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

[Civitar]

I did the manual fix and then became a Lich - it worked! I then happily went about hurling hordes of Skeletons and Zombies at the enemy Light/Medium Infantry and Scouts. By hordes I mean over 100 units within about 15 turns. The Medium Infantry plus the city I was attacking plus the enemy Berserker GP really chewed up everything I threw at them - but each dead Skeletons took off 20 HP, and eventually I overwhelmed them with weight of numbers. Muahahahahahaaa!

(Sorry. I'm really enjoying myself here.)

 

[jekke]

played v7d last night, and noticed two weird things, checked the list of changes in 7e and since they're not there, I believe they should be discussed.

first, culture still needs some improvement. I do understand the whole concept of approaching your cultural level and stuff, but: it's extremely annoying to go 0.05 culture per turn, build a theater and an amphiteater (for instance) within one turn (in two cities) and frown upon the fact that this 0.05 did not change at all, and you still get your new policy in 20 turns or so. Seems that this averaging the f(culture/pop) over years looks like a delayed effect: you increase your culture now to get policies faster in 100 turns or so. Maybe we could introduce a one-time culture boost upon completion a cultural building, like the culture ruin works?

Second, civilian unit stacking is fine, but sometimes it gives weird things. Recently my neighbour started in a hilly area with some narrow one-two-tile passes. They wanted to connect two cities with a road, but barbarians from a nearby encampment kept stealing their road-building workers. When I finally cleared that encampment, I found EIGHT workers there. I liberated them all, and their attitude to me changed from hostile to friendly in no time. We even signed a declaration of friendship next turn. I don't have a suggestion how to fix this and I'm not sure if it needs a fix at all, but what happened just does not seem correct.

 

[Civitar]

@jekke: I agree with the culture problem, it's happened to me on occasion, but the stacked workers seemed right enough - imagine that a force of humans destroys a fort occupied by barbarians, kills all the barbarians and frees hundreds of imprisoned elves, returning them safely to their homes. The country that the elves came from, despite not liking the humans initially, would quite probably drastically change its attitude towards the humans for saving so many of its citizens.

 

[Pazyryk]

So the main complain on CL is really about the "slope" being poorly responsive to what you do now? I can make it much more responsive to how far you are from Approach CL. This is a double edged-sword, however. It's going to be a great boost to Pantheistic civ (which gets that Approach CL very high very quickly) but it's going to really drag for lower culture civs (who will take forever to get their ~5 or so policies). But maybe this is good?


Should we just dump the "historical" aspect of CL altogether?

Sometimes compromises are worse that either end of the spectrum. By backing off of "historical" effect, all I have left is a "delayed" effect. The first is at least interesting (if ultimately misguided). The second is just ... nothing. I thought that a system where the total history of your civilization matters would be fun and different. But with this the last set of changes I've essentially erased everything more that 100 turns ago. So now it is just delayed effect. Neither deep nor immediately satisfying.

So: what should it be? A system based on history? Or system based on current yield? No between.

It's still going to be an "asymptotic approach" system either way. That is, the Approach CL is calculated (from historical or current c/pop) and then you move toward that value each turn asymptotically. That still leaves some variables to fiddle around with in either system: how fast the approach; how slow the "bend-over" in the asymptotic approach.

 

[zoommooz11]

So the main complain on CL is really about the "slope" being poorly responsive to what you do now? I can make it much more responsive to how far you are from Approach CL. This is a double edged-sword, however. It's going to be a great boost to Pantheistic civ (which gets that Approach CL very high very quickly) but it's going to really drag for lower culture civs (who will take forever to get their ~5 or so policies). But maybe this is good?


Should we just dump the "historical" aspect of CL altogether?

Sometimes compromises are worse that either end of the spectrum. By backing off of "historical" effect, all I have left is a "delayed" effect. The first is at least interesting (if ultimately misguided). The second is just ... nothing. I thought that a system where the total history of your civilization matters would be fun and different. But with this the last set of changes I've essentially erased everything more that 100 turns ago. So now it is just delayed effect. Neither deep nor immediately satisfying.

So: what should it be? A system based on history? Or system based on current yield? No between.

It's still going to be an "asymptotic approach" system either way. That is, the Approach CL is calculated (from historical or current c/pop) and then you move toward that value each turn asymptotically. That still leaves some variables to fiddle around with in either system: how fast the approach; how slow the "bend-over" in the asymptotic approach.

So just to clarify,

Current system is the history based one ? (also, where is the rate set for this)

Change back to the more traditional (as it is in civ 5) model.

Before I put my two cents in, where can I find info about the current mechanic/thought rationale behind it?

