Balance and Gameplay discussion.

[V3N0M]

I suggested earlier in the wrong thread that strategic bombers could be separate from regular jet bombers. The bomber would upgrade like so:

Bomber----> Jet Bomber ----> Stealth Bomber
|
|
\-------> Strategic bomber

Strategic bombers would be more expensive but stronger than the jet and stealth bombers. Maybe they could have the ability to extend the range of cruise missiles and tactical nukes as well. You guys know the balance of the mod better than i do.

Edit: The Flying Tigers would make a good legendary air unit

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

What determines how far into the game a barbarian city will turn into a minor civ when the BarbarianCiv option is enabled? Does it take game speed into account? Is it configurable?

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

What determines how far into the game a barbarian city will turn into a minor civ when the BarbarianCiv option is enabled? Does it take game speed into account? Is it configurable?

Apparently there are options in Revolutions.ini and/or Revolutions.xml. The options are explained in the INI file, but only the XML file is included in LoR. Is there somewhere I can get the other file? I'd like to be able to play with this option, but right now it's infuriating.

 

[phungus420]

jdog just reported the revolution.ini file isn't loading right, which is odd, don't know why that would be. Anyway, just change the value in the Revolution.xml file in the config folder. Also the Revolution.ini file should be in the UserSettings folder. Changing the values in it should work, but like I said jdog just reported he could only get his changes to work by tweaking the values in Assets/Config/Revolution.xml

 

[caliban02]

Just wanted to note that the SAS legend unit (with starts with tactics, 30% withdraw, and 40% innate withdraw) goes up to 100% withdraw chance with 2 ranks of flanking. This leads to a "Survival Guaranteed" message in the combat odds calculator, which I find to be amusing.

 

[esemjay]

The SAS is an excellent unit to have for just that reason- but the AI doesn't know how to counter SOF units. I'm waiting for the multiplayer compatible version so that I can wage war against people who can properly use the units in the game- because UAV's would be the bane of the SAS existence. Reason being is that you can post the SAS somewhere, and harvest experience- even if the SAS only have 1hp left.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I thought civ 4 had maximum retreat odds of 90% even if the game would show more than 90% survival odds.

 

[Afforess]

I thought civ 4 had maximum retreat odds of 90% even if the game would show more than 90% survival odds.

It does, with promotions anyway. If you earn a promotion that throws you above the global define value (of 90% unless Phungus changed it), it disables the entire promotion. Could lead to one surprised player.

 

[phungus420]

Actually the game just wol't let you get any promotions if the unit would otherwise have access to a promotion that caused the unit to go over a set GlobalDefines value for withdrawl, intercept, evade, etc. Kind of a major bug that; you'd think the devs would have just killed the button for that specific problem promotion, rather then stopping the unit from getting any more promotions. Actually they might have with 3.19, that was definatly the behavior of 3.17 though. Anyway I've obviously adjusted the global defines values a long time ago, was one of the firs things I did.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hmm, I found a maximum to the retreat odds to be a good idea of the original game. Of course, the bugs related to it aren't such a great idea.

It can of course also be fixed by picking the values of promotions in such a way that you can't go over say 90%.

Does the bug still occur if you go over 100%? It would be meaningless but maybe some part of the code doesn't realise that it's meaningless.

 

[phungus420]

It is intentional the Corsairs and SAS can achieve 100% retreat odds.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It is intentional the Corsairs and SAS can achieve 100% retreat odds.

For unique units, 100% retreat odds aren't really an issue. However, I don't really like that kind of special ability for units. Just like the 3 moves for an ancient age unique unit, it just doesn't feel right. Powerful is ok, but there must be some relation to normal units. So I would have preferred more mundane special abilities for the unique units for a realism based game like civ4. I don't like cool and flashy abilities in this game.

But that's just my opinion.

 

[esemjay]

I just played a game where I had my SAS parachute in right after I built them (I settle a LOT of generals in my military city) and they had 100% retreat odds, along with several other buffs- the next turn, they died, because there was a spy in the city I was attacking. They really aren't overpowered; they're a powerful unit that can be rendered useless if the enemy has a spy or a UAV.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I don't think they're overpowered. I just don't like the fact that their bonuses place them in some area far beyond what should be capable by a unit of their type. This includes the unique roman unit which can move faster than any land unit in the game while they're an ancient era unit or a unique unit that has no chance to die when it attacks because of 100% retreat odds. It's just a little to weird.

But as said, that's just my opinion and the units are surely not game breaking or something like that. It's an opinion, not a balance issue.

 

[esemjay]

Well it is a unique modern era unit-- and the 100% retreat odds put it on-par with modern units. It can have a guarantee to survive attacking, but has ~0% chance of surviving once it's discovered. If it couldn't have 100% retreat, I don't think I'd build it just because it doesn't really have anything else to make it special against anything but OTHER SOF units.

