3.8 Non-Congress Changes Discussion

[Little Billy]

The sentiment that religions are too powerful in general has been longstanding within some parts of the community, myself included. The chasm between founders and non-founders is extremely large. Nerfing religion in general could start by nerfing the power of the strongest beliefs, Founders, down to the level of the other types.

I find it very rare for me to miss out on getting a religion if I am trying to get one, and as such, I see not investing in it as a choice the player makes. I.e, if you dont get one, presumably you are compensated by getting some pretty good benefits from something else. I dont see a problem personally. Ill take your word for it that there is a contingent of people that think otherwise. A quick forum search didnt show much recent talk on this, mostly discussion on balancing the beliefs relative to each other.

Less "smuggling" and more "2 birds with 1 stone"

Thats fine, if nerfing founder beliefs is the goal here. But the post treats it as a pleasant side effect rather than a major balance change worthy of significantly more discussion

 

[pineappledan]

I think THE Border Growth Modifier change have a big effect on early game. Monuments provide 2 culture, with +34% faster Border Growth, it become 2.68, but still counted as 2. So it doesn't work unitl you can get at least 3 culture per turn.

I will suggest Monuments work like Smokehouse to +1 extra Border Growth Points,while Smokehouse +34% faster Border Growth

I hadn't noticed that before, but yeah that's a huge problem.
Kind of outside the scope of keeping / excluding instant yields, but definitely needs to be fixed if the % Border Growth modifiers are going to stay.

 

[ma_kuh]

Other instant yields don't benefit from % increases, right? So I don't think border growth should either. I'd be more in favor of inverting (and partially reverting) the logic of the initial proposal, so that the reductions are applied to border growth cost once again, but using a multiplicative formula rather than additive. The numbers would be the same, but you'd have the mechanic work consistently with other cost reductions (like India), instead of being an exception for instant yields. Although I say this, and then I'm trying to remember if India, Byzantium, and Fealty's cost reductions all work the same... they probably should.

So not (the original stack): 100% -25% -25% -25% = 25% cost (x4 effective rate)
instead: 100% * 80% * 80% * 80% = 51% cost (x1.96 effective rate)
current rate-based: 100% +34% +34% +34% = x2.02 rate (49% effective cost)



For the Byzantium question, the vote thing feels like a bug fix. Whether it's OP or not is another debate. I favor just streamlining the belief choices to Founders for now, but agree that Founders shouldn't be as strong as they are right now.

To me, the reward for "focusing Faith" should be getting a Reformation, an Enhancement, and scaling some benefit on how much of the world you can convert. Having the big reward kick in just by beating the 100m dash to Founding seems misplaced. While we're mentioning Founder balance, the first thing I'd do is simply shift some of the power/scaling from Founders and put it on Follower beliefs. This is an easy way to keep the punch of Founding strong, but implicitly sharing that power to your converts, helping even out the early curve of Founder civs vs. non-Founder civs.

 

[hokath]

I have meditated on the UA question.

The current situation with Byzantium's bonus belief is that you always pick a founder, and all the other belief options in the list are ignored. The problem is there are more than 50 beliefs to choose from, but only 9 of them are worth picking. This is overwhelming for new players, it's hidden information, it's tedious scrolling to scroll through, and it's a potential impediment to the AI.

Last time I went Byzantium I did a warmonger build that wanted a military belief rather than a founder.
Maybe this was a mistake though and certainly an unusual case that the AI probably would benefit from not seeing.
I also take the point about new players.

Perhaps founders really are that much stronger that even in more... creative cases they are still the wrong choice. If so, limiting it to founders now seems to me like the right decision.
(Rebalancing every belief is not a good idea)

 

[rkkn]

I'd be more in favor of inverting (and partially reverting) the logic of the initial proposal, so that the reductions are applied to border growth cost once again, but using a multiplicative formula rather than additive.

yes, I agree. I also suggested this on discord

 

[Recursive]

Based on the feedback here:
- I reverted the Conquistador change
- I made religious founder NWs mutually exclusive

The border growth change and any reworks of Byzantium can be debated at the next Congress session.

 

[azum4roll]

Other instant yields don't benefit from % increases, right? So I don't think border growth should either. I'd be more in favor of inverting (and partially reverting) the logic of the initial proposal, so that the reductions are applied to border growth cost once again, but using a multiplicative formula rather than additive. The numbers would be the same, but you'd have the mechanic work consistently with other cost reductions (like India), instead of being an exception for instant yields. Although I say this, and then I'm trying to remember if India, Byzantium, and Fealty's cost reductions all work the same... they probably should.

War weariness reduction stacks additively. Unit upgrade cost reduction stacks additively. Puppet yield and building investment too. I don't see why we want to make an exception to one mechanic.

 

[ma_kuh]

For one, I think multiplicative bonuses are safer to balance than additive reductions. Many games that do have additive reductions have a hard cap to prevent exactly this kind of over-specialization (thinking of your traditional ARPGs with 75% <element> resistance being the cap; also a notriously hard balance point in those games). But the opposite might be true for positive scaling, i.e 134% * 134% ... gets out of hand faster than 100% +34% +34% ...

