Okay, I'm back in range of my keyboard and not just killing time in between meetings. Let's give this a proper reply! To save my poor overworked fingers, I'll reply to the points where we disagreed more than anywhere we agreed - not much to talk about when we agree! (I'll copy this more or less verbatim over to the thread itself later, too.)
First off, I'm kind of surprised that of all the suggested change threads around here, mine got the in-depth treatment. Also for clarity:
I subscribe to the ol' Activision-Blizzard school of balancing: It's better to go a bit overkill than underkill. This means that at worst the dominant strategies will change around a bit than stagnate.
RE: Great Person separation on the counters.
My thinking was that Great Merchants as they stand right now are SO inferior to Engineers and Scientists, that it's actually a penalty to spawn them (unless you're Venice). To speak to your talk of Choosing between an Engineer or a Scientist, I can't say that's ever my first thought in allocating my specialists: generally it's more "I need science" and then "I need Production!" and the GP shows up later as a nice bonus.
Regarding the demotion from "Great People" to "People"... I already feel this is the case with the addition of GWAM, as well as Faith-buying even more people, etc.
RE: Cover Promotions. It's somewhat dubious on where exactly the Cover promotions are working. To the best of my knowledge, any unit with a Ranged strength is not benefiting from them as Cover applies to base combat strength, but Ranged units use their Ranged combat strength to defend, regardless of what's actually higher. This is a bug and needs a fixin'.
RE: Natural Wonders spawning somewhere impossible to work. I didn't know this was a longstanding tradition in civ games. Shall we leave it?
RE: Lancers. I wanted to change two problems here. The first is that Lancers flat-out suck at their jobs at 25 Strength. It's not actually stronger than Cav even with Formation, and it's pretty much on par with Muskets... except that it's on a later tech and costs a Strategic resource. They come out too late and in the wrong direction to be useful against Knights except as mop-up of a dated unit. Also, about that Formation promotion? It doesn't work against some units - namely Keshiks (unless this has been patched when I wasn't looking).
RE: Siege vs. Cities: ain't no kill like overkill! My first thought is of all the times that my hard-built catapult got reduced to splinters in a single hit by the city... and this Catapult is supposed to be
good against cities? Directly tinkering with Ranged strengths is a dangerous game, so I preferred to tinker with the unique-to-siege promotion.
While 200% is excessive, I went for a nice big number to make siege units truly terrifying when they show up. Let's face it, they're pretty bad in open-field fighting with weaker attacks and inability to shoot & scoot. I dislike the situation that I see so often, where ONE archer in a city, plus one or two behind can hold nigh-forever. That Siege unit needs to be the 'oh hell' button to force someone to either come out and deal with it, or die.
RE: Anti-tank going to Ranged units
After firing, they'll still be stuck in place without a Blitz promotion. It's also a representation of alternate uses of these weapons in wars. Anti-Tank rifles work pretty well as sniper rifles for anti-materiel uses, high-velocity Anti-Tank Guns were useful for smashing hardened fortifications, and attack helicopters are good anti-everything provided they're not hit back.
Also, this is a
very personal gripe, but I despise seeing the animation of antitank/antiaircraft guns being rolled forward as melee units. Both are items you hide desperately in a bush somewhere to keep from being spotted, not trundle up face-first into an infantry platoon.
RE: Oligarchy: I had a feeling that cutting down on Tradition's core mechanics was undeserved, and that taking apart the "tall growth" was unfair. Tinkering with Tradition too much might just make Liberty better at Tradition's job instead, and that's the thing I wanted to avoid most. Instead I wanted to come at it from another angle and open the door a little wider to just walking in and killing the 4-city, mass-science, beaker-spamming player. Oligarchy adds a lot of early strength to cities, making these very infrastructure-heavy plays very safe. Also, once it starts stacking with things like Himeji castle & that obnoxious pantheon, it reaches the level that you can almost hold armies with little more than an Archer or two.
RE: Meritocracy: this is meant to balance out the lack of Gold in those new cities. Pre-BNW new cities could pay off the cost of those new roads with new rivers - now they seem like more of a financial drain trying to get new Buildings up, while the city is too small to spare Food to work a Gold/Production resource. Maybe Meritocracy isn't the right place, but I think something like this might be the right effect.
