Another "how to improve the weak SP's" Thread

[Barghaest]

so when will you make the actual mod?

Since I'm back to Civ V (took a break to play DCUO with my friends) I'll probably try to hammer it together by mid-late Jan. Right now I'm in the middle of my Ottoman game and after I finish it I'll revalidate my files and throw together a beta with ModBuddy. I'll probably do a test run to make sure it's working then see about uploading it.

Might be a bit for me to finish this game... my war with Carthage is slow going (since I don't like to lose units I'm very conservative on offense and take quite a long time to capture a city due to rotating out units to heal) and has been going on since late Renaissance (approaching turn 1000 and about to get my first tech in second row of Industrial - STEAM POWER, BABY! Fear my level 10 Ironclads, Dido! - and all the AIs are either tied with me or 1-2 behind).

The AI has done an exceptional job keeping pace on King difficulty. Matter of fact I was behind in tech quite a ways through Medieval but made excellent use of my first spy to catch up to the tech leader - Carthage. The last synopsis showed myself and the #1-3 empires (I was #4 ) having 42 techs while everyone else had 41 - except Babylon who'd be ravaged by Austria and was down to 3 cities, none their original capital and only had 39.

Now that I'm on a roll against Carthage with my highly experienced Frigates/Privateers, I don't plan to let up until she's been eliminated - either by me or by the other AI when they stop fearing her military strength and smell blood (surprisingly despite the fact she loses 3-4 units a turn while I might lose 1 or 2 - usually cannon fodder/bait I captured or fresh recruits intended as meat shields - she's STILL the #1 Pointy Stick Holder... but the margin between us has dwindled from 100k to 10k over the years yet I still cannot bribe/convince anyone to join me in a war against her since they're busy squabbling amongst themselves - although seeing the various other empires clash on the high seas between my island settlements or off the coast of my core cities is quite entertaining...)

 

[zukenft]

eh...actually I was asking the OP, but any new modder is good. more options to choose from.

 

[The Keeper]

Colonialism: You can now build the colonist unit (requires gunpowder) a cheap gunpowder unit which replaces the settler but is weaker than the Musketman. Can build cities. Receive a free colonist and a free Caravel at your capital (or nearest coastal city). Cities settled on new landmasses gain +1 population, +1 happiness, + 5 defense and +50HP (requires Maritime Infrastructure).

I like this idea. Something like this would encourage mid-late game settling. With the +x population, it stacks with the Order policy of new cities start with population 3. Having a new city start with extra pop with the other bonuses (+, +, etc) makes late game settling a real option.

 

[GhostSalsa]

As for Honor, I've never liked the +50% earned XP bonus it gives...

!!!don't like it? D: It's the best warfare policy in the game!

 

[GhostSalsa]

I'm not sure why extra starter population is supposed to be attractive for new cities - by the late game food tiles are so high-yield that a new city already grows to size 3 instantly if it's near improvements. And those first 3 citizens are not even a lot of apples... an instant aqueduct would quickly earn more...

 

[GhostSalsa]

A somewhat extreme but fun fix for these trees is for post-Industrial wonders to be tied to the tech and to World-Congress Era. That way Rationalism isn't a passport to first dibs on Broadway and Eiffel, and science-focus doesn't "poach" all the victory conditions these other trees are meant to help with. The player is free to take Aesthetics or Exploration and let AI Korea hit Modern first.

A civ could still get first dibs on these wonders if they are 40 turns ahead of the pack - unlocking World Congress eras before anyone else is teched-up yet - but not if they are only 20. It would really sync well with how almost all of my Immortal games have gone, at least - in terms of how many civs reach certain eras at a time / how much tech overlap and competition there would be. Maybe less ideal on lower levels.

This would also increase the value of sharing beakers with RAs and trade routes and the devs seem to have a fixation on that. They need to tone down warmonger hate so I don't have to play "nice" just to get RAs every time.

 

[GhostSalsa]

For Piety I would suggest that Reformation includes some minor immediate bonus, but actually choosing a Reformation belief is delayed until Printing Press. This doesn't "beef up" the tree at all it just reduces the race-for-scraps aspect of it, lowers risk, and also wow makes a lot more sense historically.

Somewhere in Piety I would like a trade-route-spread buff policy like Arabia's UA just because that really adds much-needed value to some of the lesser Founding Beliefs (World Church or whatever the culture one is).

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

For Piety I would suggest that Reformation includes some minor immediate bonus, but actually choosing a Reformation belief is delayed until Printing Press. This doesn't "beef up" the tree at all it just reduces the race-for-scraps aspect of it, lowers risk, and also wow makes a lot more sense historically.

