Balance Factors

Thunderbrd

C2C War Dog
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I need us to start reporting our findings as to game balance and progression in one place again. This way reports and discussion points don't get lost.

So this thread is about discussing matters such as:
  • The length of turns and research costs of technologies on various settings.
  • The calendar dates you encounter key points in the game such as era changes.
  • The length of turns and production costs of units and buildings and projects.
  • The ratio of production tasks to technology discoveries.
  • Everything related to these subjects.
 
From another thread:
Why don't you just trim some of the excess complex fat by making it so the map size doesn't effect building costs? To me the thing that should effect building costs the most should be difficulty. After that the game speed should be factored in. Higher Difficulty= Higher Costs Longer Game Speed= Slightly Higher Costs. When most people play a game with a higher difficulty they want to feel a pushback to their own production, not see some kind of unusual boost to it because of some kind of weird factoring in of the map size. Besides the map size is just that. The size of the map itself should be either a hindrance or benefit to the player. There is absolutely no reason why the map must effect costs so much to the point that it makes "Hard Games" easy. Just like there should be no reason why the map should make "Easy Games" hard.
The goal of mapsize modifiers to research costs is to offset having less overall area. Correct me if I'm wrong but we aren't modifying production costs by map size, are we?

It has struck me that this mod to research works in later eras to help unify game experiences from one map size to the next BUT it also creates a different experience from one map size to the next in the Prehistoric, and I'm not happy with that. I think what we may eventually need is mapsize by era mods to research. Until then, I'm finally siding with @Toffer90 fully - I think we should do away with the map size research modifier entirely. Generally speaking, the number of players in a game can have just as much of an impact and we should probably eventually look at this even more directly as a 'by city' modifier, which WFL actually does somewhat help to account for, though only to help balance between players, not between tech and construction ratios.
 
ok, so I tried a nightmare game on SVN9975. Snail/large map. Techspeed was ok but building stuff was extremely slow. Barbarian activity was fierce: lots of cities spawned, boxing me and my AI civ neighbour in. It really hurt his hunting and complicated mine. Thanks to a good starting position and troublesome but successful hunting I managed to stay competitive in the tech race and slowly caught up on my backlog of buildings mid-prehistoric.

Then I saw that Toffer90 did some updates on regular deity, so I updated to svn9976 and tried out a new game deity/snail/large map.
I founded my starting city but soon it went into unhappiness due to massive unhealth. I started with something like +10 disease/turn which soon turned on disease autobuildings, which gave me unhappiness which took out my only productive citizen. So the start is extremely slow as I have only the 2 hammers from my center tile to invest with.

and slowly caught up on my backlog of buildings mid-prehistoric.
That's pretty much how it's supposed to be experienced.
I started with something like +10 disease/turn which soon turned on disease autobuildings, which gave me unhappiness which took out my only productive citizen.
Ouch. Probably shouldn't be that severe right at the beginning.
 
Ouch. Probably shouldn't be that severe right at the beginning.
I adjusted it so that deity would be the lowest difficulty where unhappiness would be a problem until you get language tech and better housing than homeless. I found it quite enjoyable on deity. We would need more opinions on this to consider a change immediately. I tested without traits, there are some traits that make unhappiness in the beginning a bigger problem I suppose.
 
I adjusted it so that deity would be the lowest difficulty where unhappiness would be a problem until you get language tech and better housing than homeless. I found it quite enjoyable on deity. We would need more opinions on this to consider a change immediately. I tested without traits, there are some traits that make unhappiness in the beginning a bigger problem I suppose.

I don't know, how much is the disease/pop on regular deity? If it is -10/pop then disease will be massive once pop starts growing.
 
Only crime and education is affected by handicap level. That's how its been for years now.
So who changed it so that disease is no longer affected by handicap level? When was it changed from the same way crime was run and why and who changed it? I'm not asking about your most recent stuff at the moment.

Does crime immediately become a problem for Deity - Nightmare players - seems it would...
 
Crime is not a problem in the beginning. Palace gives -20 crime, and the only crimes in the beginning are rape and murder, and their thresholds are high.
 
I updated my handicap calculator.
Finally all pace settings are equally usable.

That is game on Duel/Settler/Blitz is as enjoyable as game on Standard/Noble/Normal or Gigantic/Nightmare/Eternity when it comes to research cost scaling compared to building cost scaling.

Now Handicap just changes difficulty, map size just map area and game speed just game pace.
Techs had their cost increased 3.56x more than buildings.
With global change from 90 to 80 it is now 4.01x.

