Éa III, Sword & Sorcery (early versions) Balance Discussion

[Pazyryk]

Spawning rate for both demons and undead is a function of mana depletion. So there will be no spawning initially from Ahriman's Vault. (I guess maybe we need a variation on Turn Undead so that a nearby evil civ can do something with these when they spawn later...)

The hidden buildings showing was definitely fixed in hotfixes, so make sure you have those applied.

I discovered a problem with the Build Pyramids action. It's fixed for v7 and I also posted a "manual hotfix" in bugs thread. Pyramids increases the "apparent" size and military might of your civilization for the purpose of AI behavior and Domination Victory. (The AI effect could be good or bad depending, but larger military is good for deterring attacks.)

It's an interesting conundrum with Engineers. If you have one however then you must have researched either Masonry or Bronze Working. That means there is at least one wonder you can build now and others 1 tech away (and more will be added). Unless an AI starts one of these before you. [Edit: or Mathematics to make a Workshop. Maybe we need a wonder at Mathematics to give engineer generated that way something to do?]

The initial tech and policy rate is pretty well calibrated so that I see 50/50 for AI civs getting to one or the other first for naming (at least that's true on standard size map). Obviously there are some preferred names within each of these, however, resulting from AIs prioritizing initial food growth first and then name. I'll keep adjusting this with each version to push away from the overly common ones (Girnar and the 3 Dominionism ones for Man), although some will probably always be somewhat more common than others.

Barb tech rate is toned down in v7.

 

[BrokenSky]

I have just hot fix i. Sorry, I wasn't really sure how it was meant to work; should I have all the hot fixes or just the latest one? Also because I took so long to get a name, by the time I got masonry I had quite a lot of artist points and ended up with 2 engineers because of how the dice fell on generation. Also: you can get an engineer just by adopting guilds. This doesn't guarantee any wonders.

 

[Pazyryk]

It doesn't sound like hotfix i is applied. Are you sure you pressed "Extract Here" with it? Otherwise it will just upack into a folder called "hotfix i" and not actually replace any mod files. The real test is to open the Lua log after running a game and searching for the text "hotfix i". If it isn't there then you don't have it installed. All hotfixes are cumulative so you only need the most recent.

The Pyramids and a couple other bugs are listed in bugs forum with manual fixes. I should probably release hotfix j but I'm really busy with v7.

OK, Guilds too if you build Smith's Guild. But if you intentionally build Smith's Guild or Workshop then you should be prepared for an Engineer. Having no wonder-enabling techs and only one city (while intending to expand) counts as "not prepared". But I'll think about adding a wonder at that policy in any case.

Edit: There are at least two more things an Engineer is supposed to be able to do but haven't been added yet: Build Citadel (with Construction) and Build Fort (no prereq; Warriors can also do this). So the latter is something they can do if there is nothing else to do.


It's sort of intentional that GPs can't be put to sleep. It would be very bad to forget one. Do folks think I should change this?

 

[onedreamer]

See this screenshot

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=297354339

The two cities have both a river dock but they are not connected, because the capital is on an affluent of the main river. If there is a way to take this into account and connect such cities, it would be cool to introduce it.

edit: disregard this, the cities have been connected. However it happened not on the next turn from when I built the docks, but probably two turns later.

 

[Pazyryk]

Those two should absolutely be connected. Did you wait one turn after river dock completed in both? Post a save if not.

 

[onedreamer]

Trade routes:
- the AI doesn't seem to make much use (if any at all) of them, which make a couple of features (trade houses and missions) useless.
- there should be more control over which trade routes will be opened with a trade mission. Often you can open several trade routes with a single city (from different cities and land or sea) but you can't know which one you are about to open. Maybe add info on the city the route will connect from, if possible.

 

[onedreamer]

In case a fix for the slave makers becomes problematic, what about changing the policy to Sacrifices, which enables the building sacrificial altar where you can gain 5 culture (or whatever) for each sacrificed slave?

 

[BrokenSky]

In my experience the AI will eventually open trade route with me, even if they intend to go to, or have just finished a war and distrust me a lot.

A quick thing about health; I happened to notice that all the health buildings are on the opposite side of the tech tree from all the farming ones. Should there be some health buildings up on the top end of the tree, e.g. Apothecary (maybe also giving science), maybe a herbal medicine tech off the tier 4 end of the farming area for a Healer's Hut type thing, etc?

 

[onedreamer]

the kind of buildings you suggested are more related to priesthood/spellcraft IMO. In fact, Apothecary already exists with the Arcane Tradition policy.