RE: Honor:
- Gold per Kill as a finisher is too late for this to matter much. By the time you're at least six policies, the gold from a kill (7-8 early game?)... it's pretty negligible. Compare the amount to what it can buy; you've got to stack the bodies awfully deep to buy more than a single starter building. The Barbarians bonuses typically expire somewhere between Medieval and Renaissance. Doubling it up later might be strong, but as I said at the beginning, better too much than too little.
- Happiness/Culture from Units: every single one was absolutely overkill. My thoughts were that Maintenance would bankrupt any player trying to abuse the hell out of it, but looking deeper into the exact formulas of Unit Maintenance, a better balance might be struck around 1/2 or 1/3 that effect. It needs to be somewhat useful on a small army a player can afford while not being game-breaking with straight unit spam. Listening to your ideas, I think it might be fair to exempt Scouts from working with this too - I forgot about them, but they'd be a low production for higher reward unit available deep into the game.
The other mitigating factor is what happens when someone kills your units. Someone DOW'ing and eating your scout swarm could both give them some uncomfortable amounts of experience (uncomfortable for YOU, that is), and pitch you deep into frown-town and bereft of Culture.
Ultimately, it might be best to keep the Happiness/Unit ratio higher while putting a hard cap on the max output, possibly tying it to 2-3 per City in empire, or by forbidding it from taking you above a certain smile count. (So your troops won't let you become UNHAPPY, but they'll keep you at zero or something).
Re: Scholasticism
- City-states often generate approximately
buggerall for themselves, although I get that it's better the higher the difficulty. Last game I was on Emperor for (my preferred for fun factor), and it was generating somewhere around ~10% of my empire's total... after I'd allied every CS on the map. Given that the Rationalism opener does that, and stacks with other things, and is a lot shallower in the tree... eh. It could use a second look at, is what I'm driving for here.
Re: Commerce
- Mercantilism already gives Science to those buildings. My net increase is +1 on the Bank and +2 on the Stock Exchange. I don't think this is too much, given that by the time you're reaching Stock Exchanges +2 beakers isn't much, even multiplied by Universities and/or Labs.
- The second free Trade route lacked creativity I suppose. Some alternate effect could be better, or the Finisher could remain as-is.
Re: Exploration
- "Merchant Marine": I had assumed that Cargo ships would keep their pathing through other units, and they're the last unit targeted in the stack. In hindsight, this isn't quite right; maybe if the ship still stacked differently, but automatically attacks if it runs into an enemy? It's better than the automatic death they suffer right now. My intent here is that a big sprawly naval empire will run Cargo ships all over the damn place, probably farther than they can really control effectively (as their range doubles, the area to patrol effectively squares.) Protecting them from random barbarian Galleys and Trireme attacks in the Modern era would be nice.
- Navigation School: the more of a 'naval' empire you are, the more likely you need to move civilians or troops around Embarked. Being able to do this faster would be nice, versus the sometimes 15-20 turn embarked voyages you'll see lategame. That England could get to LUDICROUS SPEED is... meh. Hooray for England? Also, this policy is a massive low point of the tree; I think it needed something.
- Buying Archaeologists with Faith: the cost could be tweaked to whatever it needs to be to make this not too crazy. Buying Admirals with Faith... like you said, that basically does not happen. There's some theme with Archaeology given Hidden Sites and the Louvre; I thought this fit.
Re: Rationalism
- Libraries. Oops. That was supposed to be Universities.
- I changed the opener around so it's not totally free science (10% for first SP in the tree always felt strong to me), but I can be convinced otherwise. At least the Scientists require you to be working that kind of Specialist is my thought.
Anyways, thanks for the review. There's no more divisive topic in any community than game balance. I'm not bothered by the quick "OP" on some of the points - I know the pacing of the show demands that you move on: even at that pace it was an hour across two shows. There's just not time for in-depth back and forth across everything.
For certain. The one-hundred-and-ninety-third episode of PolyCast, "Choices Matter", features regular co-hosts "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with returning guest co-host Scott "AlphaShard" Dirk and first-time guest co-host "Reyzant". Carrying a runtime of 59m59s, the summary of topics is as follows:
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