Downscaled production cost option would be nice if someone liked even lower relative building costs.

I started game on Continents map script.
My pace settings are Normal, Noble and Standard.
I have 6 AIs. I'm America, others are Brasil, Scandinavia, Egypt, Arabia, China and Australia.
Spoiler :

My research is 10, and first column costs 16.
Initial production - 3 hammers. I'm starting with one tile city.
Alpha male and female take 4 hammers to build.
 

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Some leader's traits can have a huge effect on the difficulty of the game.

Willem van Oranje for example has so many unhappines that at the start of the game the capital can only work its own tile. I had a game with him before I started a new one because the SVN changes. It was an Immortal game on Marathon speed and on a Huge map. I played it to the middle of the Ancient Era. At the start I had only 1 :hammers: in my city.

Frederick is the other end of the scale. He gives so much science boost It's like playing on a lower difficulty level. It's too easy to play with him.

Hunting has a huge effect on the game. The animal myths give very strong boost to the science output early in the game. In my game with Oranje my start was very slow because the traits and because my starting place was bad at the start. I was around the last place in science for a while. But I was on a huge continent and I hunted a lot. At the end of the Prehistoric Era I was the leader in science with a nice margin. And I didn't use the animals to boost science by sacrificing them. It's just the effect of the myths.

I don't care much about anything else in the Prehistoric Era just hunting, hunting and some more hunting. At the end of the era I can achieve more than double research speed than I should by my difficulty and speed settings. This effect is more strong on slower speeds and on bigger maps which upsets the balancing between the different settings.

My point is you should reduce the impact of hunting somewhat and you should calculate with this in your balancing effort. Also the AI seems to be not too strong in this area which is a huge disadvantage.
 
That is exactly what hunting was designed for, the prehistoric boost in knowledge that occurred at that time. It is not possible to reduce the boost per myth below 1:science: but it maybe time to consider moving the tech at which they stop providing science and have their effect provide education instead. Sedentary Lifestyle perhaps.
 
Maybe we should increase tech global so instead of 16 you would need 20 units of research for tech in first column?
This would be 2 turns/tech for Noble and scaled properly for other GS too.
New tech global: 320*(20/16) = 400.
 
I have checked the changes from SVN 9977 concerning research/building times. Unfortunately my game is not a typical one as I already own the biggest part of the world so my research is higher than it typically would be (even if most of the cities are still small and have little research). I currently research Plastic (Modern Age) and it takes 2 turns (needs 179926 and I produce 126253/turn). A city that has all hammer buildings but no World Wonder boost to production takes 3 turns to build a Supermarket, 13 turns to build the Coit Tower wonder and 2 turns to build a Panzer (all examples are high cost & modern).
Anyway I would still say that building costs are too high to my liking (although they were reduced a little bit in the last SVN). Even if I´d estimate that a typical game would have half of my research then a modern building in a well established city would still need as long as a full research step. I suggest to cut building costs by half and will do so in my game. Unit costs seem to be OK as far as I can see.

Here my settings:
Gigantic Map (Vertical Solar)
Snail Speed
Monarch Difficulty
PPIO Modmod
 
I have checked the changes from SVN 9977 concerning research/building times. Unfortunately my game is not a typical one as I already own the biggest part of the world so my research is higher than it typically would be (even if most of the cities are still small and have little research). I currently research Plastic (Modern Age) and it takes 2 turns (needs 179926 and I produce 126253/turn). A city that has all hammer buildings but no World Wonder boost to production takes 3 turns to build a Supermarket, 13 turns to build the Coit Tower wonder and 2 turns to build a Panzer (all examples are high cost & modern).
Anyway I would still say that building costs are too high to my liking (although they were reduced a little bit in the last SVN). Even if I´d estimate that a typical game would have half of my research then a modern building in a well established city would still need as long as a full research step. I suggest to cut building costs by half and will do so in my game. Unit costs seem to be OK as far as I can see.

Here my settings:
Gigantic Map (Vertical Solar)
Snail Speed
Monarch Difficulty
PPIO Modmod
In your earlier save you were close to Modern era in 1397th turn.
And snail has 12000 turns now.
You game is kinda fried now.
Maybe change your research slider to 25%? :p

While standard map has default of 7 civs it seems map script fails to separate civs to 7 continents.
Is there Standard sized earth map, that is properly updated?
That has seas, caves, and all map resources.
 
