Gorb's Simple Changes

[Gorbles]

Just a work-in-progress thread where I list some of the simple tweaks to gameplay and balance I feel would make the game more enjoyable throughout. No bugfixing, no mechical overhauls. Just keeping it small.

General

Rebalance naval combat, make system more hard-counter dependent like ranged vs. melee on land. Cruisers beat Submarines beat Patrol Boats beat Cruisers.​

Tech Web

Nerf Affinity yields for all primary technologies. Down from +7 to +3 or similar.
[tentative] Buff Affinity yields for leaf technologies per ring (innermost ring stays at +20, second ring, +24, etc).
[tentative] Increase Science costs per ring for all technologies.​

Virtues

[vague] Put something to do with Specialists in Prosperity.​

Affinity Levels

[vague] Investigate scaling, particularly through early and mid-game.
Increase Hybrids to require 7 / 7 (up from 6 / 6).​

Sponsors

none yet​

Wonders

none yet​

Quests

Nerf Affinity results across the board to reduce extreme variance in successful Quests. Increase other rewards.​

 

[Lord Tirian]

I like the general gist of this - keeping the Civ:BERT mechanics but tuning the values.

Personally, I'd only reduce the affinity points given by the leaf techs a little bit to, say 15. Having the branch techs being important is good, I think.

Instead, I'd rather steal the idea from the other thread and increase the costs for the outer rings more sharply (say +20% for the 2nd ring, +50% for the 3rd ring) to slow down affinity point accumulation.

Regarding virtues: I'd move the extra expeditions into the Knowledge tree (how is this prosperity!?).

 

[Idleray]

Change PAC's trait upgrades to be less worthless.

Something like +1/2/3 to all yields from wonders rather than as it currently is, completely not worth upgrading.

 

[Gorbles]

Didn't think of Sponsor bonuses; added a section for them. Undecided yet, I've only played as Duncan and Barre so far.

Need to get through the other leaders, free time permitting.

I like the general gist of this - keeping the Civ:BERT mechanics but tuning the values.

Personally, I'd only reduce the affinity points given by the leaf techs a little bit to, say 15. Having the branch techs being important is good, I think.

Instead, I'd rather steal the idea from the other thread and increase the costs for the outer rings more sharply (say +20% for the 2nd ring, +50% for the 3rd ring) to slow down affinity point accumulation.

Regarding virtues: I'd move the extra expeditions into the Knowledge tree (how is this prosperity!?).

Swapping Virtues around is something I'm considering, need to get more familiar with Might and Prosperity (historically I use Industry and Knowledge the most, and the first tier in Prosperity).

I think the draw of the primary technologies is to a) unlock the leaf techs and b) for the strong benefits that tend to come with primary techs, i.e. unit and usually tile improvement unlocks. Affinity doesn't have to be a thing there on top of all of that.

I considered upping the Science scaling, but I don't think that's a problem. Even assuming a large Science output (I'm talking +2,000 per turn from whatever turn in the game) you still take several hundred turns to max out the entire tech web. You want the tech web to be explorable like that, just like you want the old tech tree in earlier Civ. games to be fully-explorable. By slowing down Affinity progress, combined with the Victories now being at level 15, but leaving Science progression as it is, you extend the mid-game phase without compromising players who like tech exploration.

Tech choices are still important as they are in the current balance state because for optimised play you can't afford to fully-explore much of the tree at all.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Sponsors:

FI-Start with 1 Free Virtue, +1/2/3 virtue for every 10
Brasilia-+5/10/15 DC per kill (War score bonus depends on whether that ends up being useful)
Kavitha- x30/20/10% cost for tiles (multiplied by trait/virtue effects not added)
Polystralia- +1/3/5 Free Trade routes in capital, (cities get a Free Trade Depot or +1/2/3 DC from Trade Depots..or +1/2/3 DC from foreign trade routes)
PAU- +10/15/20% Food when healthy (not growth)
PAC- 1/2/3 Free Wonders, other Wonders are 10/20/30% cheaper, +1/2/3 DC from wonders

Specialists
Set all to 3 base value, except
Growers 4
Traders 5

 

[Lord Tirian]

By slowing down Affinity progress, combined with the Victories now being at level 15, but leaving Science progression as it is, you extend the mid-game phase without compromising players who like tech exploration.

The problem with that is that the high-end affinity units also need a lot of affinity and are on the outer leaves, encouraging beelines to the outer ring and picking up the victory techs in between (because all the ultimates are leaf techs of the victory techs).

So while you enable tech exploration, you also encourage beelining. By delaying affinity by increasing tech costs instead, you encourage exploration of the leaf techs instead, allowing more mid-game content to come into play.