 

[onedreamer]

See what I mean about trade routes:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=298450202

If I try to establish a domestic trade route with this city I don't know with which of my cities it will be created, since it shows the destination city (which is obvious and not needed) instead of the source ones. Also I cannot choose which city to trade with and what (production or food). All this stuff should be expanded a bit.

- The Tyre civ has a weak bonus because the marketplace doesn't cost maintenance so having a free one isn't as strong as having other free buildings. Maybe add +1 gold to markets or +1 trade route available?
- One problem you should try to solve is AI sending Great People around without escort. I believe this one is inherited from the base game, so I don't know if you are able to fix it, but in Ea it gets worse as GPs tend to roam more than in the base game.

 

[Llednar Twem]

I've been playing this mod for a few days now, and it has been a very entertaining experience. There is one thing, though, that stands out as either being notably missing from the mod, or just something I've utterly failed to notice: non-combat magic. From what I've seen, magic in this mod seems to center almost exclusively around either casting destructive spells or summoning monsters to fight with. This is great during a war, but it seems odd that as broad a concept as magic would have such a limited focus.One possible solution that comes to mind, which might not even be possible (I'm no modder myself), would be to include buildings and such with mana as a maintenance cost. As a random example, some kind of magic healing facility would allow a magic-inclined civ to maintain health in a large city without having to detour into pursuing techs such as mechanics and construction.

Having said all this, it's entirely possible this sort of thing is already in the mod and I simply haven't noticed. As I said, I've only been playing a few days so far. It's also possible this was considered before and decided against. I haven't read most of this thread yet. In either case, I suppose this post is rather irrelevant. Still, I enjoy the mod, and simply thought to offer what input I had.

 

[BrokenSky]

I think it's more a case of it's been suggested, but not implemented yet.

Regarding specifics, I think a spell that booths city health might be pretty good, as an alternative to researching engineering line and medicine?

 

[Pazyryk]

It's a good point.

There is magic involved with the One with Nature victory, though it is not at all as diverse as the combat magic. In v7 there is magic involved with the Protector victory, but this is still a "beat your enemy into submission" victory (mostly).

What I don't want are simple conversion mechanics, where magic can be used to out-culture a culture-focused civ, or out-earn a gold-focused civ, or out-build a builder civ, or out-tall a tall city-focused civ. But its fine if it fill some gaps (like health) that you might be experiencing for focusing on magic.

 

[Llednar Twem]

To be perfectly honest, I don't see a problem with being able to use magic to boost any of the things you mentioned, as long as the effect is reasonably tuned such that a pure magic civ can't become the best at everything. With reasonable balance, it would simply mean that a civ trying for, for example, the tallest cities would want to invest in both magic and non-magic sources of growth. Alternatively, a pure magic or non-magic civ would have somewhat smaller cities than one pursuing both, but would also be more versatile by spending those resources elsewhere. I suppose in the end this could simply come down to a difference in philosophy though.

 

[darkedone02]

Is there trade routes going to change anytime soon? Since we are dealing in a fantasy world, I wish trade go for a revamp/overhaul to where I be able to trade an town specifically of want I wish to obtain... for example...

let say I can provided at least 5 different choices to trade with that city, Commerce, Food, Magic, Religion, and Research... I am a sidhe, and I traded with a human city using religion since I am a cult, the trade route will help spread my religion towards that city by selling religious items towards that city. Now in standard, it's always a fixed amount by distance, but I wish It was not by distance but other factors such as tolerances towards that civilization, if I engaged in war, Tolerance will decrease and produces less sales/spread because of rising xenophobia. However if I was a loyal friend of the human city, tolerance increases and the sales increases as well, along with higher chances to spread my beliefs as well.

There can be other factors that could be involved besides tolerance, this includes: Banditry (trade route could be damage or the trader could be killed by barbarians if the barbarians decided to ambush the trade route), Distance (the longer the trade, the more exotic goods you can sale and purchases), Resources (if the city is resourceful like you are and actually have something you don't, you can gain a bonus, or a penalty if they don't have anything unique they could own), and other factors that could boost or nerf your values due to certain reasons.

 

[Pazyryk]

@darkedone02, it's a good idea. But my plate is rather full now with planned features. Actually, I think I would modify (simplify) your idea for various yield types: rather than player choice, it would be determined by the nature of the trading city. So, for example, an Arcane CS or arcane-focused civ would trade mana, etc. But there is just too much to do now to think about this.

v7 is nearing completion. Everything above is in and at least can happen without causing error.

