Balance Factors

[raxo2222]

What about multiplicative increment for research/production cost of handicaps?
Prehistoric era is 100, Future era is 165.
First increment is felt strongest.
With multiplier of 1.04 final era cost modifier would be 167

With such setup techs and buildings would get more expensive by 4% on each step.

 

[Usul13]

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 don't have unlimited national units. Depending on luck I usually can't reach the limit with the Trackers. By the time I build my 4th or 5th unit some of them dies. So usually I have around 3 Trackers. With hunters I can reach the 5 unit limit. And by the time I research Hunting tactics I have at least one Master Tracker.

I'm just using hunting as a very strong startegy to boost my science. It's essentially an exploit. From the start I hunt around my capital with a Brute. I don't go far with it because it protects my city. I also use 2-3 Stone Throwers to hunt a little farther in the wilderness. I usually get 3-4 subdued animals by the time I research Tracking. It's a nice boost. After I research it I build Trackers all the time. As I said earlier sometimes every other thing I build in my capital is a Tracker just to make up for the lost units. In my game with Willem van Oranje I played on Marathon speed, Huge mapsize and Immortal difficulty. I started on a huge continent with 5 AI opponents, so I had space to hunt and there wasn't much dangerous animals around me. I was last early in the game. At the end of the Prehistoric Era I was first and I pulled up the 5 AI right behind me by Tech Diffusion. And the No Tech Handicaps for Humans option is on so I didn't benefit from TD.

My current game is on Immortal/Epic/Huge settings so it's a faster gamespeed. My starting continent is a medium island, I'm alone on it. I don't have too much space to hunt. There are Cheetahs everywhere. My starting place isn't very strong. My leader is Gilgamesh who doesn't have good scientific trait. At the start of the game I wasn't on the list of the most advanced civilizations. By the time I researched Tribalism I was 4th. And I just started to use Hunters not long ago.

So I find hunting effective as hell. You made me curious about the effect of the combat options. I will put aside my current game for now and I start a new one without those to see if I can use the same tactics.

 

[Noriad2]

Regarding hunting, if you reach hunter IV and perhaps one or more snare promotions, it is possible to get 100% subdue chance. That may be a bit overpowered.

 

[Thunderbrd]

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've been considering this as well. @Toffer90 : Your thoughts on this please?

 

[Thunderbrd]

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

At the moment, it's sounding like your experience is a little skewed by your unchallenged success for the era. There are ways to adjust by era and maybe that's what needs to be looked at more closely, but is this the standard or are you getting a lot more research at this point than can normally be expected? Hard to say. I'd love it if you'd start a new game and report on how the building vs tech achievement ratios were going on an era by era basis as you progress through.

 

[Toffer90]

I've been considering this as well. @Toffer90 : Your thoughts on this please?

I've no strong opinion either way. Make the change if you feel it's warranted, I haven't playtested enough to form an opinion on what should be changed how atm.

I would in general rather nerf the amount of beaker output you get in the prehistoric era so that the current global fits better, we should look into ways of dealing with smaller numbers across the board to avoid integer overflows. If the starting commerce only allow 8 beakers per turn then 16 beakers for first column techs is exactly two turns.

If you had tried "my take on stuff" modmod you would see that the first column of techs only cost 6 beakers (16 without modmod) on normal gamespeed and that you only get 3 beakers per turn when settling your first city. tech cost arch has been adjusted somewhat, sedentary lifestyle costs 112 beakers (236 without modmod) on normal gamespeed, and techs take about the same amount of turns to research throughout the prehistoric era.

I would like to make it so the myths only give culture and that the early civics gives heavier culture penalties, then hunting is important because it increases your border so that you can get more resources and population which indirectly will increase science. I was thinking something like +1% output per myth. This is DH's domain so I would like to hear his opinion on this.

