Éa III, Sword & Sorcery (early versions) Balance Discussion

[jekke]

Back on regular unit experience, I think I'll drop the barb xp limit.

Fantastic news! that was one of the most annoying things for me.

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Right now AI does not defend their cities at all. When you've got a few marksmen and maybe heavy infantry, their caps can be strength 13, no walls, nothing. The best defended cities turn out to be those accidentally founded on hills.

 

[Civitar]

@darkedone2: I don't think it's a question of needing trees to make paper, as it's not like the Sage is printing a million copies of it or anything. He's writing one book, which doesn't take as much paper as you might think. In general you are correct though, but the resources that should affect the Tome's writing are the resources directly related to the subject of the Tome. So the Tome of Metallurgy benefits from having Iron/Copper nearby since the author can watch smiths and miners at work and see what they have to do for his ideas to work. But writing the Tome of Harvests in an island fortress with nothing but ocean and a few fishing spots around won't get any bonuses cause where are the farms???

 

[BrokenSky]

Yeah. I mean in a pinch, several historical writing materials are available; paper made from reeds, treated deer skin, stone tablets. But yeah. Resources, buildings, techs (knowledge line for tomes, masonry for wonders, one of the arty ones for Epics etc) and specialists should maybe reduce the time taken to write/build wonders, tomes, epics, wizard towers etc.

 

[Civitar]

What he said, except for the Techs affecting Tomes idea - isn't that a bit backwards? Tomes help with Techs, not the other way around...

 

[Pazyryk]

I can't remember if it is in the manual but I have plans to change construction time for many Wonders based on nearby resources. Mostly Stone or Marble, but a few others like Copper (for Colossus).

Since it came up, I'll keep in mind creation time for Tomes as a possible Enabled Policies effect.

But I think the 25 turns is about right for "great works", meaning wonders, epics and various artifacts like tomes (I was using that term long before BNW so I'll keep using it). If an item isn't really "great" enough to justify the time, then that is an area for balancing. On Arcane Towers specifically, it seems to me that players have evaluated them as worthwhile even with the long build times. Does anyone even use the "Occupy Tower" ability?

There is room for discussion around game speed adjustment for build times, but that's a complicated issue. Partly, it's challenging to mod in. But there is also a "what do we want game speed to mean?" question. My thinking was that an epic game would not only have more turns, but also more "generations" of GPs, more wonders, more everything. A quick game would be more focused with a smaller number of all of these. (Even if you try to "scale everything", an epic game is still fundamentally different in that you can wage many more wars.)

 

[BrokenSky]

Maybe? If that's the case (gamespeed) then the unit production costs, as well as maybe buildings, shouldn't be based on game speed. Dunno about tech costs. Might be difficult to balance GPs though. hmm.

Any plans for Civs spawning during play? I played a pretty good (very detailed) Civ 4 mod which had that as a feature [Rise of Mankind: a New Dawn], both from Barbairans becoming "minor Civs" (Like village of //race//) and from some happiness/instability based revolutions and rebellion mechanics. Now the later might be too costly for the benefit, but barbarians turning into minor civs might be good? Mostly for Heldoflr and maybe some Man or even Naga?, given the types of barbarians available.
Obviously this would be more prominent in Epic and Marathons than in standard and quick because of the more game turns.

Dunno. As I said before, the effect of bonuses on great works (of all kinds) shouldn't bring the build time lower than about 20 turns, but it's nice to feel like your civ and the surroundings have an effect, which is why I suggested a range of 20 - 30; enough for the effect to be noticeable, but not so great that it doesn't feel like a large investment of time/resources and without making the default, bonus-less speed to great that it isn't worth it.

I don't often use wizardy civs that much by default, so no comment on towers. Also I tend to opt for Sidhe over Man because ... hmm. I like keeping my dudes? I dunno. I'll have to get back to you on that. But yeah; my wizards don't die a lot, so not many towers need re-inhabiting.

 

[Doopliss]

Towers are pretty much always worth it. A nice chunk of Mana, Channel and Lectio Occultus, all coming at a time where a first-generation Thaumaturge can't really do anything useful anyway (though I also haven't played around with mortal Thaumaturges). It's just that they're not very satisfying in being worth it, feeling more like a tax on using your Thaumaturge than your Thaumaturge doing something awesome. I'm afraid I don't have any solutions, and I'm not even sure solutions are necessary, but it's not a particularly fun mechanic.

