Acken's Minimalistic Balance for singleplayer (and AI improvements)

[chumchu]

General impressions of some playtests with v. 3.

Scale back the strength of Swordsmen, Longswords and Musketmen by 1. [They are slightly too dominant in their era, with no good counters except other of the same unit]

I suggest you make make sea tiles worthwhile to work, because coastal and island cities are weak with the nerfed trade routes.

My suggestion for sea tiles:
Workboats give 1 food and 1 production
Ligthouse gives 1 food on all sea tiles and 1 food on fish
Harbor gives 1 gold on all sea tiles, city connection, 50% trade route range
Seaport gives 1 production on all sea tiles and 15% naval unit production
Exploration finisher gives 1 more gold on sea tiles.

Work boats, harbors and sea ports will be more important and lighthouse less so; sea resources will be slightly weaker but the sea tiles will be decent with 2/1/1(2).

I do not agree with the placement of railroad as it threatens the balance of the tech tree: science and culture in the top, production and units at the bottom. Railroads on the beeline to plastics make it extremely tempting. At the very least move the trade route to combustion or move rail roads to steam power.

Ideas for changes to civilisations:

Nerfs

Poland: Solidarity is now "Social policy cost -20%" [brutal nerf, but they were insane before. ]

Korea: Korea's unique ability is now only +2 science for specialists and great person tile improvements. [The extra bonus for building thins in the capital was over the top]

Babylon: Get a scientist at mathematics instead of writing. [comes significantly later, at the right historical tech. Some interesting trade-offs as to how fast the beeline should be]

Rome: Either the above change to all swords or just - 1 strength to the Legion.

Arabia and Mongolia: 16/19 for Camels and 14/15 for Keshiks. [need a nerf to their uniques to bring them in line with crossbows,]

Buffs
France: Double theming bonus everywhere and not just the capitol. [not as RNG-dependant on a good production capitol and a larger bonus overall]

Iroquois: Either apply road and production bonus to jungle as well or give longhouse 10% production like ordinary workshops. [actually makes longhouse an improvement over workshops]

Japan: Samurai have Blitz instead of Shock. [works better with their unique ability, actually makes them scary]
Netherlands: NQ mod gives them a wetlands bias. Copy and paste that.

Zulu: Make Impi a replacement for longswordsmen with 20 strength, no iron requirement. [Gives them a longer window as the beeline to steel is faster and they are stronger. Fits better historically as they were a mobile, offensive, anti-infantry unit with their, throwing spears, 2 foot stabbing spears and clubs. They were not a close formation anti-cav unit.]

Unsure
The Maya should probably be nerfed but I can not think of a way to do it that does not also make them less fun.

Persia no longer gets 10% combat bonus during golden ages. [They are top tier to me but many do not share that view]

Spain gets 300 gold for finding wonders first. [Slight reduction of RNG]

The danes are sufficiently buffed IMO, even if the rest is meh their berserkers are amazing now. Feels a bit like Mongolia of the coast.

Byzantium and Carthage are mixed bags. They have much more useful unique horsemen now but still suffers from simultaneously having a unique unit at sailing and a weak unique ability. Byzantium can at least benefit from the new piety while harbors are still very meh buildings. Carthage are also hit hard by the nerf to naval trade routes. If you improve harbors that might work. I'm inclined to buff them more but I have no ideas that does not involve a new unit.

Portugal, Morocco and India have been hit by the relative nerf to tradition and the difficulty of playing peaceful early. (I have tried to get early trade routes to my neighbors in a number of games but most often lose them to double DoWs.) They might need a buff.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

General impressions of some playtests with v. 3.

Scale back the strength of Swordsmen, Longswords and Musketmen by 1. [They are slightly too dominant in their era, with no good counters except other of the same unit]

I suggest you make make sea tiles worthwhile to work, because coastal and island cities are weak with the nerfed trade routes.

My suggestion for sea tiles:
Workboats give 1 food and 1 production
Ligthouse gives 1 food on all sea tiles and 1 food on fish
Harbor gives 1 gold on all sea tiles, city connection, 50% trade route range
Seaport gives 1 production on all sea tiles and 15% naval unit production
Exploration finisher gives 1 more gold on sea tiles.

Work boats, harbors and sea ports will be more important and lighthouse less so; sea resources will be slightly weaker but the sea tiles will be decent with 2/1/1(2).