More importantly: We need to figure out how to fix techs costing 1 beaker around information lifestyle on marathon gamespeed. ^^

 

[Noriad2]

All myths don't HAVE to give the same benefits; some may give science, others may give culture, others may give education.
If you want to lower science output in Prehistoric in general, perhaps increase the commerce from the Palace and/or science from buildings, then use civics to lower the effects back again to what it was, and at the same time those new civics lower the benefits from myths, too.

 

[Noriad2]

I've completed a test game through the prehistory, starting at svn 9976 (Toffer removing the 2nd deity settler) and upgrading mid-way to 9977 for the settler cost repair.

Settings:deity, large map, snail.

I had a decent starting position and aside from the initial hit from disease, it was mostly a cakewalk. Game pacing was okay.

I conquered the cities of my two closest rivals, and was the first to reach Sedentary lifestyle. At that time I had 5 cities while all other civs had at only 1 city. I was first in score with 155 points while number two had 58 points and number three had 57 points. So I basically already snowballed enough to be certain to win in the long run.

I've 7-zipped my save files and uploaded them here:
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/5c66079d98196062e024de253aab12c620180313172150/3ffbac
(this link will be available for a week)

@Toffer90: you said you made Nightmare a lot easier compared to the last JosEPh_II's numbers. Have you set Nightmare back to difficult again?

 

[Toffer90]

@Toffer90: you said you made Nightmare a lot easier compared to the last JosEPh_II's numbers. Have you set Nightmare back to difficult again?

That was reset in the TB commit I waited for. I believe a lot of the easiness factor you describe is better adressed with the upcomming C2C v39 AI overhaul TB have planned for (He said even before v37 was released that he planned an AI overhaul for v39). We may want to make difficulties harder than they currently are until we get the AI better.

The only thing I made easier when I started out was:
<iTrainPercent>110</iTrainPercent> → <iTrainPercent>135</iTrainPercent>
<iConstructPercent>110</iConstructPercent> → <iConstructPercent>135</iConstructPercent>
<iResearchPercent>225</iResearchPercent> → <iResearchPercent>135</iResearchPercent>
And I did it as a temporary solution because I was making some major changes to tech vs building cost across all game options and if I hadn't normalized those values you would have had techs take way too long to invent for the difficulty to be playable at all. I was waiting for a new handicap tag that made it possible to adjust the research cost for the AI based on the difficulty the human player was on instead of doing it the other way around. That way gamespeeds are the same regardless of what difficulty you play on.

The equivalent to the tags above is now set from:
before I changed anything related to balance → how it is now:
<iAITrainPercent>100</iAITrainPercent> → <iAITrainPercent>44</iAITrainPercent>
<iAIConstructPercent>100</iAIConstructPercent> → <iAIConstructPercent>58</iAIConstructPercent>
<iAIResearchPercent>100</iAIResearchPercent> → <iAIResearchPercent>79</iAIResearchPercent>

A lot of other difficulty factors have been changed too, and we might want to increase the difficulty step between the difficulty levels for some of them based on user feedback.

Edit: Had a look at your game, and I see you play with start as minor civs, this gameoption breaks the AI in so many ways that it should be removed from the game imo.
AI in a perpetual state of war makes them real stupid in many ways, they will practically give up on developing their nation while in a war that seems overwhelming unless they have many cities that can be spared from the war effort.

I see you also use the downsizing is profitable, it's ok as long as you never split up units before selling them as this is an exploit. The option kinda requires you to put a self imposed restriction on how units can be disbanded. Edit: Didn't know the gold amount had been scaled correctly.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I don't have unlimited national units. Depending on luck I usually can't reach the limit with the Trackers. By the time I build my 4th or 5th unit some of them dies. So usually I have around 3 Trackers. With hunters I can reach the 5 unit limit. And by the time I research Hunting tactics I have at least one Master Tracker.