Tomes I'm less optimistic about, though the decreased mod bonuses might change that (or, I guess, weaken Great Works and Processes equally). My tech is very rarely narrow enough that the KM cut makes a difference, and giving up 25 turns of Sage research only really seems worthwhile for T6/7 techs you have your eye on - particularly when you usually can't put them off until your GP has more levels under their belt.

 

[Pazyryk]

The Occupy Tower action is mostly targeted to the moral races, and obviously after that first generation of casters. It's only 3 turns and then you are ready to do other stuff. It's a pretty straightforward trade-off mechanic. Spend 25 turns to get another source of mana. Or spend 3 turns to have a (probably better) tower and then do other stuff for that 22 turns. I'd say the later is better if you are in need of that caster's services now. But Arcane Towers are wonders after all -- they are supposed to be a big deal.

 

[zoommooz11]

The Occupy Tower action is mostly targeted to the moral races, and obviously after that first generation of casters. It's only 3 turns and then you are ready to do other stuff. It's a pretty straightforward trade-off mechanic. Spend 25 turns to get another source of mana. Or spend 3 turns to have a (probably better) tower and then do other stuff for that 22 turns. I'd say the later is better if you are in need of that caster's services now. But Arcane Towers are wonders after all -- they are supposed to be a big deal.

1. Probably better?? I thought the 'new owner' changes the tower to their stats, and does not retain the previous owners level?

2. I hope its never IGE compatible. Just because I cannot help myself, 'a little bonus here, remove a few tough unit there'. Without it each game, and decision is much more final, or real, and hence much more enjoyable (for me at least).

3. Paz, I noticed in one of the change logs you adjusted GP rates, including ageing having some effect--where is this modded?

4. In game settings, I changed
Living Terrain
('SPREAD_CHANCE_DENOMINATOR to 350 (was 100), this does means that spread chance is much lower, which equals slower right?

5. Even though most people don't have games as long as mine, a bit of feed back from my own games may still help with balancing 'epic' games. Made a host of balance changes for mine own version, 780 turns in and game is really cool.

 

[Pazyryk]

1. No. For each school, it is the better of the old owner and the new. (The tower will rename itself for new owner when its highest stat comes from new owner.)
2. Well, anything you can do with IGE you can be do with Fire Tuner, although you have to do many things with Lua commands (so you are safe if you don't know how to do that).
3. Planned but not implemented yet.
4. Yes, that slows it.
5. You're going to run out of unique GP name/portraits after a while. But there is code to recycle old ones, so it should work.

 

[jekke]

I can't remember if it is in the manual but I have plans to change construction time for many Wonders based on nearby resources. Mostly Stone or Marble, but a few others like Copper (for Colossus).

This would be great, and it's also highly intuitive.
Could also work with other buildings as well. I remember back in Civ IV, you could even build walls and castles for half a price, if you had stone (makes perfect sense).

Speaking about writing times for the tomes, I believe these can be linked to the improvemens. As is was posted here already, it is difficult to expect a scientist to write Tome of Leviathan if (s)he lives in a mountain country with no direct sea access. So in principle, I can see two possible things: 1) at leastone fishing boat/mine/farm (on a resource) is needed for Leviathan/Construction/Harvest Tome; 2) the writing time scales down with the amount of the improvement, say, in the range from 25 turns to maybe 15 or so.

 

[jekke]

Speaking of which, with all the new Armageddon stuff dropped into v7 (and potential ways to get expensive techs) I wonder if we are due for a big increase in the starting Sum of All Mana? In above screenshot, you were mostly there without even learning Breach. (Maybe this question is better answered in Balance thread.)

---moving here---

Indeed, I've built like 4-5 temples and summoned a number of creatures - that was enough. However, I must say the last ~40 turns weren't very exciting; I was trying to build yet another temple and had to clear the tile from blight repeatedly. Also, fighting off some hostile creatures spawning here and there (not a problem for my marksmen) and that's basically it. I guess increasing the total mana sum will just extend this stage of the game...

Maybe if there is much more demons spawning, it may become a problem for a player to defend the cities, which bring some new challenge; basically, the idea is that you don't simply have to bring the world down but also survive it (in a way).

 

[Doopliss]

I guess increasing the total mana sum will just extend this stage of the game...

Maybe if there is much more demons spawning, it may become a problem for a player to defend the cities, which bring some new challenge; basically, the idea is that you don't simply have to bring the world down but also survive it (in a way).

Based on my experiences with Arcane Armageddon, I would nerf Temples before buffing the Sum if it came to that. If the Manual effects are accurate, any one of them will deal more damage-per-turn than a Fallen magic civ burning its entire mana income. It's not just an arcane thing - it also makes Demons and Anra feel insignificant.

