Balance patch discussion and goals

[mystikx21]

So in line with those
Tier 1
CEP reduced the gold-production ratio to make gold buying a reasonable prospect. I think it may have gone too far in this respect, but it definitely sexed up gold as a yield to have a use for it other than just making sure you could pay for stuff and buy off CS.

I prefer CSD for diplomacy simply because the diplomatic victory in default basically comes down to just buying everyone off at the appropriate time. Which is boring. So we would need a good use for gold. Spending on stuff to buy is one attractive option.

2) Melee units, land and sea, were generally buffed in CEP. Archers were weakened against cities (but not units). This generally improves the relative balance of units. There may be specific instances of imbalance (horses are probably too strong, and the vanguard problem remained with a few units in the main mod, even though the added units were removed), but that's about it.

There are some other changes to cities that may be needed (more HP for example and somewhat lower strength and healing) that should also help out melee units.

3) Policies were addressed, but not resolved by CEP. I would argue the main mod design fundamentally broke many trees in fact by going too far. GEM had an overall better balance here, but had its own issues as it progressed and can't be applied to the ideologies game of BNW anyway.

More debate is needed on several trees. Some ideas are now workable because of the dll or the changes in other areas make some ideas more appealing (tolerance in piety for instance is particularly better as a reduction in happiness penalties than as a randomly useful extra yield).

Tier 2
1) I don't know that the issue is so much that beliefs are imbalanced (there are some, but they should be slightly imbalanced to reward quicker faith accumulations) but that they're often incoherently stacked, like they were thrown together into categories. CEP was. Well awful. If there's a major debate to be had in this community moving forward, it will have to be on what to do with religion. Because I don't think this was ever really had in a strong way until very late in the development and nothing was done as a result. Or at least what was done was ill-thought out experiments, often imbalanced, and totally uninformed by these debates and questions.

2) see above

3) I think this is somewhat addressed in CEP, but there's really no getting around that population, and thus food, is always going to be more important than any other yield. I don't see how this is actually a serious problem as a result.

What is at issue is there isn't a strong tile yield balance to provide good sources of production or gold alongside the river-farming, and this extends not just to the problems of food/production but to things like the relative value of camps or plantations vs mines or farms. And there I think CEP did better (eventually). If you can get a good amount of production or gold, it at least feels more powerful than a standard "farm as much as possible, given happiness" approach such that you may want some mines or villages for variety or city specialization goals beyond just the bare minimums.

Tier 3
1) Agreed here, but that's mostly resolved. There's some work to be done on BNW leaders and some leaders would need to be overhauled to make use of changes elsewhere, but we're in good shape with CEP changes to deal with most of the major imbalances (I had to make some more shifts of my own but it's still a good base).

2) That post-pike upgrade path all around is all screwed up. (Lancer-ATG-Gunship) and difficult to make sense of. I'm not sure I like the skirmisher line that CEP used either but it at least includes a more logical "upgrade" path (chariots-cavalry-gunships).

3) Mostly resolved in CEP. The biggest question marks surrounded the spy buildings. Gazebo has an interesting idea for those that I'd let him float it when that thread on buildings goes up, and then whether to keep a few buildings that were nixed (I hate the recycling center as currently conceived for example. Hate. And there's a couple others that can be folded into existing lines to help those out, with the forge's effects being moved to barracks line buildings, or the bomb shelter moved to the military base).

4) Mostly resolved as well.

 

[Tomice]

We would need then at least these threads (I should think).

1) Leaders changes - this always gets long and contentious. CEP can probably short circuit some of the debate, but there's some lamer changes in CEP that can easily replaced or amended.
2) Policies, probably divided into early-middle-ideologies each with their own thread so each gets some room to breathe.
3) Army-navy balance/promotions changes
4) Wide-tall balance suggestions (not covered by changes elsewhere, such as national wonders or happiness adjustments or more elaborate changes)
5) Culture victory enhancements
6) Diplomatic victory enhancement + CSD
7) Religion/Piety thread - this really needs to be its own thread as it wasn't getting anywhere in CEP with what was tried there and many good suggestions were shot down with a "we need a dll mod to do this".
8) Mechanical enhancements now available via dll/whoward that we would like to see, which could then be incorporated by other threads.
9) Tech tree adjustments (move items around, move paths around, add some effects?)
10) General economic changes (buildings values or tile values, etc)
11) Wonders
12) Anything else we would want to add or preserve from other mod packs.