I'm just using hunting as a very strong startegy to boost my science. It's essentially an exploit. From the start I hunt around my capital with a Brute. I don't go far with it because it protects my city. I also use 2-3 Stone Throwers to hunt a little farther in the wilderness. I usually get 3-4 subdued animals by the time I research Tracking. It's a nice boost. After I research it I build Trackers all the time. As I said earlier sometimes every other thing I build in my capital is a Tracker just to make up for the lost units. In my game with Willem van Oranje I played on Marathon speed, Huge mapsize and Immortal difficulty. I started on a huge continent with 5 AI opponents, so I had space to hunt and there wasn't much dangerous animals around me. I was last early in the game. At the end of the Prehistoric Era I was first and I pulled up the 5 AI right behind me by Tech Diffusion. And the No Tech Handicaps for Humans option is on so I didn't benefit from TD.

My current game is on Immortal/Epic/Huge settings so it's a faster gamespeed. My starting continent is a medium island, I'm alone on it. I don't have too much space to hunt. There are Cheetahs everywhere. My starting place isn't very strong. My leader is Gilgamesh who doesn't have good scientific trait. At the start of the game I wasn't on the list of the most advanced civilizations. By the time I researched Tribalism I was 4th. And I just started to use Hunters not long ago.

So I find hunting effective as hell. You made me curious about the effect of the combat options. I will put aside my current game for now and I start a new one without those to see if I can use the same tactics.

I am playing Noble/Snail/Huge. My strategy is fairly much the same as yours except I don't leave my borders before I get Tracking unless I get a Scout from exploring with my initial Stone Thrower. I play Hatshepsut without any Traits.

All myths don't HAVE to give the same benefits; some may give science, others may give culture, others may give education.
If you want to lower science output in Prehistoric in general, perhaps increase the commerce from the Palace and/or science from buildings, then use civics to lower the effects back again to what it was, and at the same time those new civics lower the benefits from myths, too.

We could, but which ones?. The point of the Myths is science in the Stone Age. Changing it from that means we may as well get rid of them.

 

[raxo2222]

@Thunderbrd You didn't answer my other suggestion

What about multiplicative increment for research/production cost of handicaps?
Prehistoric era is 100, Future era is 165.
First increment is felt strongest.
With multiplier of 1.04 final era cost modifier would be 167

With such setup techs and buildings would get more expensive by 4% on each step.

Basically Prehistoric era would always start with research and construction modifier of 100
For ancient it would be 100*(1.04)^1
For classical it would be 100*(1.04)^2

For Future era it would be 100*(1.04)^13 = 167

 

[Toffer90]

@Thunderbrd You didn't answer my other suggestion



Basically Prehistoric era would always start with research and construction modifier of 100
For ancient it would be 100*(1.04)^1
For classical it would be 100*(1.04)^2

For Future era it would be 100*(1.04)^13 = 167

Those era tags are not necessarily meant to go in any steps at all, it could go down in one era transition and up in another, how much up or down depends solely on beaker and hammer output that is typical for cities in that era..

 

[raxo2222]

Those era tags are not necessarily meant to go in any steps at all, it could go down in one era transition and up in another, how much up or down depends solely on beaker and hammer output that is typical for cities in that era..

Ah so they can be used as pacetime control

Fun fact: these tags were going steadily below 100 as eras passed in vanilla BTS.
There were no slower games than Marathon, and there were only 4 game speeds.
Duel had research modifier of 100 and Huge had research of 150. No Giant/Gigantic maps.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you had tried "my take on stuff" modmod you would see that the first column of techs only cost 6 beakers (16 without modmod) on normal gamespeed and that you only get 3 beakers per turn when settling your first city. tech cost arch has been adjusted somewhat, sedentary lifestyle costs 112 beakers (236 without modmod) on normal gamespeed, and techs take about the same amount of turns to research throughout the prehistoric era.

I'm not really looking to recost the tech arc at this point. That's a baked in thing for us to now work around.

I would like to make it so the myths only give culture and that the early civics gives heavier culture penalties, then hunting is important because it increases your border so that you can get more resources and population which indirectly will increase science. I was thinking something like +1% output per myth. This is DH's domain so I would like to hear his opinion on this.

