Balance - The "Wide vs Tall" Problem

[Gazebo]

Though I do think one should keep a sensible way of explaining the abstraction in mind, if simply because it guides intuition. A new subsystem or tweak should at least not go contrary to expectation.

Regarding the food vs. growth: It's not just the implication that bothers me, it's also that it punishes wide more than tall: often, cities go into stagnation with then hit the food ceiling, often without many reserves. If you are then hit by unhappiness, you might lose a citizen. It takes a size 15 city a lot more turns to recover from that than a size 2 city, meaning a empire with large, topped out, well-developed cities is hit harder than one of a lot of tiny ones.

Another idea along this line: for every missing building, have a gold penalty equal to the maintenance cost of the missing building. It imposes a "development penalty" - cities pay for the buildings without getting the benefit until they are actually built.

I'm starting to like the idea of population limits, I have to say. It also solves the issue that luxury resources are always better than food resources. If population becomes more important, so do settling spots with lots of food.

Scaling happiness from luxuries based on total empire population would also help with this immensely.

So, I'd like to get a framework for v1 up and running soon.

First step for you guys:

Import CEP information that we can or want.
Draw up a list of xml number changes you are happy with.
Draw up a list of new xml for the functions below.

For me:

Create function for buildings requiring more than a certain amount of population
Create function for buildings requiring more than a certain amount of imperial population (this can, on a side note, be used to take away the building dependency of national wonders – why not make the bonus tied to imperial population? This works for wide or tall).

Creating unhappiness yield functions for culture, defense and religion (in the event we want them).

Thoughts?
G

 

[mystikx21]

For this. I'm inclined to say that a change to luxuries is the easiest solution, with maybe a change to city unhappiness as well. I like the Tirian-Wodhann setup but it sounds like it is beyond the initial scope to use it.

I do not think the city population requirement for development is ideal.

Some kind of development penalty maybe as a means of getting around to a gold cost per city, but it would have to scale based on available tech, etc.

As far as CEP. I have to say we haven't yet discussed most of the objects I would want to see ported over (units, resource distribution, tile values, building/wonders, policies, tech tree), and so far the only change that's even come up is the per city unhappiness costs.

 

[Gazebo]

Fair enough. I'm going to throw the functions together anyways (as it is super easy, and might be of use eventually). I'd like to push on, then, and see if we can't agree on what to port over and what to not port over.

My .02:

1.) The leader traits are largely solid. I'd import them all, then we can go in and tweak as we need to (none are inferior to the base game's traits). We have some work to do on BNW's leaders (specifically Indonesia), but I digress.

2.) The units need some work. I'm of the opinion that a 'balance patch' should not add more units to the game. I think we take many of the promotions and bonuses that are in CEP, but leave out the wonky until upgrade trees. Once we have these established, we can work on more balance. I will say that, for the sake of the AI, we need to avoid a rock-paper-scissors approach to combat. The AI has a hard enough time getting things arranged correctly as-is.
(As an aside, I really, really think we should make all ranged land and naval units have the ability to capture cities. Make them very weak strength-wise, but this alone would help the AI so much).

3.) The policies are...okay. Not great, but not terrible. I honestly like the policies of Reform and Rule more (except for his questionable Patronage tree). I think a balance somewhere between the two would be nice, but I'm (of course) partial to the ideas I outlined in the rationalism thread.

4.) Vanilla buildings aren't terrible, but I like most of CEP's. I say we take them all.

5.) Vanilla wonders need work. Most of CEP's changes are solid. I say we take them all and sort out the balance later.

6.) CEP's AI changes and global changes are largely unnecessary, particularly with the DLL. I say we ditch them and start over from scratch. We also do not need any of the custom lua (Except for the 'tools').

G

 

[mystikx21]

1) Leader wise - there's probably cause to discuss the following, relative to the CEP final release, unless you're pulling from stuff I did to it. Any of this stuff I'd suggest is of note for changes or even discussion, on top of going over the BNW group, where I'd agree Indonesia is probably most in need of work. The US/Rome questions were probably the most pressing for me personally.
Note: Babylon and Korea may be considered to be nerfed somewhat. Or at least changed such that they are not as overpoweringly strong (though this was more true after I reduced them somewhat than in the official release). I'd also consider reducing the Mayan Pyramid to 1 faith 2 science, perhaps.
Note: that change log is all the stuff I did to CEP over the last month or so, not just leaders changes. Policies got a major overhaul, so did the game economy.

2) The units in CEP were relatively well balanced (But not perfectly so). They could need changes to the resource distribution to be a little better off. I would say the skirmisher units were the biggest wonky change that needs to be figured out (chariot archer-dragoon-gunship changes). Otherwise, I would agree they're better and more interesting overall.