 

[Roland Johansen]

You're again talking about game balance while that has nothing to do with the argument I gave. My argument has to do with how realistically they compare to other military units, how realistically they fit within the combat representation of the game. Of course, civ4 doesn't try to be 100% realistic in every aspect, still I like the more immersive elements of the game more than the less immersive.

I'll give an exaggerated example: It wouldn't be imbalanced when the game would allow you to build a single tank in the ancient age for 5000 hammers. Still I wouldn't like it as it wouldn't fit within the rest of the game and would make the game more gamey and less about simulating the rise of empires roughly following the history of the real world.

 

[JaredPWagner]

I wanted to start by saying thanks for this great mod. I have gotten countless hours of enjoyment out of it. You have really created something special here.

I read the entire thread. Having played two games to a win on deity I wanted to comment on various balance issues I have noticed.
Overall balance is excellent; however there are a few areas where I believe small changes would make for a better game experience.

Ancient Era:
Things near perfect here. The axemen changes work well. I have two suggestion for you to consider in this era.
1) Barbarian Nomads - This guys need a boost as they are really weak. I would bump them up to strength 6 or at least 5. When an barbarian axeman invades my own axemen and swordmen are only an equal match. I have to bring in a chariot to deal with them making them a major problem if you don't have horses. Nomads should be equally difficult to deal with if you don't have spearmen.
2) Battering Rams (See city raider problem below)

The City Rader Problem - The city raider promotion is very powerful. In truth it with the addition of early siege it is probably unbalanced.
Currently there are two windows in the game where offense is so grossly superior to defense that it is possible to wipe out multiple AI civilizations with minimal to no losses even on deity.
These windows occur at the following points in the game
1) When Swordsmen are first built but before long bowmen and crossbowmen
2) When Grenadiers first become available

With a stack of swordsmen and battering rams you can use the rams to damage initial city defenders and mop up with the green swordsmen. Once the swordsmen get to city raider II you don't even need to lead with the rams anymore. This was less of a problem in vanilla as you could not take down cultural protections or walls.
Grenadiers are even more of a problem because you typically have several great generals at this point and so they can be built with city raider II or III from the start. A strength 12 grenadier with +85% from city raider III totally destroys the best defender of the time a strength 9 musketmen.
I won my last deity game by being first to grenadiers then going on a rampage destroying and raising all the cities of my competitors. I lost less than one unit for every city I raised. I did not even use siege except to bombard down cultural defenses.

Suggested solutions to consider
1) Increase max damage of battering rams -> reduced survivability. With a max damage of only 30% they almost always survive combat. This lets them remove 30% of the defenders strength at no cost. This allows you to mop up with green swordsmen without losing them. For balance rams should usually die in a direct city attack.
2) Increase archer strength to 4. In a prior post in this thread it was requested that an new unit Composite Bowmen with strength 4 be added at mathematics. This would probably be ideal but would require tons of work. An easier solution is to just increase archer strength across the board to 4.
3) Change grenadiers back to a gunpowder unit. They are simply too powerful and should not have access to the city raider promotion.
4) Consider having melee units not upgrade to other unit types. This would make Pikemen and Heavy Footmen dead ends in terms of unit progression which makes sense historically and also has the advantage of preventing city raider promotions from spreading to more advanced units through upgrades.

Classical Era. I really like the new seafaring tech. Not too many suggestions for this era
1) The hammer cost of the great lighthouse could potentially be increased. It is one of the best wonder in the game as long as you are on the coast but is cheap to build compared to the other wonders.
2) Consider having a linear progression for city bombard rate. Right now the battering ram is better for taking down cultural defense then the catapult, and the trebuchet better then the bombard. While this does not have a huge effect on gameplay it is odd.

Medieval Era.
1) Pikemen don't really need a -10% city attack penalty. It does not change much. That said it does not matter much if it is kept in.
2) Knights could use some sort of boost. They are completely trumped by both elephants and pikemen both of which come much earlier and cost less. They make poor city attackers compared to heavy footmen and are not even that good at taking out siege. Currently they have no real role in the game. Consider giving them a +25 or +50% bonus verses melee in combat outside cities. This would make them dominate for a brief time in combat outside cities while still leaving them trumped by elephants.
3) Consider moving the Curiassiar back to Military Tradition. That line is really weak now that it has no military units. Military Science is already very good as it unlocks trafalgar square and grenaders.
4) Musketmen are a bit weak. They come later in the game now with the addition of the musket tech but their strength is still only 9. A strength of 10 or a small city defense boost would make them better.

New Wonder Costs:
1) Leonardos Workshop is pretty expensive for what it does hammer cost could possibly be lower.
2) Trafalgar square is amazing. Probably too good to be buildable for half price. Consider removing the bonus with whales.