Somewhere in Piety I would like a trade-route-spread buff policy like Arabia's UA just because that really adds much-needed value to some of the lesser Founding Beliefs (World Church or whatever the culture one is).

Most of the reformation beliefs suck though.
Glory of god is good, Jesuit education is good, and sacred sites is good. Not surprisingly, the AI always takes JE and SS, and far earlier than a human possibly can.

Underground sect sucks, because by the time you have an appreciable number of spies, the world is almost completely converted to one religion. The 6 pressure from a spy is negligible compared to the 80 or so every city is getting from neighboring cities by this time.

Unity of the prophets is not so bad, but not very good

Charitable missions is ok, but still not as good as the three good ones

Evangelism is only useful to the AI who can somehow make missionaries constantly with like 5 faith per turn. If faith costs didn't scale with eras, this might be a good belief. For a human, it's more cost effective to buy like 3 prophets and blast the largest cities in the world to passively flip the rest of the world.

Heathen conversion is decent, but hard to get early enough for it to matter to a human player. Adding the +1 or so culture to shrines and temples in organized religion would help make this better.

Religious ferver has too large a conversion coefficient, and holy warriors already does the same thing better

 

[GhostSalsa]

Most of the reformation beliefs suck though.
Glory of god is good, Jesuit education is good, and sacred sites is good. Not surprisingly, the AI always takes JE and SS, and far earlier than a human possibly can.

They do suck, but religion overall really sucks in BNW because the AI is absurdly zealous right now. Like Evangelism paired with the Missionary Zeal belief is incredible, you can just flip City States at will which makes those quests a lot easier. But the AI will waltz right back in with a Great Prophet two turns later, and then the other AI will do the same, back and forth. In G&K the spread was king and there wasn't a lot of room for flipping - Evangelism would be a a lot more beneficial in that environment.

More to the point a Printing Press unlock for Reformation would reward using Piety but not ignoring your infrastructure. The AI selects Piety without really benefiting from it most of the time so this sifts out the annoying losers so they don't take choice beliefs they can't even leverage.

 

[Barghaest]

!!!don't like it? D: It's the best warfare policy in the game!

Part of the reason I dislike it. It's a bit OP early on - and was an early "must have" in Vanilla - and later in the game (when my veteran units pretty much have all the promos anyway) it's rather useless. I'd prefer a more balanced one, which is why I did the changes I did.

 

[Ninakoru]

Regarding the +1 gold per liberty city, someone recently released a balance patch that removed the maintenance cost of monuments and shrines. I think that is perhaps a good buff to the non-tradition trees and it tones down legalism a bit which is crazily powerful right now. I think Liberty, Honor and Piety all deserve to get a little help in early gold income and a removal of maintenance costs for monuments and shrines is a perfect way to do this.

Yup, I think is one of the things that are broken on early game right now: the gold problem, once you get road connections and 3 caravans you can go with it, but of non-tradition starts you are pretty much tied to minimal units yo get your gold out of the red numbers (not talking about isolated starts in whitch you are severely limited by gold...). I did that change of no maintenance on the cheapest buildings and things go smoother and makes some sense.

Piety doesn't really need a buff if you know how to use it. The reason it grants neither culture or happiness is two-fold: 1) There are plenty of pantheon/religion beliefs that grant them and 2) You don't have to save up for the GP like people doing other SPs and can freely buy missionaries/buildings with faith and get your Enhancer belief by completing the tree. I did a Piety opener in my current game with Ottomans (also got Stonehenge) and had no culture issues because of the beliefs I selected.

That's a bit supid IMO. You just can get all the buffs from a religion plus the passive ones you get from liberty or tradition. Religion should be an additional support, but with piety you will need to use those bonuses to cover what already do tradition/ liberty gives with only policies, wWith a special mention of the happiness/culture/growth you NEED to compete on early eras.

Other problems are happiness and culture. I think ALL ancient policies should give some of both, a little culture from the shrines and temples pretty much fixes piety.

Honor is broken: it should help a player to support an army, give some decent local happiness per city to partially support city conquest, and specially some production and army aids to actually support an army easier. Gaving to garrison units o get your only extra happiness (and culture, but that is not so vital) source is evil. You wont get the money to support any extra troops for conquest, plus you will need to keep those units at the cities to maintain happiness.

I wont give my possible solutions, instead I'll give a link to the balance mod i made, in whitch you can find some resonings about what I made.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=514586

 

[Redaxe]

Yes Ninakoru is on the right track with that balance patch.

On a side note has anyone heard if Fireaxis are still working on Civ 5?

I think most people agree that Civ 5 is pretty well done, it just needs a bit more tidying up in some areas like the OP mentions.
I'd love to see another expansion personally but if that is to happen the devs will need to spend some time enhancing the AI and improving performance. There is a fair amount of content now and it seems like the AI often struggles to make the optimal decisions as well as the long turn times.