I'm pretty sure his intention has always been for these to represent the tech surge in this time frame but I can say I think it would be a tragic change because it would greatly undercut the value of hunting.

More importantly: We need to figure out how to fix techs costing 1 beaker around information lifestyle on marathon gamespeed. ^^

Not a problem. I just need some time to correct it. Then we need to see where it begins happening later.

That was reset in the TB commit I waited for. I believe a lot of the easiness factor you describe is better adressed with the upcomming C2C v39 AI overhaul TB have planned for (He said even before v37 was released that he planned an AI overhaul for v39). We may want to make difficulties harder than they currently are until we get the AI better.

Actually that's kinda unexpected. I think it might take the AI a little longer now to grow due to it working more like it was planned and not taking the reckless shortcuts it was - but that could be potentially compensated by some stronger AI research benefits on difficulty. My wife was falling behind fast when they were set to 5 per difficulty rather than 2. They did take a little longer to start growing though.

I see you also use the downsizing is profitable, it's ok as long as you never split up units before selling them as this is an exploit. The option kinda requires you to put a self imposed restriction on how units can be disbanded.

Naw... I also made it so that units give a fraction of the gold when they are split and sold. And vice versa... so I scaled it appropriately.

@Thunderbrd You didn't answer my other suggestion



Basically Prehistoric era would always start with research and construction modifier of 100
For ancient it would be 100*(1.04)^1
For classical it would be 100*(1.04)^2

For Future era it would be 100*(1.04)^13 = 167

I don't have an opinion yet but I'm not trying to force it. At this point, just trying to make sure that the game plays well. I don't always respond because I don't always understand OR I'm just considering things proposed.

 

[raxo2222]

Not a problem. I just need some time to correct it. Then we need to see where it begins happening later.

If you have Toffer's interface overhaul, then you can start game on Eternity, and then look at pedia with techs ordered chronologically.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you have Toffer's interface overhaul, then you can start game on Eternity, and then look at pedia with techs ordered chronologically.

I don't and I won't until it's core.

 

[raxo2222]

I don't and I won't until it's core.

Okay

 

[Shoobs]

Feedback:
Just started a new game. Alpha male takes 24 turns to complete. WTF?
Deity Snail Giant.

 

[raxo2222]

Feedback:
Just started a new game. Alpha male takes 24 turns to complete. WTF?
Deity Snail Giant.

Snail has 12 000 turns.
On Normal: 24/12 = 2 turns.
Construction costs don't depend on map size and handicap (handicap speeds up ai instead).
Eternity 20000
Eons 16000 - 1000 turns less than ~2x old Eternity.
Snail 12000
Marathon 8000 - 500 turns less than old Eternity.
Epic 6000 - 1000 turns longer than old Snail and 500 turns less than old Eons.
Long 4000 - 700 turns longer than old Marathon.
Normal 2000 - old Epic.
Blitz 1000 - old Normal.

@Toffer90 I think you should somehow add descriptions on how long each GS is.

 

[Shoobs]

Snail has 12 000 turns.
On Normal: 24/12 = 2 turns.
Construction costs don't depend on map size and handicap (handicap speeds up ai instead).
Eternity 20000
Eons 16000 - ~2x old Eternity.
Snail 12000
Marathon 8000 - 500 turns less than old Eternity.
Epic 6000 - 1000 turns longer than old Snail and 500 turns less than old Eons.
Long 4000 - 700 turns longer than old Marathon.
Normal 2000 - old Epic.
Blitz 1000 - old Normal.

@Toffer90 I think you should somehow add descriptions on how long each GS is.

Excuse me, Alpha male has NEVER taken 24 turns to make as far as I recall. It's usually 3 4 6 or 8. Never 24. I found out what the issue is. Having only 2 production in my city, having any immediate negative to production bumps me down to 1.
Am I wrong in feeling that in an attempt to hurt the player that they've gone too far?

In addition, I have 12 unhealth and 3 angry.
With a size 1 city.
Jesus.