I roughly second all of these suggestions, especially with regard to the sea. Played Japan a dozen or so times and while sea-resource-towns are awesome, you lose a lot of turns early and in Acken-land, it's all about the Early. I don't know about knocking a point off of Longswords/Muskets but Swordsmen, maybe. I do like how important the iron scramble is, though, and then if you knock a point off of them, do you have to do the same for horse? Speaking of, that is a counter-example re needing the same unit.)

Ideas for changes to civilisations:

Nerfs

Poland: Solidarity is now "Social policy cost -20%" [brutal nerf, but they were insane before. ]

...

Japan: Samurai have Blitz instead of Shock. [works better with their unique ability, actually makes them scary]
Netherlands: NQ mod gives them a wetlands bias. Copy and paste that.

Re Poland, now that one gets more SPs I think they're more balanced than before.

Re Japan, the fishing-boats-culture bit is cute but takes forever to get going and Samurai building them for free is a bit of a joke given when you get them. It'd be cool if Japan somehow started with Sailing and/or got cheaper fishing boats, but I'm sure at least the former is breakable in some way. (Any way to make fishing boats buildable without having Sailing first? Still need sailing for Optics so it'd still be prioritized.)

 

[Legen]

There are lots of mods trying to rebalance Japan, not counting those that completely rework it under some different leader. You could start arguing what each one did right or fell short. From a quick search:

- "Snakesea's Civilization Balance": makes the samurai as strong as the musketman and substitutes Shock I for "50% culture on kill". Also, adds a 3º unique for each civ, Japan's one being a Barracks replacement (Dojo) that adds +2 and an additional +15xp for land units.

- "Japan: Chained Country": substitutes the culture from fishing boats/atolls for a 50% chance to kill foreigh prophets and missionaries if no Open Borders was signed for that civ. Also, removes the Zero and for an Amphiteather replacement (Dojo), which generates 3, up from 1, and adds +20xp for Melee units.

- "Enhanced Japan": adds +2 to the Samurai and, instead of the Zero, has the Dojo as a Barracks replacement, giving +40xp to land units only and +2.

- "Krajzen's Buffs Collection": replaces the Samurai's Shock I for Blitz and increases its production cost by 15%.

- "Rising Sun: Civilizations of Old Japan": Oda Nobunaga stays the closest from the unmodded Japan, adds +3 to the Samurai and substitutes the Zero for the Kajiya, a Forge replacement that doesn't require Iron near the city and provides 2 Iron, but doesn't add 1 to iron tiles anymore.

- "Communitas": Samurai gains +2 and Blizt, but loses Shock I and Great General II. Substitutes the Zero for the Dojo, a Barracks replacement that adds +1xp to units inside the city and +4 to Iron and Horse tiles.

It's not the only civ that gets some rebalancement, but is likely one of the most modded out there.

And I remember that one mod made Korea gain culture from specialists, instead of science. I quite laughed when I first saw, because it felt like a kick in their nuts.

 

[Chum]

I feel like food Caravans have been nerfed beyond being usable.

I feel this as well, after multiple playthroughs. If you don't have a coastal cap, it's almost pointless to send them. I still do because I have so many trade routes, but when you're looking at the trade screen and seeing 4 food vs sometimes gold in the teens from a trade route, it's harder and harder to justify it.

 

[chumchu]

I like the nerf to caravans. 1)They are no longer auto builds, they give slightly less than a watermill but are more flexible which seems balanced to me. I see them as more of a flexibility thing than a raw power thing in early game which seems fine. They become very good late game though. 2) The external/internal balance seems about right. The external gives more, but depends on your diplomacy, the internal gives less but are safer. Maybe the boost from exploration and patronage can be decreased a bit or changed.

I still think that there is too much gold floating around. I repeat my suggestion of removing gold from the all the +food luxuries and not just salt (citrus, cocoa, whales, crabs).

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I still think that there is too much gold floating around. I repeat my suggestion of removing gold from the all the +food luxuries and not just salt (citrus, cocoa, whales, crabs).

On Immortal at least I often have gold issues, so I definitely don't vote for this. Those 15-20 unit armies are damned expensive to maintain! Plus, the jerk AI is almost never giving 8gpt for excess luxes.

