Criticise these alternate traits

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EDIT: Download version 4 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11441
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I've been trying recently to come up with alternate, interesting and (crucially) balanced traits, through modifying xml files. My general ideas were a bit like this:



Everyone's suggestions and criticism of my original ideas, as well as some extra playtesting has resulted in these changes:



So, version 4 now looks like:

Agg
- Free Promo (Combat I): Melee, Gunpowder, Mounted, Helicopter, Siege, Armour units

Cha
- No Anarchy
- Double Speed: Monument, National Wonders

Cre
- +2 per City
- +25% World Wonder production

Exp
- Double Speed: Granary
- +50% Settler
- +1 per City

Fin
- +35% Trade Route Yield (in )
- +10%

Imp
- Double Speed: Jail
- -25% Experience needed for Promos
- +50% Great General points

Ind
- Double Speed: Forge, Factory, Levee
- +75% Worker, Work Boat

Org
- -50% Civic Upkeep
- Double Speed: Courthouse

Phi
- +100%
- +1 per City

Pro
- Double Speed: Castle, Bomb Shelter
- +1 for: Walls, Bunker
- Free Promo (City Garrison I): Archer, Gunpowder units
- +50% Domestic Great General points

Spi
- +1 per City
- Double Speed: Temples, Monasteries, Cathedrals

Please play-test it, and criticise!

i like the idea of splitting up any bonus to Wonder production (world and national)

can't remember who is CRE/PHI in BTS, but that'll do for me!

I totally agree with you Munch! Some traits just aren´t that logical, and your suggestions seems good! Almost just like I have thought. Some of them may be too powerful, though, like discount from nukes for aggressive trait etc. And shouldn´t industrious maybe add double production bonus for forges and factories? Little changes here and there to balance those traits could be made? Let´s hear more opinions.

I agree with you on everything but spiritual, spiritual shouldnt have a happiness AND cultural boost, too much of an advantage

HoMM3 fanatic said:

I totally agree with you Munch! Some traits just aren´t that logical, and your suggestions seems good! Almost just like I have thought. Some of them may be too powerful, though, like discount from nukes for aggressive trait etc. And shouldn´t industrious maybe add double production bonus for forges and factories? Little changes here and there to balance those traits could be made? Let´s hear more opinions.

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Thanks for the input! I thought about double speed of forges and factories for Industrious, but I think it would have to replace one of the other points, or the trait would be too strong (of course, we can always improve the others too!). Also, I like the novelty value of extra s on tiles . I think you might be right about the discount nukes, but that is very late in the game, and so far I haven't seen whether it would be too powerful. With a bonus occurring so late in the game, I imagined you would need a different trait to compliment your strategy before you can truely exploit half-price nukes.

maddogmark25 said:

I agree with you on everything but spiritual, spiritual shouldnt have a happiness AND cultural boost, too much of an advantage

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What if the boost(s) were smaller? In order to compete with traits such as Industrious and Financial (which I think are powerful here) I'm not sure that simply having half-price religious buildings and either boosted happiness or culture is enough. I would like half-price missionaries as a possible replacement for 10% extra culture per city, but it is ugly to code this, as far as I can see. The trait description would read "Double production speed of Jewish Missionary, Buddhist Missionary, ...". It's possible, though.

maddogmark25 said:

I agree with you on everything but spiritual, spiritual shouldnt have a happiness AND cultural boost, too much of an advantage

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Yeah I dont undertand the cultural boost with spirtual, other then that they look better then the current set of traits we have, in which some really suck imo and make no sense.

Munch said:

. I would like half-price missionaries as a possible replacement for 10% extra culture per city, but it is ugly to code this, as far as I can see. The trait description would read "Double production speed of Jewish Missionary, Buddhist Missionary, ...". It's possible, though.

Click to expand...

^ This makes more sense, then the cultural boost for a "spiritual" leader

I think that the double speed production of Tac Nukes and ICBMs is very weak for Agg since Nukes are Modern Era and many players rarely use Nukes or even play to the Modern Era. I would keep the increased production speed of Barracks.

nbcman said:

I think that the double speed production of Tac Nukes and ICBMs is very weak for Agg since Nukes are Modern Era and many players rarely use Nukes or even play to the Modern Era. I would keep the increased production speed of Barracks.

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I agree with this.

Yeah, maybe you´re right. I agree with barracks bonus for aggressive.

Sounds good, I'd say

Spiritual
+1 Happy for State Religion
+1 Happy
+100% production temples, missionaries
(remove/increase Missionary limit?)

The 'tip' already has to say + to Jewish Temple, Hindu Temple, etc. adding Missionaries won't make it that much more complicated.

Aggressive (Barracks + Drydocks rather than Tac Nukes +ICBMS)

Makes sense. I'd like this is a toggle option

Philo_Beddoe said:

^ This makes more sense, then the cultural boost for a "spiritual" leader

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I agree. I didn't want the culture bonus, but it was all I could think of implementing to strengthen this trait. It was based on some poorly thought-out idea like 'religion has had an inspirational affect upon cultural works such as music and art', but anyway, I agree it should go.

Krikkitone said:

Sounds good, I'd say

Spiritual
+1 Happy for State Religion
+1 Happy
+100% production temples, missionaries
(remove/increase Missionary limit?)