 

[rkkn]

I don't see why we want to make an exception to one mechanic.

because additive reductions are extremely bad for game balance if you have more than one or two of them. And for border growth we have more than one or two of them.
Their efficacy is also not intuitive if you're not mathematically inclined and keeping track of all the other reductions you've gotten. Whereas a multiplicative reduction is always going to give you the same relative benefit regardless of what you've already got.

For the record I would argue that those others should be either changed or reworded to be more clear. Like for a new player reading Venice's UA on civ select, seeing "Puppets have -30% yield penalties" it is extremely NOT obvious that this actually means "puppet yields are 2.5x as high as normal"

Another option is switching it back to cost reduction while still having it stack like an additive addition. Just move the additions to the divisor. Cost / (100% + 34% + ...)

 

[azum4roll]

because additive reductions are extremely bad for game balance if you have more than one or two of them. And for border growth we have more than one or two of them.
Their efficacy is also not intuitive if you're not mathematically inclined and keeping track of all the other reductions you've gotten. Whereas a multiplicative reduction is always going to give you the same relative benefit regardless of what you've already got.

Unit upgrade cost reduction can stack above -100% and there's specifically a cap made for it (upgrade everything with 1 gold).

Another option is switching it back to cost reduction while still having it stack like an additive addition. Just move the additions to the divisor. Cost / (100% + 34% + ...)

There's no way to word that short and precisely. It better stays as a yield modifier.

 

[rkkn]

Unit upgrade cost reduction can stack above -100% and there's specifically a cap made for it (upgrade everything with 1 gold).

that doesn't break anything though. upgrades being completely free is just a nice perk. You can only upgrade units when you reach a new tech tier, and then after that it's done until the next tier. It just saves you a bit of cash. Border growth being minimum, however (grow one every turn) definitely breaks balance.
When reductions stacking to zero is fine on balance then it is ok. When reductions stacking to zero is not fine on balance, then you need a different method.

 

[azum4roll]

Now we have a different method. What's the problem then?

 

[Barna1]

Another option is switching it back to cost reduction while still having it stack like an additive addition. Just move the additions to the divisor. Cost / (100% + 34% + ...)

If I understand correctly, that would give exactly the current behaviour, except it removes the weird rounding issues. It would also feel more consistent with how other modifiers work. So if we want to keep this buff to instant yields (which I'm neutral about), I think this is a good solution.

There's no way to word that short and precisely. It better stays as a yield modifier.

I think "34% faster border growth" would reflect it very accurately (and would be more accurate than the current version if the 3.8 changes stay).

 

[rkkn]

Now we have a different method. What's the problem then?

because some people take issue with having all sources of border growth affected by this current method

 

[azum4roll]

I think "34% faster border growth" would reflect it very accurately (and would be more accurate than the current version if the 3.8 changes stay).

And what should be shown on the city culture and tile growth UI? (the purple hexagon thingy)

Base tile culture cost: 10
Modifier: ???
Final cost: 7 (and rounding problem's still here, it's supposed to be 7.5)

 

[Barna1]

And what should be shown on the city culture and tile growth UI? (the purple hexagon thingy)

In the city screen? The current version seems to be even more confusing. With monument plus palace the border growth screen says +3 (because it only shows culture and doesn't show border growth points), but it actually (correctly) increases by 4. Smokehouse bonuses similarly don't appear anywhere as far as I can tell. (Probably most people never check this, otherwise it would have been changed). For the new suggestion, something like "tile cost (after modifiers): 15" would work (when the base cost is 20, modifier is 34%).

Final cost: 7 (and rounding problem's still here, it's supposed to be 7.5)

The rounding problem becomes negligible for large numbers, and border growth costs are always large (except the very first one which happens to be a multiple of 4 so has no rounding issue).

 

[rkkn]

Probably most people never check this, otherwise it would have been changed

I check it!
it is indeed quite bad. BGP (the yield, separate from culture) isn't shown anywhere

 

[azum4roll]

"tile cost (after modifiers): 15"

I mean, the modifier still needs to be shown. What should it be?

 

[Barna1]

I'm not sure we need to show that explicitly, there are many places where modifiers are hidden (including the current border growth screen). But if we do want to show it, something like this could work:
Border growth speed modifier: 134%
Tile cost (after modifier): 15
(So just don't show the cost before reduction because showing it might be confusing. I don't think that's a problem, base costs for things like policies isn't shown either.)

 

[Thibix Magnus]

hi there, I noticed the change in byzantium (version 3.9.1) and found the reason here. Something not discussed in this thread is that byzantium can no longer make super holy sites. Was that considered OP, and if so should it be discussed? My impression is that super holy sites are more useful for tradition byzantium for their very focused yields, and tall byzantium may be quite niche already compared to wide byzantium. I'm a bit sad to see that go away, if it's not for obvious balance reasons. I did not follow the whole story, if the issue was having too many WC votes, and not the access to the two wonders, why not simply leaving things untouched?