13) As any topic is worked on, tested, and completed, decide whether to include all or parts of these changes in a major modification pack.

One very important aspect missing IMHO is "Coasts and Navies".

Civ traditionally failed to properly represent the enormous importance ship-based trade and warfare had throughout human history. The mediterrenaen coast was one of the most important areas in early human history (grecoroman age). Coastal trade, exploration and combat consistantly helped small-ish nations to rise in importance way above what you'd usually expect from their sheer pouplation number (Greece, Carthage, Venice, The Hanse, Portugal/Spain/Britain/Netherlands,...). Even today, the US assures it's (military) dominance through their navy, just as Britain or other colonial powers did before. "Being landlocked" was almost a guarantee for a nations poverty throughout history up to the present day, and a majority of the human race lives in coastal areas.

That said, in various civ games it was often the case that coasts should be avoided if you want to powerplay, and having a navy at all often ended up being an unnecessary luxury. I don't know how the current situation in unmodded BNW is, but CEP did a lot to righten this situation:
- Small islands often contain ressources making them worthwhile for settling
- Ships are rather strong vs. land units making them useful to have
- Several building and yield changes assure you rarely want to settle 1 tile away from coast (which should be rather pointless in a somewhat realistic game).
It was simply beautiful to see the realistic, feature-rich coastlines from the Communitas map script filled with a large numbers of ships and densely populated.

So I strongly suggest keeping this whole topic in mind from the very beginning.

 

[Stalker0]

That said, in various civ games it was often the case that coasts should be avoided if you want to powerplay, and having a navy at all often ended up being an unnecessary luxury. I don't know how the current situation in unmodded BNW is, but CEP did a lot to righten this situation:

My notes on this for the base BNW game:

1) Trade routes make the sea absolutely mighty, many say its OP in fact compared to land trade. It really does create the "riches" aspect of sea empires you were mentioning.

2) Along that, you need a navy to protect those trade routes. Not necessarily a big navy, but you do have to be watchful of it.

3) The base lighthouse makes a sea city very strong. A city with 2-3 sea resources is a very strong city once a lighthouse is built.

4) My thoughts on the naval units, at least until the industrial era.

Trireme: Good for early sea exploration and handling barb ships. I generally build a few of these.

Gussirame (I can never spell this right): Good for early warfare, probably the one I build the least, not because of strength but I don't do early war much myself.

Caravel: I always build a few of these to explore the world. They aren't great military vessels, but they serve a very important function.

Frigates: These will let you dominate a coastline, they are very strong for their time. My most commonly built ship overall.

Privateers: Definitely weaker than frigates, but cost no iron. If strategic resources were better balanced (aka I didn't have sacks of iron and horses always sitting around) I think they would be fine as an escort to the "expensive" frigate. They have unique abilities which gives them a niche, and I do build a few...but as long as I have iron I'm building frigates.


So overall I am pretty darn happy with sea/navy in BNW. There always room for some tweaking, but there is not nearly the problems present before that expansion.

 

[Stalker0]

One I forgot to add:

Tier 3: Strategic Resources are too plentiful overall. In almost every base game I play, with little effort, I have piles of strategic resources. So much so that the resources are not really strategic at all.

 

[Stalker0]

What is at issue is there isn't a strong tile yield balance to provide good sources of production or gold alongside the river-farming, and this extends not just to the problems of food/production but to things like the relative value of camps or plantations vs mines or farms.

Absolutely right. That was the point I was trying to make, but you stated it far better.

 

[mystikx21]

Agreed on strategic resources as well. CEP improved this (especially by spreading out the resources so you often have to expand more to get more), but I'm not satisfied that it totally solved the problem.

There's often tons of coal and oil but not much aluminum for example.