 

[Phukit]

On Immortal at least I often have gold issues, so I definitely don't vote for this. Those 15-20 unit armies are damned expensive to maintain! Plus, the jerk AI is almost never giving 8gpt for excess luxes.

Yup,current game i have every green modifier you can have ,not one red mod and a DoF with Egypt.....rameses will pay me 2 gpt for my salt.......he also wants 1gpt 4 luxes and 2 iron for his sugar...WTH!!!

 

[Phukit]

On a side not i think the AIs willingness to take over city states is getting a bit out of control, T175 in my current game and yet again there are maybe 5 CS left in the game.

Lets be honest,the AI does not suffer the same penalties for conquering a CS that a human player does.Im sure it looks like it does on paper but the reality of its execution is questionable at best.

It also makes the patronage tree much less attractive......why would i invest 6 policies into a tree if there are only going to be a 1/3 of the CS left by mid game?

 

[Phukit]

I still think that there is too much gold floating around. I repeat my suggestion of removing gold from the all the +food luxuries and not just salt (citrus, cocoa, whales, crabs).

I would simply like to see plantations add 1h 1g instead of 2g upon improvement.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

It also makes the patronage tree much less attractive......why would i invest 6 policies into a tree if there are only going to be a 1/3 of the CS left by mid game?

So true! On the plus side it means you can't turtle -- I know that is a thing Acken really wanted to prevent. I played a Monte Raging Barbs game yesterday and was surrounded by CS two deep on two sides, with a coast and an underpowered AI on the other two. I decided to just expand fast and beeline Education, see if it worked (while farming barbs for culture, of course).

First: Yeah, it worked short term, but couldn't support 5 cities with just 5 luxes, happiness-wise.

Second: It took longer than normal, but by turn 110 or so the AIs started rolling and crushed CS after CS, and I ended up with a bunch of Assyrians at my door ... and I was without my usual army of Swordsmen.

(An aside: It was a little weird, for supposedly getting +15% food from the Floating Gardens, I had a tough time getting my cap big. Yeah, I went Liberty, but still.)

Anyway -- on a Pangea map, the CS will fall sooner or later on the harder difficulty levels, which means Patronage/Siam are pretty much boned.

An idea -- take a look at the Reform and Rule Patronage policy, which is much more centered on taking over city-states than just playing nice with them. You might get some good ideas for a Patronage revamp.

 

[Phukit]

General impressions of some playtests with v. 3.

Scale back the strength of Swordsmen, Longswords and Musketmen by 1. [They are slightly too dominant in their era, with no good counters except other of the same unit]

I think this is a fine compromise.

I suggest you make make sea tiles worthwhile to work, because coastal and island cities are weak with the nerfed trade routes.

My suggestion for sea tiles:
Workboats give 1 food and 1 production
Ligthouse gives 1 food on all sea tiles and 1 food on fish
Harbor gives 1 gold on all sea tiles, city connection, 50% trade route range
Seaport gives 1 production on all sea tiles and 15% naval unit production
Exploration finisher gives 1 more gold on sea tiles.

Work boats, harbors and sea ports will be more important and lighthouse less so; sea resources will be slightly weaker but the sea tiles will be decent with 2/1/1(2).

Im ok with the way work boats are atm,though i agree LH should add 1f to all sea tiles,harbours and seaports are beyond useless in the mod as it stands and need some love agreed.

Ideas for changes to civilisations:

Nerfs

Poland: Solidarity is now "Social policy cost -20%" [brutal nerf, but they were insane before. ]

This imo is overkill,solidarity is really the only decent thing about Poland,Their UB in underwhelming espescially if you have but a few pastures with high horse counts,their UU is really nothing special.If this were to happen i think the both the UB and UU would need a slight buff.

Babylon: Get a scientist at mathematics instead of writing. [comes significantly later, at the right historical tech. Some interesting trade-offs as to how fast the beeline should be]

But is it too late? up for debate, if this change is made it would be nice to see walls of babylon add +1 culture.

Arabia and Mongolia: 16/19 for Camels and 14/15 for Keshiks. [need a nerf to their uniques to bring them in line with crossbows,]

I dont think we should be trying to bring UUs in line with base units,they should be brought in line with other comparable UUs or other UUs of the same era.