 

[Gorbles]

Hmm, good point. Will consider!

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Reduce the efficiency of hammer conversion ("City Projects"). Depending on the amount of free production players can get (via TR, etc) I think a 10-15% base value should suffice. Adjust the "Ambitious" trait accordingly.
By nerfing conversion you encourage players to build stuff instead of just converting scence past turn 100, which in return makes constructable tech unlocks more attractive.

As for specialists, I suggest a "consumes less/no food" perk and maybe a wonder that boosts them ("cause no unhealth" / "+1 production yield" / etc).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Reduce the efficiency of hammer conversion ("City Projects"). Depending on the amount of free production players can get (via TR, etc) I think a 10-15% base value should suffice. Adjust the "Ambitious" trait accordingly.
By nerfing conversion you encourage players to build stuff instead of just converting scence past turn 100, which in return makes constructable tech unlocks more attractive.

As for specialists, I suggest a "consumes less/no food" perk and maybe a wonder that boosts them ("cause no unhealth" / "+1 production yield" / etc).

Constructable tech unlocks would be better encouraged by making them better

Ring 3 buildings should be giving +40-100% bonuses or +10-30 yield

 

[Lord Tirian]

Another thing for the pile: Have a good, hard look at the strength deltas of unit upgrades. While mostly consistent, I feel they're a bit too large - that massively encourages slingshots and outpaces alien life rapidly.

I don't think that's bad when you're on T4 units but the step to T3 feels too large, in my opinion.

 

[Lord Shadow]

If we're talking about semi-small changes...

As for naval combat "hard" counters, "Cruisers beat Submarines beat Patrol Boats beat Cruisers" doesn't make much sense. I believe it pays off to draw a parallel with reality when possible, and if we understand cruisers as heavy ships and patrol boats as light ships, a more sensible counter scheme would be "Patrol Boats beat Submarines beat Cruisers beat Patrol Boats". It would also help address the current proliferation of patrol boats (and submarines) and absence of heavier ships.

To expand on that scheme further, while the norm is that ranged units have weak melee strength, on the sea front, if melee boats are just melee and subs have strong ranged power and weak melee, I'd make it so cruisers are both strong at range and strong in melee. Especially as they evolve into what's essentially battleships. One caveat, however: I'd give submarines a bonus against them, to negate that increased resilience. Not sure if such a perk (bonus vs. cruiser-type) exists, though...

Regarding affinity and affinity-related victory progression, I understand (based more on reading than actual playing) that higher-end affinity techs and units end up unused because it's just not necessary to take those roads. I'd de-emphasize point gain from non-tech sources in order to encourage researching all or at least the vast majority of techs associated with the desired affinity.

 

[Gorbles]

I'm going to be honest (sorry if it comes across as blunt). This game is not reality. Video games in general to not adhere to realistic expectations. Basing games design on a particular country's naval forces is not going to result in a coherent base going forwards.

At the moment, Cruisers beat Submarines they have the range, so long as they have sight, but they lack melee strength. Submarines beat Patrol Boats (and other melee units) from a medium range but lose in melee, but are outranged by Cruisers and fragile to boot. And so on, and so forth. The system needs work, but it's kinda how it works at the moment.

Problem is, unless you absolutely spam Patrol Boats (I'm looking at you, AI) it's far more efficient to get Cruisers, especially with their Affinity upgrades. Submarines are somewhere in the middle; their invisibility actually grants them utility. Patrol Boats are simply a necessity to take Cities, in addition to being a bit cheaper than Cruisers to build or purchase. Maybe you disagree with me that Cruisers are the most efficient, I don't particularly mind. These are my simple changes, after all, and I'm not sure how many of them I'll even get to.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'm going to be honest (sorry if it comes across as blunt). This game is not reality. Video games in general to not adhere to realistic expectations. Basing games design on a particular country's naval forces is not going to result in a coherent base going forwards.

At the moment, Cruisers beat Submarines they have the range, so long as they have sight, but they lack melee strength. Submarines beat Patrol Boats (and other melee units) from a medium range but lose in melee, but are outranged by Cruisers and fragile to boot. And so on, and so forth. The system needs work, but it's kinda how it works at the moment.

Problem is, unless you absolutely spam Patrol Boats (I'm looking at you, AI) it's far more efficient to get Cruisers, especially with their Affinity upgrades. Submarines are somewhere in the middle; their invisibility actually grants them utility. Patrol Boats are simply a necessity to take Cities, in addition to being a bit cheaper than Cruisers to build or purchase. Maybe you disagree with me that Cruisers are the most efficient, I don't particularly mind. These are my simple changes, after all, and I'm not sure how many of them I'll even get to.