 

[Piedead]

A problem I have with the historical culture system is seems somewhat all-or-nothing. High culture civs have more incentive to get more culture (from policy finishers). Low culture civs have little incentive to change, as the effects of the buildings will be much lower.

The current yield system would solve that problem and let empires play catch up, while the early investors would still have a higher culture due to the approach factor. Overall, it would decrease early game incentive but increase late game incentive for culture.

Some people would prefer one way, some would prefer the other. Other still would prefer it somewhere in the middle.

In my opinion, the current yield system would be more forgiving and probably better for the base game, but should be done by setting CL_RECENCY_BIAS to 1, so those who want it more historical can change it.

 

[iffi]

Should we just dump the "historical" aspect of CL altogether?

Opening policies is a major part of the fun in Civ games for me. So my personal problem with the 'history matters' system is that it forces me to build every building giving culture as soon as they are available. And of course I also have to open the techs giving Theater and such as soon as possible. With the base system I can at least pick my time when I start focusing on culture.

The secondary personal problem is that the numbers involved are hidden. I don't see the immediate effect an Opera house has, I just have to trust that the effort was worth it.
In my current game I went for culture quite heavily as usual, and the number that is displayed stayed the same all the game (at +0.05). At least it did not start dropping like it did in the previous version even if I felt I had focused on culture. I had twice as many policies than the best AI civ at late game, so I was successful in what I was aiming for, the static number displayed just made it feel ineffective. The max CL is rising of course, but it also is not giving me a concrete feeling of progress. I just have to get used to the system and trust that +0.05 per turn all game is good.

 

[BrokenSky]

This is just a suggestion but (please don't hit me) how about Historical culture for Sidhe and Current Culture for Man and Heldoflr? (I can't names. I'm sorry). Since post Ai pantheism civs are Sidhe and dominionism are man, this would work ok for AI balancing, while it also fits in with the idea of Sidhe being one thing from the get-go and finding it hard to change, while man is more adaptable ... type thing? I'm not sure if it would hurt the player too much though? Though it might not hurt them at all...

 

[Pazyryk]

@BrokenSky, Next thing, someone will ask for an Option. It's hard enough to keep track of one system.

To answer questions above, current system is "compromise". It's original "historical system" with a big "recency bias" added in. And the only documentation is here in this discussion (or in the mod code itself). Reason being that it is evolving fast and the manual doesn't get updated right away. And no, we're not going back to base Civ (exponential cost with huge city number penalty).

A problem now is that change/turn is really two steps away from current c/pop. First, there is the averaging of c/pop over time (to determine your Approach CL). Your change/turn is responding to the gap between Current CL and Approach CL. Bigger gap = faster rate (although not proportionately; there is a buffering effect). But the reason that change/turn doesn't change immediately is the averaging of c/pop over time. It takes at least some turns for Approach CL to start to change, which widens the gap, which then affects change/turn.

It's not entirely this way from initial planning. It sort of evolved. The only "core concept" here (that definitely won't change) is that civilizations have a Cultural Level that determines number of policies and other things (right now only diplomacy, but maybe someday city graphics and other stuff...).

I think I'm convinced anyway that the averaging of c/pop is a bad idea. The "recency bias" succeed in removing the (possibly interesting or not) history aspect but did not fix the specific problem that changing c/pop has no immediate effect on anything the player can see. So I think I'll jettison this concept entirely. Approach CL will be derived from current c/pop (no averaging). I'll change the UI so that the player sees actual c/pop, and the Approach CL that results. This is a simple equation:

ApproachCL = (c/pop) * CL_C_PER_POP_MULTIPLIER + CL_C_PER_POP_ADD

The two constants above are currently 6 and 5, respectively. So that means if you are generating 2c/pop then you are approaching CL = 17. This is the same as the current equation except that c/pop is now ave(c/pop) with the averaging being a biased average.

Actually, I lied above. There is also a factor in there (added in recent patch) to prevent gaming the system by holding pop at 1. It is really:

ApproachCL = (c + 10) / (pop + 10) * CL_C_PER_POP_MULTIPLIER + CL_C_PER_POP_ADD

The +10 factor only matters when pop is very low (preventing a divide by small number situation). As c and pop get larger the fraction approaches c/pop.


Changing the system may result in new possibilities for gaming the system. The one I didn't want is the ability to ignore culture entirely and then "rush culture" late in game when you have massive production to do so. But, maybe that's not really a problem. Doing this would move Approach CL up and you would see change/turn respond to that. But it will still take turns for CL to go up. And you didn't benefit from policies early, which maybe is punishment enough.