I agree that Armageddon currently has problems similar to One with Nature, and that making late Mana Depletion crazy enough that players would have a lot of their effort consumed by just surviving would be awesome, but I'd understand if those were longer-term issues.

 

[Pazyryk]

I'll nerf the mana burning aspect of Temples quite a bit in v8. They will also have Anit-Theism policy prereq in addition to tech. Hopefully this will balance arcane versus religious end of the world approaches.

Ideally, the evil player should be fighting off an onslaught of angry civs in addition to demons/undead. But that's going to take some AI dll work. (Lowering relationship to minus infinity won't cause AIs to DoW, or to attack even if they do DoW. I believe the AI player has to evaluate some target city as conquerable to do that. So I need to override that and have civs just go all out at some point.)

Protective Wards and strengthening Living Terrain are two ways to head off Blight and Breach before it happens. After it happens, we only have cleanup of Blight by workers/slaves. I'd like to add both a divine spell and an arcane spell in v8 that can help remove Blight after the fact. These could perhaps act in a radius from the caster's Tower, or else work on owned plots only. Any thoughts on spell names? (It's intentional that Breach can never be repaired and I'll probably keep it that way.)

 

[zoommooz11]

In my current game I am getting a huge amount of gold in my capital. Now I have built the national treasury, and am in a golden age, but 5000 per turn seems a bit excessive. I have looked at the mouse over to see where its all coming from, and 4500 of it comes from 'other sources' Any idea why so much gold id being generated?

Edit: Just checked and one of the ai civs is generating 149000 gold per turn with 12,000,000 million in the bank.

Edit 2: Ah, I see the national treasury gives interest on what you have in the bank, so it can just build and build. How would I go about changing it from interest on money to a percentage increase of cities gold output (trade+tiles*percentage), or set a maximum limit to the amount it can generate?

 

[Pazyryk]

OK, I've seen this gold interest issue twice now, but the first was a player modifying game with IGE and the second from a player who mods game for 6000 turns. Has anyone seen a problem with unaltered Éa game? (Even with Epic settings?)

 

[Llednar Twem]

I've rolled over to negative gold generation exactly once, but it was a pretty extreme situation. I had built the national treasury with a max level merchant and never actually bought anything because I was playing on settler to learn the mod. I don't think it's ever been an issue under what could be considered normal circumstances.

 

[Pazyryk]

I haven't looked but I'm assuming the dll uses short integer to hold gold income, which would roll over to negative above 32767. If we are exceeding that (in unmodded Éa game) then certainly something is wrong elsewhere. I'll take a good look at all of the interest generating possibilities (there is a bug anyway in National Treasury). They may need adjustment plus a cap.

 

[Doopliss]

Moving over here due to balance.

UI tells you that you will get 0.5% x the Merchant's Trade Modifier interest per turn, but the actual effect is one-tenth of that amount. (Actual effect is reasonably balanced.)

So if you were floating 1,000 gold, it would take the first 25 turns to recoup your losses from not spamming Trade during that time (not including the leveling you would have done during the Trade-spam). That seems like a reasonable investment in GP-turn terms, but I can't help but feel it's underpowered when you add on the cost of not spending your gold. In my experience, if you're designing your civ (relatively) around making gold, not doing anything with it can put you pretty far behind in the early game. A thousand gold is enough to rush-buy two mills (three with Mercantilism), which would make a babby city's core worth 9/5 instead of 4/1. I might have the wrong mindset about this, given I can never seem to make a gold-centric civ successful either way, but in balance threads you can't always tell whether it's you or the game.
I do, however, like the 100 gpt limit, though it's worth noting that you won't be reaching that with Mammonas/Bankers unless you could buy basically whatever you wanted with the banked gold. That seems like the best way to make the interest tangible without being explodey, unless you wanted to shift the payoff to something other than gold instead.

If you're still looking for civ-enabled policy finishers, how about "Each GP you have decreases the GP spawn rate 35% less than normal"? Uniform, yet something every civ would appreciate, and pretty consistent with the assorted 'GP Buff' enabled policies.

 

[Pazyryk]

It's pretty much a maxim that you should spend all your gold fast in Civ5, for the reasons you state. So I'm trying to throw a wrench in the works and make hoarding gold a reasonable consideration that (in some circumstances) is a good idea. Not sure if we are there yet. But maybe.

Someday we will have "civ-enabled policy finishers". But the idea for that is that there will be 1 unique finisher for each civ. But that's a long way down the road. I'm still in the middle of implementing roughly 90 new policies just for the non-finisher enabled policies.