City Razing:
1) With the addition of revolutions it is almost always better to raize enemy cities rather then to try and hold them. Currently the consequences for capturing an trying to hold an enemy city are severe. The city will require
a massive military garison and will still need to be bribed ever few turns. Thats in addition to the normal cost that comes just from having another city which can be up to 16 gold per turn depending on the number of cities.
In contrast destroying the city is pretty much consequence free. All you get is a diplomatic penality against a civ that you are probably trying to destroy anyways. Consider having city razing generated free enemy troups equal in quantity to the number they would get if you captured the city and it had a revolution. This would make the decision to raze a city a little harder.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I wanted to start by saying thanks for this great mod. I have gotten countless hours of enjoyment out of it. You have really created something special here.

I read the entire thread. Having played two games to a win on deity I wanted to comment on various balance issues I have noticed.
Overall balance is excellent; however there are a few areas where I believe small changes would make for a better game experience.

Ancient Era:
Things near perfect here. The axemen changes work well. I have two suggestion for you to consider in this era.
1) Barbarian Nomads - This guys need a boost as they are really weak. I would bump them up to strength 6 or at least 5. When an barbarian axeman invades my own axemen and swordmen are only an equal match. I have to bring in a chariot to deal with them making them a major problem if you don't have horses. Nomads should be equally difficult to deal with if you don't have spearmen.
2) Battering Rams (See city raider problem below)

The City Rader Problem - The city raider promotion is very powerful. In truth it with the addition of early siege it is probably unbalanced.
Currently there are two windows in the game where offense is so grossly superior to defense that it is possible to wipe out multiple AI civilizations with minimal to no losses even on deity.
These windows occur at the following points in the game
1) When Swordsmen are first built but before long bowmen and crossbowmen
2) When Grenadiers first become available

With a stack of swordsmen and battering rams you can use the rams to damage initial city defenders and mop up with the green swordsmen. Once the swordsmen get to city raider II you don't even need to lead with the rams anymore. This was less of a problem in vanilla as you could not take down cultural protections or walls.
Grenadiers are even more of a problem because you typically have several great generals at this point and so they can be built with city raider II or III from the start. A strength 12 grenadier with +85% from city raider III totally destroys the best defender of the time a strength 9 musketmen.
I won my last deity game by being first to grenadiers then going on a rampage destroying and raising all the cities of my competitors. I lost less than one unit for every city I raised. I did not even use siege except to bombard down cultural defenses.

Suggested solutions to consider
1) Increase max damage of battering rams -> reduced survivability. With a max damage of only 30% they almost always survive combat. This lets them remove 30% of the defenders strength at no cost. This allows you to mop up with green swordsmen without losing them. For balance rams should usually die in a direct city attack.
2) Increase archer strength to 4. In a prior post in this thread it was requested that an new unit Composite Bowmen with strength 4 be added at mathematics. This would probably be ideal but would require tons of work. An easier solution is to just increase archer strength across the board to 4.
3) Change grenadiers back to a gunpowder unit. They are simply too powerful and should not have access to the city raider promotion.
4) Consider having melee units not upgrade to other unit types. This would make Pikemen and Heavy Footmen dead ends in terms of unit progression which makes sense historically and also has the advantage of preventing city raider promotions from spreading to more advanced units through upgrades.

Classical Era. I really like the new seafaring tech. Not too many suggestions for this era
1) The hammer cost of the great lighthouse could potentially be increased. It is one of the best wonder in the game as long as you are on the coast but is cheap to build compared to the other wonders.
2) Consider having a linear progression for city bombard rate. Right now the battering ram is better for taking down cultural defense then the catapult, and the trebuchet better then the bombard. While this does not have a huge effect on gameplay it is odd.

Medieval Era.
1) Pikemen don't really need a -10% city attack penalty. It does not change much. That said it does not matter much if it is kept in.
2) Knights could use some sort of boost. They are completely trumped by both elephants and pikemen both of which come much earlier and cost less. They make poor city attackers compared to heavy footmen and are not even that good at taking out siege. Currently they have no real role in the game. Consider giving them a +25 or +50% bonus verses melee in combat outside cities. This would make them dominate for a brief time in combat outside cities while still leaving them trumped by elephants.
3) Consider moving the Curiassiar back to Military Tradition. That line is really weak now that it has no military units. Military Science is already very good as it unlocks trafalgar square and grenaders.
4) Musketmen are a bit weak. They come later in the game now with the addition of the musket tech but their strength is still only 9. A strength of 10 or a small city defense boost would make them better.

New Wonder Costs:
1) Leonardos Workshop is pretty expensive for what it does hammer cost could possibly be lower.
2) Trafalgar square is amazing. Probably too good to be buildable for half price. Consider removing the bonus with whales.