I found a base Civ5 bug that was causing a HUGE accumulation of mana. Basically, as your city mana from nearby Towers was going up from 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11... your actual mana/turn was going up 5, 11, 18, 26, 34, 44, 55. This was a base Civ5 bug from changing #free buildings if building gave faith (=mana). So fixing that will tame the mana situation a good deal.

Tradition branch has been completely overhauled too. I'll post that here sometime later.

I'll take a quick look at Living Terrain spread and the criteria for One with Nature. I know that spreads are happening (with hotfix) but still seem too rare nowadays. And criteria is too high for the VC.

Assuming no more bugs pop up in autoplays (which are running 24/7), then the only other thing I plan to do now is finish adding Favored Techs for all civs. Then I'll release v7.

 

[BrokenSky]

Tradition branched overhall.

 

[Pazyryk]

Here are the new Tradition effects. All help text is updated:

Opener +1s1c from capital; enables Tribal Council & Forefathers' Statue buildings
Folkart +1c per Textiles Plantation, Exotics Plantation, Vineyard and Quarry; enables Jeweller building (with Currency)
Crafting +1c per Fair, Jeweller, Ivoryworks, Stoneworks, Brewery, Winery, Distillery and Textile Mill; enables the Kiln building (with Construction)
Folklore Required for all Epics (in addition to tech prereq)
Barding +1c per Amphitheater, Theater, Opera House; +8 Barding modifier for all Artists
The Arts +2c per Theater, Opera House, Museum and University; cities can select the Support the Arts process which converts 1/3 of all city production to culture in the city
Scholasticism +10%s; +10%s from Libraries; enables Papermill building (with Literature)
Academic Tradition +15%s; +15%s from Universities
Rationalism +15%s; +15%s from Laboratories; cities can select the Research process which converts 1/3 of all city production to science in the city.
Finisher Gain extra research equal to 1/3 of all culture generation

All Epics now have a tech req in addition ot Folklore. (I can't remember names of these either but they are at Writing, Zymurgy, Drama, Literature, Music and Aesthetics.)

Tech tree shows Epics now (& Tomes & other stuff not shown in v6).

It's maybe a little weird that the branch enables two conquest buildings, but they make sense for the branch. Tribal Council can be built in cities that have a civ/city race-mismatch to get rid of the 2 unhappiness racial disharmony effect. Forefathers' Statue is available in a conquered city of the same race but only 100 turns after conquest; this building is the only way to end occupation in Éa. Militarism and Slavery branches give you other ways to deal with these effects. However, the other consideration is that this isn't a "peaceful" branch necessarily. I would consider it a good complement to Militarism in a conquest game to help with CL and KM effects from added population (plus Tribal Council to deal with racial disharmony unhappiness).

 

[BrokenSky]

sounds cool! I tended to take tradition with whatever else I was going for anyway. Really boosts artists! In my last (technically on going) sidhe game I found that It didn't feel like my 3 max level artist were really doing much to my culture though. Maybe this will fix that? Either way though I think that the culture mean level thing though should be weighted by more current turns; around turn 250 I up and shifted all the artists from the capital to my new world holdings to help with the land grab there. Despite the significant drop in my culture production (about 60) the policies per turn stayed at +0.05 the whole time. The only real difference was how much food my cities were getting (bare in mind that I did Dominionism - Tradition, with a couple of other trees opened to open +1 to get the GP if I really needed one) and had a large number of cities, my capital generally at about 25 and several 18 or 19s.

That said I did have a high priority on artist specialists, which I dropped when it felt like it wasn't doing anything in favour of scientists to help with the now mounting research costs - I'd done large areas of the tech tree to about tier 3 or 4 and knowledge maintenance at around +300%

added later:

Regrading culture level; the fact that (last time I checked) a weighting bias to more recent culture level does not exist does introduce a problematic scenario; the one where man, who is "adaptable" is locked into a specific path by the early game actions. Since the main benefit of man is being able to quickly and relatively easily change focus, aside from accumulating 1 per GP lifetime bonuses, at the cost of having overall weaker GPs than Sidhe, this doesn't seem right, since one can't change from a non-culture focus to a culture focus easily. Adding a recent turn bias would help man in this area, but for sidhe probably less so, unless all the artists were born quite a bit later than early game.s

 

[Doopliss]

It seems great. The Folkart/Crafting buffs are necessary and appreciated, and the tile yield buffs are a good way to get the culture churning reasonably early. I'm not entirely sure that the culture building buffs can amount to much before the Great Culture Crawl sets in, but that's pretty squarely conjecture. +40-80% Science for three (and a half) policies seems astronomical, but the tech progression tiers will definitely make this less of a huge deal than it would be in ordinary Civ.