Buffs
France: Double theming bonus everywhere and not just the capitol. [not as RNG-dependant on a good production capitol and a larger bonus overall]

just make the french a puppet state of the germans.

Iroquois: Either apply road and production bonus to jungle as well or give longhouse 10% production like ordinary workshops. [actually makes longhouse an improvement over workshops]

this should be the case anyways,it may sound like OP production but it comes at the expense of growth and chops.

Japan: Samurai have Blitz instead of Shock. [works better with their unique ability, actually makes them scary]
Netherlands: NQ mod gives them a wetlands bias. Copy and paste that.

Japans UA needs more love than the samurai though that does make for an interesting change.replace the ability to make fishing boats with the ability to build farms.
also prefer the dojo +2 culture or +1 culture +1 science over the current UA which is grossly situational.

Zulu: Make Impi a replacement for longswordsmen with 20 strength, no iron requirement. [Gives them a longer window as the beeline to steel is faster and they are stronger. Fits better historically as they were a mobile, offensive, anti-infantry unit with their, throwing spears, 2 foot stabbing spears and clubs. They were not a close formation anti-cav unit.]

as long as they dont upgrade until rifling im fine. just give Impies 3 movement and remove it from the Ikanda

Unsure

Portugal, Morocco and India have been hit by the relative nerf to tradition and the difficulty of playing peaceful early. (I have tried to get early trade routes to my neighbors in a number of games but most often lose them to double DoWs.) They might need a buff.

[/QUOTE]

i am of the opinion that atm Liberty is far superior to tradition as far as openings go,it is a lot more flexible and tradition just doesnt lend itself to helping you survive the early game. Getting expos out faster and the extra early production from liberty have for me at least made it the go to opening in this mod.

 

[Acken]

Oh my many suggestions on that page.

Regarding CS and patronage it's a bit difficult to fix. I don't want an easy alliance with 16CS, the warmonger AI needs to eat them because of 1UPT (otherwise it won't attack behind a CS) and it's difficult to explain to it easily which CS are fair game and which aren't based on relative positions. On the other hand I want some CS to still be available.

 

[Phukit]

Oh my many suggestions on that page.

Regarding CS and patronage it's a bit difficult to fix. I don't want an easy alliance with 16CS, the warmonger AI needs to eat them because of 1UPT (otherwise it won't attack behind a CS) and it's difficult to explain to it easily which CS are fair game and which aren't based on relative positions. On the other hand I want some CS to still be available.

Im not looking for an easy alliance with 16 CS,But i would like to see more than 4-5 CS left to compete for at t150 in most of my games.And its not just the warmonger Civs....its basically all of them except inda and brazil in my experience.the AI just views CS as an easy expo.And how is it that the AI can conquer multiple CS yet still have CS friends and allies? As it stands the AI have virtually everything to gain and nothing to lose by conquering CS, there needs to be some risk/reward here.

I think it would be nice if any DoW against a CS was also a DoW against any civ that has pledged to protect it.

 

[Legen]

Oh my many suggestions on that page.

Regarding CS and patronage it's a bit difficult to fix. I don't want an easy alliance with 16CS, the warmonger AI needs to eat them because of 1UPT (otherwise it won't attack behind a CS) and it's difficult to explain to it easily which CS are fair game and which aren't based on relative positions. On the other hand I want some CS to still be available.

Honestly, I just wish the City States would all be at a permanent war against those AI conquering them, with a low patience threshold; they're too passive right now. Plus, quests to denounce the AI warmonger and a buff to gifting units quest. 10 for one unit arriving 3 tunrs later is too little for the cost we pay in producing a unit, and the help the CS gets is negligible.

Maybe the CS could somehow gain, say, 3 units for each we gift them? We can only provide one per 3 turns anyway if the unit isn't already in the CS border. We could say that our unit was training some of their recruits...

Abuot Japan, instead of replacing their culture UA completely, why not just changing the "+2 per atoll" part to "+2 per Barracks"? Pretty much a Dojo implementation and very synergetic with the revamped Honor Tree.

And the bonus xp could just be a buff to the UUs instead. Almost every mod either buffs the Samurai and/or replaces the Zero because of how little difference they make compared to the units they replace. In fact, unlike units like the Longbowmen and the Hussar, they don't change how you use them in the battlefield.