Note: there is a whole entirely separate issue of whether the total number of policies earned (by turn 100, 200, or "ceiling" level.) is appropriate for the amount of culture generated. That's up for debate too but it should not be confused with the issues above. I think what I'll do is keep number as is while removing averaging of c/pop effect (for 7f), but then adjust up with v8 when we have Enabled Policies.

 

[jekke]

@jekke: I agree with the culture problem, it's happened to me on occasion, but the stacked workers seemed right enough - imagine that a force of humans destroys a fort occupied by barbarians, kills all the barbarians and frees hundreds of imprisoned elves, returning them safely to their homes. The country that the elves came from, despite not liking the humans initially, would quite probably drastically change its attitude towards the humans for saving so many of its citizens.

I see you point. However, what I'm not sure is that liberating eight workers at once has to be 8 times more efficient than liberating a single one. Imagine some terrorists capture a number of people from country A nowadays and a country B liberates them. Of course this will help the relations between A and B, but does it really matter if it were 500 captives or 5000?

 

[Pazyryk]

7f just released, which removes "history aspect" for approach CL as discussed 2 posts up. It should work fine with a saved game (you might see Approach CL change drastically, but that's the point). Give it a try.

One funny thing you will see with new system is that when you pop an early culture goody (which now gives 100c btw), you will see Approach CL jump up to something like 66. But it doesn't matter. Your change/turn jumps to +0.25 for that turn. Next turn everything is settled back to normal.

I see the issue with liberating workers. I'm not really sure that the dll awards this diplo bonus in a linear way anyway. But the other issue is: What the heck is a player going to do with 8 workers? Maybe any captured workers in excess of 2 (at a given encampment for a given civ) should just be deleted.

 

[jekke]

I've got a question regarding the living terrain again. Assume I'm a theism follower and my pantheistic neighbour is spreading forests with a druid. Now, I'm trying to stop them from doing this because, say, they're close to the victory.

The obvious choice is, of course, to conquer them. This is not always possible, but instead clear, straightforward, and efficient. That's one way.

Now what if I can't (or don't want) to attack them? I can build a ton of workers and tell them to clear every forest in my lands (and around); problem is, the forest regenerates, and if it had a strength of 35 (nothing unusual), I won't clear it away in reasonable time.

In my recent game I noticed that if I build a sawmill on top of the forest tile, it stops showing the living terrain strength. Does it mean the forest does not spread from this tile any more? What if I chop it after building a sawmill, does it help?

Also, I noticed the forest appears on my farms and orchards, but if for the farms the tooltip simply says smth like "forest, grassland, farm", for orchards the LT persists: "jungles(6), plain, bananas".

Another thing is that a foreign druid can do Bloom and Ea Blessing and everything in my lands and I can't stop it. It looks a bit like spreading a religion in base Civ, with the only difference that I can't close borders (as for missionaries), can't block the way with units (as for prophets) and can't even tell the other player to stop doing this. So, what is the right answer? War?

Edit: An interesting choice would be making a new building option (something like fort maybe) for workers, which prevents LT to regenerate. The idea is like this: I clear jungles from a certain tile and, say, put salt into the soil so that the latter is not fertile any more. Effectively it turns the tile into a desert (I know graphics won't allow it etc); could be made as a improvement. This could have some bad consequences (like spoiling the Ea etc) with pantheistic civilisations, but that's another question. Maybe a player must have salt in order to be able to do this, or make it cost money. Alternatively, this could be one of the magic options; an evil witch casts a curse on LT on that tile.

 

[Civitar]

Well, that's sort of what Blight does with regards to permanently blocking Living Terrain I believe... and undead, demons, and Armageddon are pretty bad consequences if you ask me.

 

[jekke]

Civitar, can you choose which tile to cast blight on? I thought it's randomly chosen...

 

[Civitar]

Only if cast from a tower, otherwise it's cast on the tile that the mage is on. I once blighted a city-state's entire territory, including their famous copper mines and gold mines... they fell easily soon afterwards. And I never noticed forest growing back on those blighted hills.

 

[Calavente]

but jekke raises a nice question:
how do a non-fallen civ opposes the living terrain victory without conquering the offender ?

building improvements on forest ?
causing great fires ?
creating deserts ?

