wish i could remember who offered to help, darn brain farts anyways.

TowerWizard said:

There is a bug option that will show the trait if you hover over the flag, like it was presented in Civ IV.

Edit: The idea of traits that grow and change is awesome. But for some traits you cannot scale the benefits.

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I can't think of one where the benefits are not scalable. Can you give me some examples?

I can't think of one where the benefits are not scalable. Can you give me some examples?

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Aggressive. Either you get the promotion, or you don't. I guess you could scale the reductions in building costs, but this trait have a lot of 10% reductions. Scale that, and the reduction gets worthless.

Agricultural. +1 on tiles with 5 . I think this is hard to scale too. Here you can scale the building cost reductions, sure.

Charismatic. +1 per city and on a lot of buildings. You cannot give +1/2 . I really don't see how you can scale reductions in xp needed for promotion costs, especially in the beginning. Like, promotions require 5% less xp? What is 5% of 8? Rounded up, or what? Unless you are talking about promotion costing like 7.75 xp, I don't see the solution. It have to be something like 25% for i to kick in, otherwise only units with massive amounts of xp will feel any difference.

Ok, that was the first 3 traits on the list, and I found problems with all of them. Basically, all you can scale is cost reductions and increased production speeds. Nearly everything else seems to me to be either/or.

In my system, mentioned above, this is solved by letting you choose new traits (that add to those you already have, of course) at every new age, that work like the normal traits, but that have a much smaller impact on the game, and that might well get obsoleted. Like a trait that gives you +20 % attack against animals, or increases your cities production by 10% untill the next age, or something. I have not fleshed it out. My point is that scaled traits are problematic, and that it is the wrong way to go.

TowerWizard said:

Aggressive. Either you get the promotion, or you don't. I guess you could scale the reductions in building costs, but this trait have a lot of 10% reductions. Scale that, and the reduction gets worthless.

Agricultural. +1 on tiles with 5 . I think this is hard to scale too. Here you can scale the building cost reductions, sure.

Charismatic. +1 per city and on a lot of buildings. You cannot give +1/2 . I really don't see how you can scale reductions in xp needed for promotion costs, especially in the beginning. Like, promotions require 5% less xp? What is 5% of 8? Rounded up, or what? Unless you are talking about promotion costing like 7.75 xp, I don't see the solution. It have to be something like 25% for i to kick in, otherwise only units with massive amounts of xp will feel any difference.

Ok, that was the first 3 traits on the list, and I found problems with all of them. Basically, all you can scale is cost reductions and increased production speeds. Nearly everything else seems to me to be either/or.

In my system, mentioned above, this is solved by letting you choose new traits (that add to those you already have, of course) at every new age, that work like the normal traits, but that have a much smaller impact on the game, and that might well get obsoleted. Like a trait that gives you +20 % attack against animals, or increases your cities production by 10% untill the next age, or something. I have not fleshed it out. My point is that scaled traits are problematic, and that it is the wrong way to go.

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Well, anything that is a percentage bonus can scale. Sure there's not much difference between 9% and 10%, but that's the nature of a scale - significant difference between end points, but small changes within it allowing for granularity.

Anything that is a one-time benefit (such as getting an extra promotion when producing a unit) can be scaled by becoming a probability of getting a promotion (with > 100% allowing for multiple promotions in princiapl)

On a couple of the specifics:

Agricultural - instead of extra food on tiles with >5 we simply change it to a civ-mide mod on food %. Then it obviosuly scales, but also has the same basic effect

Charistmatic - same as agricultural really - can just change to a civ-wide % mod on happyness from the relevant builidngs.

Obviously the existing traits would need to be tweaked, but I don't think any of them are impossible.

Koshling said:

can just change to a civ-wide % mod on happyness from the relevant builidngs.

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Yes, you sure CAN do this. You can water down every trait, and give players 12 % of the Aggressive trait, and 28% of the Spiritual trait, and in this way let civs have little of everything. But as I said, I think this is the wrong way to go. I think that if traits are to be changed, it would be much better to have more small traits that you have in totality, than to have a bit of everything. I think it will be more challenging and fun to have goals for every era to give you rewards (the small traits). This will give rise to strategies regarding which ones to pick, that at the same time gives rise to minigames, and era specific challenges, which will make every era more unique. More fun than to scale every trait into 1% slices and distribute them out during the whole game.

Think of role playing games, think of each new era as a "new level" where you get to spend points on new skills or perks. This is what I suggest we do to this game.

Oh, and what good is it to have 12 % chance of new units getting the Combat 1 promotion? Wow, every 8th unit will have it! The rest will have to by it for themselves. By the time the percentage have risen to good levels, the chances are that you do not really need that many more units. Basically, I want the game to have LESS randomeness, not more of it.

Thanks for reading this.

TowerWizard said:

Yes, you sure CAN do this. You can water down every trait, and give players 12 % of the Aggressive trait, and 28% of the Spiritual trait, and in this way let civs have little of everything. But as I said, I think this is the wrong way to go. I think that if traits are to be changed, it would be much better to have more small traits that you have in totality, than to have a bit of everything. I think it will be more challenging and fun to have goals for every era to give you rewards (the small traits). This will give rise to strategies regarding which ones to pick, that at the same time gives rise to minigames, and era specific challenges, which will make every era more unique. More fun than to scale every trait into 1% slices and distribute them out during the whole game.

Think of role playing games, think of each new era as a "new level" where you get to spend points on new skills or perks. This is what I suggest we do to this game.

Oh, and what good is it to have 12 % chance of new units getting the Combat 1 promotion? Wow, every 8th unit will have it! The rest will have to by it for themselves. By the time the percentage have risen to good levels, the chances are that you do not really need that many more units. Basically, I want the game to have LESS randomeness, not more of it.

Thanks for reading this.

Click to expand...

I already have some more traits i am thinking of adding, but i dont know if any of the AI will be able to tell the difference, i am not that aware of AI decision making material.

strategyonly said:

I already have some more traits i am thinking of adding, but i dont know if any of the AI will be able to tell the difference, i am not that aware of AI decision making material.

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Currently there is no valueing of traits at all, I think, as there is no choice to be made.

So the negative traits from Realism Invictus are ...

- Anti-Clerical = +1 from Religious buildings.
- Cruel = 20% more XP needed for Unit Promotions
- Arrogant = -20%
- Idealistic = 25% Slower Production of Military buildings.
- Revolutionary = -2 to Diplomatic Relations
- Megalomaniac = 20% Slower Wonder Production
- Barbaric = -25%
- Isolationist = -25% Foreign Trade Routes, 25% Slower Production of Trade buildings
- Fanatical = -25% Birth Rate
- Populist = +25% Civic Upkeep
- Executive = -10%
- Foreign = -25% Worker Speed, -25% Production of Workers
- Temperamental = -50% Great General Emergence Inside Cultural Borders
- Schemer = -40% Great General Emergence

These all seem like good 3rd traits to have to help balance the leaders.