 

[mystikx21]

First wave of CEP stuff for use elsewhere. These are raw files and directories, and not the entire base mod. I figured that if the file as a whole is desired to be used, we can add to the load order, and if not, we can add the features that we want changed.

These are unit and promotion changes. Details can be found here (general changes), here (units details), and here (Promotions changes).

In these files I disabled (for now) CEP's unit cost formula adjustment so there could be a rounding issue that some unit costs 471 hammers say at the moment, but it won't increase the cost by 1.8x (or 2x, depending on which version of CEP you may be familiar with), and accordingly reduced the two "added" units to the regular cost scale. I was less concerned about the rounding than the cost adjustment (which demands we increase yields, which we may or may not end up doing). Rounding is easy to fix if desired.

The promotions effects may need to be sorted through a bit to make sure some of the changes I undid from CEP are in fact correctly undone. I haven't bug tested all of these, as I say, they're raw.

We also would need to yank out some changes made in other directories for everything listed on the appropriate wiki page to be fully accurate (or from the CAT/CIN mods that ran with it). But if they're desirable ideas (and some will be, even if many could be detested, some are simple cosmetic things like unit renaming), they're there somewhere. I'll keep uploading chunks over the weekend as I have time.

I will add a discussion thread for units/promotions changes tomorrow, so if there are specific points to object to or approve of, feel free to add a discussion thread of your own to get a head start on what should be used and what shall be ignored.

 

[Tomice]

So overall I am pretty darn happy with sea/navy in BNW. There always room for some tweaking, but there is not nearly the problems present before that expansion.

Good to know and thx for the elaborate answer!

 

[bane_]

1) Identify clearly which things are most broken or boring in the base game and set out to change these things while avoiding things that are most clearly working.

Naval AI.
They are technically 'working as intended', but this makes games pretty boring when not in Continents or Pangea because the AI is terrible on water; sometimes even those who were supposed to be the best aquatic civs, it's specially worse when you put random and see someone getting like... Atilla in Archipelago.

 

[mystikx21]

Gazebo has requested more stuff from CEP.

Rather than just include them without comment in a balance patch, I feel it is wise that we should open up some threads on what changes are ideal, what is no longer needed, what is now available, and as a result, what we should keep. I will open up some threads on the following issues that CEP addressed or changed.

There's already a units/promotions thread. I'd like us to have some more discussion on the lancer question, and whether or not to keep the Marine unit, and also the ATG, and whether or not a "grenadier" unit is really warranted or not. It sounds like the "cruiser" is a go, so I will at least set up the unit stats and someone else can borrow the artwork that was designed for it.

For the most part promotions, unit strengths, unit costs, and city combat have not come up either (city combat has at least gotten some debate). Whether this is because nobody checked those out or those are uncontroversial changes, I don't know yet.

Tile balance - CEP significantly altered the value of a variety of bonus and resource tiles (and provided more interactions with city buildings to give those buildings some flavor), natural wonders were balanced, freshwater bonuses were provided, coast lines were improved, strategic resources were spread out more, and so on. Many of those sound appealing, but will interact with the new happiness system, and any other changes. So I would advise we tread carefully. But with changes to luxuries, these kinds of changes would also make those into useful tiles in addition to the happiness. Things like that.

I would also include CEP changes like making the gold purchasing modifier lower and adjusting the city connection income as objects here part of a general economy shift.

Building changes - There's a huge amount of balance for building costs, upkeeps, and tile value, and some modest adjustment in individual buildings. I would definitely suggest we look at the spy buildings with an eye to make them useful, keep the extra HP from defence buildings, and adjust happiness buildings with the new system in mind.

Wonders - CEP added/changed/removed a lot of wonders. Some will be ideal. Some will not.

Leaders - CEP leaders were generally better overall than vanilla, but with happiness changes, many may need to be significantly adjusted, or have new abilities.

Policies. Generally CEP is kind of a mess in policies. It is better than vanilla in some respects, and worse in others. If there are ideas we want to keep as part of a general overhaul, we should look into it but I would not expect most of those changes to make it into this project.