So you would suggest something like reducing the melee strength of Cruisers (more vulnerable to Patrol Boats) and increasing the melee strength of Subs (better able to clear out Patrol Boats)

 

[Gorbles]

That would be a good start. It's just odd that Patrol Boats don't heavily counter Cruisers like most melee units do ranged in BE (especially since melee vs. ranged is even more lethal than in CiV). Submarines are tricky because they're built around invisibility and have range. Not sure I would do much to them beyond looking at melee strength - maybe a slight cost reduction?

With invisibility and range, Submarines do a good job against Patrol Boats. The problem is that Cruisers are just better at it.

Been thinking about Hybrids too, they're a bit too easy to get. I'd implement my Affinity changes first, and see if it's as easy to get them. If so, I'd up them to 7 / 7 and reduce the dedicated upgrades to maybe 10, I think. Would need to play around a bit more.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Given there weren't any naval melee units at all before Rising Tide, and seeing how Civ5 works, it's fairly clear the devs' intent wasn't to reproduce the same "melee beats ranged" convention seen in land warfare.

Nobody suggested basing design on a particular country's naval forces, just that it pays to have some basic knowledge about semi-modern naval warfare (the kind you frequently see represented in media, which isn't the all-missile modern incarnation per se) if it makes sense within the game's mechanics. Just like it intuitively makes sense to have tanks stronger than common infantry, even if that isn't always true in real life.

Realism aside, it's not very logical that cheap little boats would be the counter for big, expensive ships. Enacting that would only further justify the AI spam of melee boats. Why would they build anything else if melee boats solve everything? Light kills heavy would only make sense if there were "medium" ships to kill lights and be killed by heavies. If you made light ships weak against submarines, however, you'd be infringing upon the "melee beats ranged" convention you want to create stronger adherence to.

And it's not really a problem that cruisers are better at ranged combat than submarines. Leaving aside the fact they're more expensive, they lack invisibility. Things are fairly balanced in that specific area.

 

[Gorbles]

There are no assumptions to be made on developer intent, simply what I want to do with the counter-based system BE already has in place. Making Cruisers weaker against melee attacks is a part of that, given how every other ranged unit is countered by anything with a melee Strength greater than 10 (hyperbole).

Melee units absolutely destroy ranged units in vanilla BE. I fail to see why this shouldn't apply to naval combat as well.

They're also not that much cheaper than Cruisers. Especially considering the advantages naval Cities can get to Production, the difference can often be a single turn in getting out a maxed Cruiser vs. a Maxed Patrol boat. Purchase price is 780 vs. 1120, I think (could be including purchase discounts there, though) - significant on paper, but not when you're already dropping 800 on a unit to begin with.

Melee boats wouldn't solve everything. Melee boats take large damage assaulting Cities, as they should. They can't easily counter Submarines as they lack range. If my system ever made Patrol Boats too powerful, you can bet I'd do something to address it.

I'm a bit tired of repeating myself at this point. It isn't a "melee beats ranged end of good game". It is a hard counter based system whereby Submarines beat Patrol Boats, Patrol Boats beat Cruisers, and Cruisers beat Submarines. Hard melee beats hard ranged. Submarines are somewhere in the middle.

I dunno what you're even arguing for at this point. "don't do these changes in a mod I don't have to play, they're dumb?" Or is it more than that? You don't see me putting down your ideas, I'm simply defending mine.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Fair enough. You should probably try to get this moved to modding discussion if your intent is to brainstorm for a mod rather than to suggest changes to the main game. It wasn't entirely clear until now.

 

[Gorbles]

Eh, I'm open to both, but it just seems you're approaching a different solution to me. Neither are necessarily wrong. Doesn't seem like something resolvable

 

[Galgus]

I don't think the melee-ranged counter system works well on water due to how much more movement there is and how few obstacles there are.

Perhaps Patrol Boats could gain significant flanking bonuses and more movement than Cruisers, so the idea would be to swarm and destroy them and to guard them from that.

I'm not a big fan of submarines generally, but if they are in the game I think they should be glass cannons.

They would lose to any ship in a fair fight, but could deliver a powerful surprise opening salvo.

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah I think ideally Submarines would have a more unique mechanic than just Invisibility. Just trying to keep the changes small, most positive impact out of the least change. This is the ideas subforum and not modding, but in the worst case scenario where we assume a complete lack of developer resources, small tweaks are better than more involved ones.

(assuming their reading of this subforum, of course)

Can say for a fact that programmer resources are one of the first things to go when you have a limited budget / man-hours