PS: Blitz isn't the only one that works well with Bushido, Charge (+33% vs wounded units) also do because of how much discrepance it creates between the japanese unit and someone's else unit as they get wounded.

 

[Acken]

Trying to work on the unit gift to help alleviate CS defense issues sounds like a reasonable solution. 1 for 3 sounds too much but maybe an instant gift and a better influence boost in gifting would help (especially in the CS with the gift quest).

 

[chumchu]

@ Phukit
Poland: I rate their unique building as above average as pastures are very common and become really good tiles with stables. I build stables in cities with 3 such resources and the polish stables are roughly twice as good: they cost 17% less, give gold in addition to hammers and give xp in addition to production boost. The same with their unique unit now that Lancers have been buffed. A lancer with + 3 strength, +1 move, shock, and heavy charge [plus 15 xp from the stables] will demolish anything else in the era and be evenly matched to Rifles with their extra mobility and promotions.

Have you tried massed cavalry attacks with a special unit in the mod? I tried with companion cavalry on deity. They can do brutal surprise attacks and they eat cities once you break through the enemy's defenses [which they are quite good at]. I think that winged hussars are even more dominant in their era than companions [No counters from spears and pikes]

With the nerf to solidarity they are an above average civ, but they have to leverage their other uniques and not just rely on their free policy tree.

Camels and Keshik: The closest comparable unit are crossbows and they are way better than those. They were the two best unique units in the game before the mod, and now one of their counters, x-bow, have been nerfed.

Japan: I see Japan as one of the big benificaries of the mod, melée units are way better, honor has been improved, and sacrificing units is often needed to break through defensive position, all of which make samurais and bushido better. They are a war civ with no relevant economy bonus. Among those they are middling. I just think that they could use a more interesting unique unit to have an Era where they are particularly good at war. I would like to avoid giving out more culture on non-culture buildings, Dojo could be an armory that gives 15 extra xp.

 

[chumchu]

A Civilisation that needs a buff more than Japan is the Ottomans. Their unique ability is potentially good but situational as it depends on the map and naval warfare starts in earnest at navigation, when you get privateers. Coastal start bias is tundra tier with the nerfed trade routes. Sipahi is a very slight upgrade to lancers. Only the Janissaries are good and they come to late to carry the entire civ.

My suggestion is to copy NQ mod and make their UA: "Ottoman Tolerance: Each city gets +1 Happiness for each Religion in that city with at least 1 Follower."
You could either buff the Sipahi by making them cheaper or giving them a flanking bonus [both fit historically] or replace them with a unique privateer to cover their lost UA:

Corsair: Availiable at astronomy, gold from kills.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

For what it's worth, after going about 1 for 20 on Pangea, I now am *really* going to move down from Immortal . (Though I haven't tried one of the super-powered Civs yet, hmmm ...)

AI on the other side of the world takes everything over = You Lose.
You can't figure out a way to support 7-8 good cities by turn 150 = You Lose.

Merh! Even on a map where I *can* turtle it's not a given that I can get to the 700+ bpt that the AI is often easily getting (often more than one of them, and often a lot more bpt than that) by turn 200. One thing I haven't done is try to go all the way through Commerce. My one victory on Pangea was with Isabella and I managed to convert half the continent to my religion, which, combined with Mosques/Pagodas everywhere, managed to handle the inevitable happiness problems that you'd even get in the base game with 5+ cities. But a typical Freedom/Honor build, for instance, just doesn't give the happiness you need to happily support 7 or 8 big cities.

(And in the base game, you could often have CS allies help alleviate that problem for you -- no more!)

Argh, I say. Argh!

 

[Acken]

I strongly suggest you get a second happiness source from a second tree to help yes.

All trees beside Aesthetics give a source of happiness which is often 1 per city and available in 3 policies. The exception is Commerce which gives a lot more but requires a bigger investment in the tree.

One thing I'm also contemplating to help CS interest is to make their luxuries more random in the map generator. As you guys know CS often have a lot of the same ressources.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I strongly suggest you get a second happiness source from a second tree to help yes.

All trees beside Aesthetics give a source of happiness which is often 1 per city and available in 3 policies. The exception is Commerce which gives a lot more but requires a bigger investment in the tree.

One thing I'm also contemplating to help CS interest is to make their luxuries more random in the map generator. As you guys know CS often have a lot of the same ressources.

One per city just ain't going to do it .