City Razing:
1) With the addition of revolutions it is almost always better to raize enemy cities rather then to try and hold them. Currently the consequences for capturing an trying to hold an enemy city are severe. The city will require
a massive military garison and will still need to be bribed ever few turns. Thats in addition to the normal cost that comes just from having another city which can be up to 16 gold per turn depending on the number of cities.
In contrast destroying the city is pretty much consequence free. All you get is a diplomatic penality against a civ that you are probably trying to destroy anyways. Consider having city razing generated free enemy troups equal in quantity to the number they would get if you captured the city and it had a revolution. This would make the decision to raze a city a little harder.

I agree with everything you wrote here
It's a shame Phungus has no time to continue improving this mod
Especially since all of these things are balance changes (with the exception of adding composite archers), and would be very easy to implement

 

[pigg]

I really like this mod, but there are some things that should be fixed.

The biggest and most important one is that if you start game from a later era the early religions are missing and that's just not cool. I don't like much to play the first eras... When playing epic speed i put 2-20k advanced start points to get boring start off (still i wanna have early wonders and religions..).
Actually there is also another problem with gameplay. I like that epic speed, but now it's not that fun to play because there is no multiple production (used to play PIG mod). And grinding early techs with marathon is sooo slow... :/ My first game with monarch went pretty easy and i started to build my best cities better. 1800 ad i had cities with 1.1k money 1.1k research and 700 production when building military units (those were different cities). And they were still growing well. Because of that more than half of my capital's production was wasted when building military.

Then there are the graphics. In my opinion part of them look dirty and unfinished, especially the grassland is ugly. And the starting screen! In original BTS it looked classy and clean. Now it has sharp edges and pixels with bright unmatching colours. <--no homo

Then just out of curiosity. The Barbary Corsair is pretty overpowered I think. It's quite easy to get even on immortal and then kill some triremes, put great general to command it and dominate the seas the rest of the game. I even ran out of promotions Its pretty fun still and luckily computer can't use it properly. It need some privateers as emergency backup when raiding capitals. So it's not an issue.

There is now so much good new stuff that its easier to point out the things i don't like. I'm going to play this mod more but if you could fix the religions (and multiple production) it'd be more pleasing =) Starting screen doesn't effect on gameplay at all so i'd not focus on that And maybe i get used to new terrains.. Still I don't see why they had to be fixed because they were clear and good looking. I don't think civ should be that much about realism, its mainly math and strategy to me.

 

[bestbrian]

I really like this mod, but there are some things that should be fixed.

The biggest and most important one is that if you start game from a later era the early religions are missing and that's just not cool. I don't like much to play the first eras... When playing epic speed i put 2-20k advanced start points to get boring start off (still i wanna have early wonders and religions..).
Actually there is also another problem with gameplay. I like that epic speed, but now it's not that fun to play because there is no multiple production (used to play PIG mod). And grinding early techs with marathon is sooo slow... :/ My first game with monarch went pretty easy and i started to build my best cities better. 1800 ad i had cities with 1.1k money 1.1k research and 700 production when building military units (those were different cities). And they were still growing well. Because of that more than half of my capital's production was wasted when building military.

Then there are the graphics. In my opinion part of them look dirty and unfinished, especially the grassland is ugly. And the starting screen! In original BTS it looked classy and clean. Now it has sharp edges and pixels with bright unmatching colours. <--no homo

Then just out of curiosity. The Barbary Corsair is pretty overpowered I think. It's quite easy to get even on immortal and then kill some triremes, put great general to command it and dominate the seas the rest of the game. I even ran out of promotions Its pretty fun still and luckily computer can't use it properly. It need some privateers as emergency backup when raiding capitals. So it's not an issue.

There is now so much good new stuff that its easier to point out the things i don't like. I'm going to play this mod more but if you could fix the religions (and multiple production) it'd be more pleasing =) Starting screen doesn't effect on gameplay at all so i'd not focus on that And maybe i get used to new terrains.. Still I don't see why they had to be fixed because they were clear and good looking. I don't think civ should be that much about realism, its mainly math and strategy to me.

The whole point of much of the mod, and much of the work done by AchillesZero, was in reducing the graphics (specifically, the moded components), so that they would be effective without overwhelming computers, and causing crashes (something most mods don't bother to consider). I still think it looks pretty clean, and if your 'puter can handle the enhanced graphics option, better yet.

The Barbary Corsair is a lot of fun, but it does have its limitations: you can promote the heck out of it, but it's still only ever going to upgrade to a destroyer. Also, the AI can't make proper use of it, because it doesn't work well on its own; it needs to be part of a pack of privateers to protect it (preferably one or two with Medic). I think many human players fail at this, as well.

Multiple Production was never part of this mod, and unless you decide to mod it in yourself, more than likely won't ever be, so you can't fault Phungus on that one. As far as Advanced Starts go, I haven't got a clue, as I've never played them.