 

[Tomice]

Tile yields and general economy are extremely important, glad you made it a priority. Everything else is based on a solid economic system, no sense to balance leaders or policies before.

Changes to yields will also interfere with the new happiness system, they need to be balanced simultaneously.

A problem might be that a lot of the changes made during general economic and happiness balancing might unbalance leaders, policies and beliefs...

 

[mystikx21]

Yes, definitely. Although we can quickly come up with policy or happiness effects (and have some new ones) that replace or replicate the rough effects of the existing policies once the happiness and economic changes are sounded out generally enough. I think the tile/economy changes have progressed enough that we can start that work. Ditto units.

I will be putting up a summary post of the different changes (in part so I can keep track of them), and then package that together to send off to the boss to use. We'll have to tweak some numbers from there of course, but the overall balance is more modest in some places than GEM/CEP (and more ambitious in scope in others). Which I think is to the good.

 

[Tomice]

It's surely good to look at the unmodded game once again and ask ourselves about the flaws and needed changes from scratch. Many things in CEP seemed to be there mostly because they were some kind of tradition.

 

[mystikx21]

Correct. I've been posting major CEP changes in the threads as the topics emerge (once buildings and tiles and units are basically matured, I will start one on wonders and leaders). That way people who did not use it can comment with their outsider perspective, and stalker, expired, and I each have some distinct points of view on how to achieve some balance, what needs changed, what doesn't, so there will be a CEP PoV too.

Some of those changes we have kept or modified slightly and some we have removed or replaced or were made obsolete. I think the basic goals of CEP are being maintained as much as possible, but we are trying to avoid change for the sake of change and where a change is made, use some amount of modularity so people can season to taste easier.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Note that not everybody here (though many have) played/followed CEP. There's a reason why I tend to argue against many of mystikx21's CEP lists - because I'm unfamiliar with CEP's reasoning and see at least a few things as pre-BNW/Civ4 design choices. I see a lot of interesting and good design in Civ5/BNW that I hope we get to preserve.

That's why, I think, the discussion here is really important and interesting (and I hope I'm not annoying mystikx21 by basically going "why?" at every second proposal... ).

 

[mystikx21]

I didn't create the mod. Just helped out a lot (same with expired). "Why" is a very useful exercise which is why I want to post the changes instead of just go whole-hog and have to take things out or adjust things after the fact.

But I'm not always the best person to ask either. At least half the time I'm inclined to agree it wasn't needed, isn't needed anymore, or should be toned down. There were clearly some legacy changes from vanilla and GK in there that should have been removed (and I've usually toned those down from what was in the official mod as it is). Most of the changes that are up for discussion are already my watered down ideas.

 

[Stalker0]

At least half the time I'm inclined to agree it wasn't needed, isn't needed anymore, or should be toned down.

I can say, as much disagreement as mystikx and I have on the specifics of implementation, I think we are both in agreement on this.

In general, I think CEP went a bit too far. It went away from a balance patch and truely became a varied gameplay patch. That said, there is still a lot of good content that can be used with small adjustment.

 

[Wodhann]

Note that not everybody here (though many have) played/followed CEP. There's a reason why I tend to argue against many of mystikx21's CEP lists - because I'm unfamiliar with CEP's reasoning and see at least a few things as pre-BNW/Civ4 design choices. I see a lot of interesting and good design in Civ5/BNW that I hope we get to preserve.

Seconded. Whenever someone mentions CEP I frown and go like "whatever...", then carry on with my ideas considering Civ5 as it is and not compared to some other mod that did a similar thing.

Not trying to belittle CEP, it's just that I never played it nor do I feel like I have to.

 

[Gazebo]

CEP's done a lot of great things, but I've always been a proponent of 'take what we want from CEP, ditch what doesn't work.' I think that's a fair assessment of what we all want to do.
G

 

[Stalker0]

CEP's done a lot of great things, but I've always been a proponent of 'take what we want from CEP, ditch what doesn't work.' I think that's a fair assessment of what we all want to do.
G

Yes, its important to note how much experience comes with CEP. The mod has gone through every version of Civ5, and we have tried many of the ideas that have come up on these threads.

Its much better than starting from scratch