 

[Doopliss]

On one hand, you don't really need to be able to stop someone getting One with Nature non-militarily. You can't stop any other victory without slapping the civ in question around, except in very unusual Domination cases. On the other hand, if it is indeed "this forest is strength 35, therefore it will regenerate over 15 times at rather high speed" that's definitely a problem even aside from One with Nature. One option might be for chopping to cut living terrain much more (or remove it entirely), with living terrain strength instead affecting how long it takes the chop to complete. This would make living terrain more annoying short-term, and you still need to worry about it spreading back if there are other forests about, while still allowing a massive horde of workers to clear a swathe around their civ. It definitely seems like, if someone's training up a massive horde of clear-cutters, the onus should be on the One with Nature player to deal with them.

Another (basically unrelated) idea would be to let the game's "Wild" units (animals, tree-ents, werewolves and Major Spirits) passively increase Living Terrain strength a little on any Living Terrain tile they're on. This wouldn't entirely solve the "only Druids matter" aspect of One with Nature, but it would make forest-spreading a bit more tangible and have some nice flavour in monster-filled forests growing where non-pantheists fear to tread.

 

[Calavente]

and give targets for non-pantheists wanting to reduce the wilderness of their forests

 

[Pazyryk]

Putting an improvement on living terrain (ie, sawmill) stops it from spreading. It's strength still counts toward One with Nature victory but only at 1/3 value. Chopping/slash-burning/removing reduces strength by 1 each time, and the feature doesn't count while removed, so that is also suppressing that victory condition. Keep in mind that all Living Terrain starts with strength 0-3, so even the strongest starting terrain gets knocked down to 2, meaning only a 2% chance per turn (on standard map size/speed) of self-regenerating. So maybe it regenerates in 50 turns...but chop again and it is strength 1...so regenerates after 100 turns...but chop once more and it is gone forever.

One with Nature has both a "world-wide coverage" and an "average strength" criteria. It varies with map and number pantheistic players but I've been seeing those values at something like 65% and 6, respectively. (The coverage only counts plots that could have forest/jungle/marsh, so not for example desert or mountain or a plot with a NW feature.)

So if you have a lot of territory, then you probably can suppress this victory by suppressing Living Terrain on your own territory. Yes, they can raise average strength on their own land, but the coverage criteria means that they probably need to target your uncovered land (if you have enough of it), which you can fight against with workers/slaves.

Blight and Breach spells, btw, eliminate all Living Terrain strength when they succeed in causing blight/breach. Even when they "fail" (because caster mod < target plot strength) they still reduce plot strength by caster mod. So this is a direct assault against One with Nature victory criteria.

---------------------------------------------

I'm fairly happy with the "fight against" One with Nature VC aspect of the game. However, I'm not satisfied with the actual approach to the VC itself. The problem now is that it is almost all based on one subclass of GP and only two spells. That and finishing the Pantheism policy branch, but I take that as a given. Ideas are welcome.

Yes, perhaps animals could be more integrated into the system somehow. That could work a dozen different ways: increased animal spawning; animals contributing to LT strength; LT strength contributing to animal strength; etc...

On Living Terrain itself, my plan over the long term is to expand the concept to other "terrain types" like Desert, Arctic, Open Plains, Deep Ocean and others. No, most of these types won't ever spread. Instead, each would have it's own characteristic behavior that would get stronger. Maybe desert would become more hazardous to cross. So, for example, a pantheistic player might be more into Cult of Epona (rather than Cult of Leaves) so the Living Terrain they are most focused on (at least in their homeland) is Open Plains. Not sure if it would try to overcome neighboring forest, but it would at least resist being covered by it. Obviously, with Deep Ocean the coverage criteria would have to be changed in some way. But this would allow Cult of Aegir civ to do something with the seas. With this system, each of the Cults would contribute by helping you strengthen a certain terrain type.

 

[BrokenSky]

Maybe? Deserts would surely become less habitable as everything in them died. Ocean would of course have more fish and stuff and be able to support more large creatures so more terrain strengths = more monsters. I think maybe one of the end features is spawning dragons where probability of spawn is very low, even at large strengths? Maybe chance/turn = if (strength > 100) strength - 100, else 0. And when I say Dragons I mean really powerful dudes which start young and get more powerful with age until the ancient dragons (age > 100 turns?) are basicly characters. These are some where between NPC god type things (and diplomancable civs of 1 unit which can maybe be allied with?) and animals? I dunno... I think there's room for a cool idea here. Basicly the point is that the dragon is a force of nature and a character... type thing?

Sorry this went off topic a bit. Maybe Living terrain also gets a percentage chance of units on it getting attacked by local animals approximately equal to (strength/2)% per turn? So strong areas can only be explored with an armoured escort and even then maybe dangerous? I'm thinking a dark-forest type thing, where the danger is nature... Obviously roads reduce the risk and it's only done if you end turn there? Or something?