 

[Quineloe]

The main issue that always remains with honor in my book is that there's nothing in it that helps you grow and nothing that helps you tech, which are the two keys to actually winning a game. With a tradition opening, your capital grows like crazy, with liberty opening you have the cities you want settled settled and improved in no time.

On an honor opening, you're stuck with your low pop capitol and another city until you capture the first capital, which then is usually a building-free 3 pop city with a lot of unhappiness, and at worst with the identical luxury resources as your capital.

I'm thinking about two things here:
1. Citadels also provide +2 food, +2 hammers, +2 science. That way, those 5-7 GGs you'll be sitting on by renaissance era can actually be used and don't just soak up maintenance and supply.
2. Captured capitals keep their palaces for the +3 hammer, +3 science +3 gold bonus.

citadel numbers are for ancient era, I'd say Fertilizer could increase the food, chemistry the hammer and whatever it is that boosts the academy boosts the science to +3 each.
New Deal increases it by +1 each again.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[Barghaest]

That's a bit supid IMO. You just can get all the buffs from a religion plus the passive ones you get from liberty or tradition. Religion should be an additional support, but with piety you will need to use those bonuses to cover what already do tradition/ liberty gives with only policies, wWith a special mention of the happiness/culture/growth you NEED to compete on early eras.

And you get that through Piety by being able to pick the best beliefs first... and being able to purchase the faith buildings without delaying Enhancing the religion since completing the tree gives you the second prophet. Adding more happiness/culture to Piety would be OP since going Piety is going to get you one or two of Pagodas, Cathedrals, Monasteries and Mosques. Because religious beliefs are first come, first served then going Piety allows you the pick of the lot making your religion more powerful than going other openers.

Now, one might argue that Piety is underpowered on Immortal/Deity since a human player is at a disadvantage in the religious race due to AI starting with Pottery (unless you get lucky with Ancient Ruins/CS discoveries to either get Pottery within the first few turns or enough faith to snag a good pantheon for your start), but on King and below it's very well balanced. Getting good religious selections can have a great impact on the late game.

 

[sendos]

so when will you make the actual mod?

I have no modding experience at all. I did wish I had some experience but with so many files to look and so many instructions and formulae to observe, I might end up busting the game for myself and anyone unfortunate enough to try it out. I just posted this thread for discussing ideas on buffing piety, honor and exploration, and maybe a little bit of liberty. The current message is mostly:
- leave liberty be
- piety buffs are mostly good
- honor steps on autocracy a bit but seems good
- either give small buffs to exploration or leave it be.

 

[Barghaest]

I have no modding experience at all. I did wish I had some experience but with so many files to look and so many instructions and formulae to observe, I might end up busting the game for myself and anyone unfortunate enough to try it out. I just posted this thread for discussing ideas on buffing piety, honor and exploration, and maybe a little bit of liberty. The current message is mostly:
- leave liberty be
- piety buffs are mostly good
- honor steps on autocracy a bit but seems good
- either give small buffs to exploration or leave it be.

Modding's relatively easy once you understand the XML. Just opening some of them in notepad and browsing through them helps with that - there's also quite a few tutorials on how to do it and various references.

The ModBuddy you can download through Steam (free) will also make sure the mod doesn't have any overt errors (typing mainly) in it to reduce chance of "busting the game".

 

[Galgus]

I actually think a bonus and the Capital and a yield added to military and defensive infrastructure would be good for Honor.

I'd also let them construct said infrastructure in half the usual time without needing to pay a maintenance cost for military buildings.

I'd like to encourage Honor to prioritize those buildings.

 

[Redaxe]

I actually think a bonus and the Capital and a yield added to military and defensive infrastructure would be good for Honor.

I'd also let them construct said infrastructure in half the usual time without needing to pay a maintenance cost for military buildings.

I'd like to encourage Honor to prioritize those buildings.

I think a +1 production bonus to the barracks and armoury is a very good idea. It also helps make create more synergy so you're rewarded for getting the Heroic Epic.
Thinking about this logically, military facilities where civilians are trained in war and weapons are crafted creates a lot of skills and potential value-added goods for a civilization, think weapons, tools, machines etc that filter through into the wider economy.
There are plenty of successful industry's today that contract skills and materials to both defence and civilian economies. So it makes sense for barracks and armouries to provide a production bonus and it suits the honor tree.

One other thing for Honor. How about the finisher policy adding +3 global happiness to the Heroic Epic for each civilizations capital you hold? I think warmongering is probably the hardest and most tedious victory right now and this is small change that would help the would-be Napoleons of civilization.