I would still say we could use 2-3 new ships (a ranged classical ship, a ranged industrial ship to go with ironclads, and a modern melee ship post-destroyer). Otherwise, I would not want to add anything unit wise.

The promotions are basically fine there and mean we could remove Marines or ATGs if desired.

The AI seems fine at attacking and capturing cities with reasonably strong melee ships in CEP and changes to city strength. I've seen them do it at any rate. The biggest change there was the change in city strength period came down and we used extra hit points from defence buildings to make for proper sieges. I would say the AI suffered from the same problem of using melee units on land anyway. If we have fixed that, then chances are good that the melee ship problem is decreased. (misread this point slightly: if this is being proposed, would it allow melee attacks only against cities as a coup de gras?. Most ranged units are already fairly weak melee wise relative to melee units of the similar era, so a reduction in strength is not needed. I'd be curious if this would in fact help the AI though. Would it know to use ranged attacks to soften it up first and then come in as a finisher?)

3) Policies need a lot of work still. Especially Piety. I would be happy to look over stuff in R&R and see if we can't combine those forces. Religion in general needs a lot of work. And that change log should make the policies more tolerable to start with. Exploration in particular. Rationalism is still a problem which we will be looking at making some adjustments toward. (looked over R&R's policy trees. There's some good ideas to be mined, but a lot that make little sense to me from the "don't break it if it already works well" philosophy, I will post some thoughts on it).

4) CEP's buildings are generally a lot better. I did a balance pass after the official release to more of them and they should be better still (more or less upkeep, cost changes, some UB changes, etc).

5) Wonders are definitely better, but there hadn't been any balance pass in a while. I believe there's some changes needed here and there to make some of them work, no idea if they're all lua based or xml (machu picchu, hagia sophia stand out there). National Wonders got a balance pass but not the other.

6) Agreed.

7) There's a bunch of tile balance changes, economic changes (city connections for example), resource distribution change, and a few others that we'd want to look at. The one I'd want to be most cautious about is the change moving villages/trade posts forward. That may be fine but I think it was moved too early.

Also there's code that disabled inflation. That appears to be a major imbalancing feature and needs to be removed if it was to be used.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Just a quick comment regarding policies: I really don't like R&R tradition tree design-wise, it's pretty much the "one city challenge" tree there instead of encouraging having ~4 core cities. Tall shouldn't be just "one huge city".

 

[mystikx21]

^Agreed.

I would not advise that we port over any mod in full design but adopt ideas that seem most sensible and necessary and reject and replace those that aren't. Tradition is basically fine in the base game, with some adjustments in the order of effects here and there to make it a little broader but preserve a 4 city base. It doesn't need "help". Not much was done to it in CEP (and the aqueduct change that was could be restored with the dll mod overtop of it as there's a fix for that I believe).

 

[ExpiredReign]

6.) CEP's AI changes and global changes are largely unnecessary, particularly with the DLL. I say we ditch them and start over from scratch. We also do not need any of the custom lua (Except for the 'tools').

Hallelujah!!!

(As an aside, I really, really think we should make all ranged land and naval units have the ability to capture cities. Make them very weak strength-wise, but this alone would help the AI so much)

So you mean giving them a very weak MELEE strength to enable to deliver the coup de grace? I would like to see how this would be implemented to make a decision first, I'm not sold 100% on the idea, though I do see the need for it to help the AI. If no other solution to that situation is forth-coming then, yes, give them that ability.

As to CEP's buildings, the only part I don't really like is the whole smith/workshop/windmill restructuring and renaming. It always seemed to me as convoluted.

CEP's units are a whole new kettle of fish. The entire lines of units were adjusted to make them as viable for longer and earlier so as to be useful up until their replacements are researched. This didn't always work as there tended to be two opposing camps, one that viewed their position in the techtree, and the other that viewed them based on the amount of research expended to get them. The first camp, notably EricB's mod-mod, viewed the position in the techtree as important and wanted the basic unit early in an era and the upgrade either last in the era or first in the next era. The latter, Thal's view, was to calculate the research from all the lines of research and place them accordingly. This meant units like muskets, riflemen, infantry came and went very quickly.
It's for this reason I suggest leaving the CEP modified units aside and just work from vanilla. Set our own suggested goals of viability and longevity and work from there.
I tend to agree with @mystikx21 that we might need to investigate some 'fill-in' units. Notably in the naval lines, but I still feel there is need of work with the scout type units, not sure exactly what would be universally accepted, but I will flesh-out an idea as we get in to it more.



Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk

 

[Gazebo]

Good points all. Before we continue, I want to list out all the functions I've added that affect gameplay directly (functions that aren't just AI improvements). Here they are, with descriptions.

-- Create buildings that cannot have access to fresh water.