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I try to quickly go to the later ages to play the space part of the game so it is just important to research quickly. And I never would have chosen snail it it was 12000 turns then.
Somewhere in Industrial era tech costs suddenly started to overflow.
A lot of techs have 1 or other much smaller costs for now.
This means you can reach space age even quicker for now :p
I guess rounding error fixer was misplaced.

I reported this bug.
 
That is exactly what hunting was designed for, the prehistoric boost in knowledge that occurred at that time. It is not possible to reduce the boost per myth below 1:science: but it maybe time to consider moving the tech at which they stop providing science and have their effect provide education instead. Sedentary Lifestyle perhaps.
I would move it to Hunting Tactics. By the end of the Prehistoric Era you can move from last to first easily on a bigger map and on a slower gamespeed even on Immortal difficulty. So it's too late by then in my opinion. Immortal should be a very tough level but hunting makes it too easy.

Also Hunters are far more effective units than Trackers. Before Hunting Tactics hunting requires a huge effort. In my current game every other thing I built was a Tracker until I researched Hunting Tactics. They die quite easily. So at least you have to pay for hunting by slower developement of your capital. Hunters have much bigger chance to survive and with some promotions they become very strong against animals. Using Hide and Seek barbarians can't see them so you only have to move them a little caution. They can subdue animals more often too.

Also by this time you can have one or two Master Hunter. They are almost unkillable by animals. Even big cats and quite big herds of herbivores are easy preys to them. And they even better in subduing.

On a Huge map and Marathon speed at the end of the Prehistoric Era I can have 200-300 subdued animals easily that I didn't use for anything just keeping them for build things with them in my new cities. If I would sacrifice them for boosting research it would give even more edge.

So in hunting all hell breaks loose with Hunting Tactics.
 
Effectively Immortal has tech handicap of 114 - it used to be 120.
That is AI setting for tech cost modifier is 88.
 
That is exactly what hunting was designed for, the prehistoric boost in knowledge that occurred at that time. It is not possible to reduce the boost per myth below 1:science: but it maybe time to consider moving the tech at which they stop providing science and have their effect provide education instead. Sedentary Lifestyle perhaps.
You could lower the :science: boost by creating a multi-level auto building. It would get built in your capital, it would step a level up after every 5-10 myths built in your empire and it would give 1:science: for every level. Or it could be built in any city for every 5-10 myths built in that city. I don't know if it's a good idea but it would help balancing the tech boost.

Edit: Or it could gain a level exponentially. 1st level after 1 myth, 2nd after 3 3rd after 9 etc. Or after 1-2-3-5-8-13 etc myths.
 
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I would move it to Hunting Tactics. By the end of the Prehistoric Era you can move from last to first easily on a bigger map and on a slower gamespeed even on Immortal difficulty. So it's too late by then in my opinion. Immortal should be a very tough level but hunting makes it too easy.

Also Hunters are far more effective units than Trackers. Before Hunting Tactics hunting requires a huge effort. In my current game every other thing I built was a Tracker until I researched Hunting Tactics. They die quite easily. So at least you have to pay for hunting by slower developement of your capital. Hunters have much bigger chance to survive and with some promotions they become very strong against animals. Using Hide and Seek barbarians can't see them so you only have to move them a little caution. They can subdue animals more often too.

Also by this time you can have one or two Master Hunter. They are almost unkillable by animals. Even big cats and quite big herds of herbivores are easy preys to them. And they even better in subduing.

On a Huge map and Marathon speed at the end of the Prehistoric Era I can have 200-300 subdued animals easily that I didn't use for anything just keeping them for build things with them in my new cities. If I would sacrifice them for boosting research it would give even more edge.

So in hunting all hell breaks loose with Hunting Tactics.

I don't play with any of the combat options/mods on. I play on noble and I am not finding hunters to be as effective as you are. Maybe it is because I can only have five. Do you have unlimited national units on?

I also keep a large number of animals for city building.

You could lower the :science: boost by creating a multi-level auto building. It would get built in your capital, it would step a level up after every 5-10 myths built in your empire and it would give 1:science: for every level. Or it could be built in any city for every 5-10 myths built in that city. I don't know if it's a good idea but it would help balancing the tech boost.

Edit: Or it could gain a level exponentially. 1st level after 1 myth, 2nd after 3 3rd after 9 etc. Or after 1-2-3-5-8-13 etc myths.
We have enough trouble getting the AI to build the myths or even move some subdued animals into cities. This would just put them further behind. Also my capital is not my science city. I build most of my myths in my science city if I can. This would force your capital to be your science city.
 
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