The 'tip' already has to say + to Jewish Temple, Hindu Temple, etc. adding Missionaries won't make it that much more complicated.

Aggressive (Barracks + Drydocks rather than Tac Nukes +ICBMS)

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The things I've highlighted in bold are things that I think are beyond the scope of xml trait modifying. If anyone knows this to be false, please tell me how it's done.

Also, the 'tip' is automatically generated based on the xml files, although there may be a way to overwrite this..?

Would having double speed of Barracks, Drydock AND Stables be too much? I'm also surprised no-one has suggested giving the Combat I promotion to siege, air or naval units for the Aggressive trait, so I'll throw it out there. Would it be overpowered (or just a silly idea) to have so many units with instant Combat I?

you've combined the best parts of Creative and Industrious into Creative

And severely weakened Financial by making the bonus apply to gold alone, not commerce, and making the bonus smaller in the first place!

You madman!!!

Wow, I think much of this looks fantastic. I also like the idea industrious not being linked to world wonders or something like that.

Are you actually going to mod this up? I'd like to give it a whirl.

Also, I don't understand how commerce goes straight to research/production buy gold does not? Can someone give me a quick explanation on that?

lutzj said:

you've combined the best parts of Creative and Industrious into Creative

And severely weakened Financial by making the bonus apply to gold alone, not commerce, and making the bonus smaller in the first place!

You madman!!!

Click to expand...

!!

Don't forget, that the 'best part of Industrious' that's now in creative is only the production bonus to World Wonders, I've removed the original bonus to National Wonders and Team Wonders, whatever they are.

Also, I don't believe Financial has been 'severely weakened', so much as it's:
1) now less easy to exploit, and
2) more of a medium-to-late game trait.
Originally it was a very easy trait to leverage to your advantage (just build by the sea and cottage spam) and the benefit was huge; this way the bonus is for gold rather than generic commerce, and boosts your financial infrastructure by allowing fast construction of money generating buildings. I've played a test game as Mansa Musa, and I think it is still a powerful trait. Of course, that's based on only one game, and I'd like to see what other people think when they try it.

jpinard said:

Wow, I think much of this looks fantastic. I also like the idea industrious not being linked to world wonders or something like that.

Are you actually going to mod this up? I'd like to give it a whirl.

Also, I don't understand how commerce goes straight to research/production buy gold does not? Can someone give me a quick explanation on that?

Click to expand...

Thanks! I've already made a mod of this and playtested it to the industrial era with Stalin and Mansa Musa. I wanted to get to the modern era with Stalin, as no-one can produce nukes quite as fast as him, but got dogpiled! It's pretty good as far as I can see, and a diverse set of traits tend to occupy the top spots on the scoreboard. I've edited the first post to include a download link.

As for gold versus commerce gold: versus ), this is how I understand them:
Commerce is what you obtain from tiles (and some other features), for example river tiles produce 1 , and the more a cottage grows the more commerce it yields. Commerce is then channelled into some combination of Science, Culture, Espionage, and Gold based upon how you set your sliders. So, if you build a market which gives you +25% Gold gold in a city, but are running 100% Science, there will be no effect until you start putting some percentage of commerce into Gold. I hope this makes sense!

All very interesting.

Ind trait is over powered even with the other traits all beefed up. I never liked the +50% Wonder build bonus as it tended to to garantee a brace of wonders to an Ind civ. I therefore for my personal Mod I changed the trait to +1 hammer on tiles with 4 hammers (without any forge building production bonus.) In the early game the advantage is less meaningful for cities with bonuses for plain hill mines and metal deposits. One has to think about placing a city. However, the trait really comes into its own in the renaissance/industrial era, especially when railroad comes around. By the industrial age the trait offers, roughly speaking, an extra mines-worth of production per city, which is hugely significant.

I fear your version of Ind offers too much of a production boost far too soon.

CaptainMidnight said:

I fear your version of Ind offers too much of a production boost far too soon.

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I see what you mean. On a related note, one of my gripes with the original version of Financial was that it gave you a bonus on unimproved tiles - i.e. sea tiles. With my current version of Industrious, this problem is less prevalent, but for example applies to forests on plains hills. Another problem I have recently realised with my version is that during a golden age all your hammer-producing tiles generate a extra hammer, which would push many tiles into this "3 hammers gives you a bonus hammer" situation, for example grassland lumbermills, and plains towns under Universal Suffrage.

So yes, I think +1 on 3 is overpowered. If it were reduced to requiring 4 on a tile, and you were allowed double production speed of Forge and Factory, do you think this would be more balanced?

Exp
- Double Speed: Settlers
no this is to powerfull, +50% is max, otherwise this traits means 'your first build must be a settler'
- +2 per city
instead of +2H a +1 food on city tile (to get 3F in most cases) could represent the 'expandability' (in the early game I often hesitate to build a city because it wont grow)
- Double Speed: Granary, Aqueduct


Fin
- +15% per city
- Double Speed: Market, Grocer, Bank, Harbour, Customs House
Such a trait sucks ^^ and the +15% would be indexed upon the tax slider. (its stronger if you get 100% tax than if you get only 10% tax).

Ind
- +1 on tiles with 3
- Double Speed: Workers
Hard to say here... would this be balanced ? i dont think so but not sure :/
I'd rather say +1H on mines.

Looks very good, I'd prefere this instead of the standard traits. Maybe aggressive is a little too weak.