ALTER TABLE Buildings ADD COLUMN 'IsNoWater' boolean default false;

-- Belief requires an improvement on a terrain type to grant its yield.

ALTER TABLE Beliefs ADD COLUMN 'RequiresImprovement' boolean default false;

-- Belief requires a resource (improved or not) on a terrain type to grant its yield.

ALTER TABLE Beliefs ADD COLUMN 'RequiresResource' boolean default false;

-- Give CSs defensive units at the beginning of the game.

ALTER TABLE Eras ADD COLUMN 'StartingMinorDefenseUnits' integer default 0;

-- Give CSs defensive units at the beginning of the game.

ALTER TABLE HandicapInfos ADD COLUMN 'StartingMinorDefenseUnits' integer default 0;

-- Earn a free building only in your capital as your trait. No tech requirement.

ALTER TABLE Traits ADD COLUMN 'FreeCapitalBuilding' text default NULL;

-- Earn a set number of free buildings. Uses standard 'FreeBuilding' trait (i.e. Carthage). No tech requirement.

ALTER TABLE Traits ADD COLUMN 'NumFreeBuildings' integer default 0;

-- Adds a tech requirement to the free buildings.

ALTER TABLE Traits ADD COLUMN 'FreeBuildingPrereqTech' text default NULL;

-- Adds a tech requirement to the free capital building.

ALTER TABLE Traits ADD COLUMN 'CapitalFreeBuildingPrereqTech' text default NULL;

-- Grants a free valid promotion to a unit when it enters a type of feature (forest, marsh, etc.).

ALTER TABLE Features ADD COLUMN 'LocationUnitFreePromotion' text default NULL;

-- Grants a free valid promotion to a unit when it spawns on type of feature (forest, marsh, etc.). Generally used for barbarians.

ALTER TABLE Features ADD COLUMN 'SpawnLocationUnitFreePromotion' text default NULL;

-- Feature-promotion bonuses restricted to Barbarians. Can be used with CityStateOnly if desired.

ALTER TABLE Features ADD COLUMN 'IsBarbarianOnly' boolean default false;

-- Feature-promotion bonuses restricted to City States. Can be used with IsBarbarianOnly if desired.

ALTER TABLE Features ADD COLUMN 'IsCityStateOnly' boolean default false;

-- Grants a free valid promotion to a unit when it enters a type of terrain (grassland, plains, coast, etc.).

ALTER TABLE Terrains ADD COLUMN 'LocationUnitFreePromotion' text default NULL;

-- Grants a free valid promotion to a unit when it spawns on type of terrain (grassland, plains, coast, etc.). Generally used for barbarians.

ALTER TABLE Terrains ADD COLUMN 'SpawnLocationUnitFreePromotion' text default NULL;

-- Grants a free valid promotion to a unit when it is adjacent to a type of terrain (grassland, plains, coast, etc.). Generally used for barbarians.

ALTER TABLE Terrains ADD COLUMN 'AdjacentUnitFreePromotion' text default NULL;

-- Terrain-promotion bonuses restricted to Barbarians. Can be used with CityStateOnly if desired.

ALTER TABLE Terrains ADD COLUMN 'IsBarbarianOnly' boolean default false;

-- Terrain-promotion bonuses restricted to City States. Can be used with IsBarbarianOnly if desired.

ALTER TABLE Terrains ADD COLUMN 'IsCityStateOnly' boolean default false;

-- Adds ability for settlers to get free buildings when a city is founded.
ALTER TABLE Units ADD COLUMN 'FoundMid' boolean default false;

-- Adds ability for settlers to get free buildings when a city is founded.
ALTER TABLE Units ADD COLUMN 'FoundLate' boolean default false;

These do not include Whoward's functions and changes, which are equally substantial, though not gameplay focused.

We have some new trait options, as you can see. We now have the ability to give only a free building in the capital (something an early-rush civ like Assyria might take advantage of), we can set the number of free buildings a civ receives (so, for example, we could limit Dido to 4 harbors, not that we would want to), we can set the tech for when these free buildings unlock (so you could give, say, England two free factories at industrialization), or when the free capital building unlocks. these give us quite a few interesting means of adding traits without falling back on yield bonuses, etc.

We have the ability to give features and terrain bonuses, either for spawning (i.e. barbarian spawns) or passing through them (like Kilaminjaro, but for anything). We can set these to be CityState only, or Barbarian only. Kinda fun. Saves us a lot of extra code for barbarian spawns.

We have the super settlers from CSD (they're now in the Balance Patch - I consider them largely essential for making late-game settlements viable, especially for the AI around 1800).

We have the 'requires improvement' or 'requires resource' traits for beliefs. This lets us nerf dance of the aurora and desert folklore.

We have the 'IsNoWater' trait for buildings. This is used for the test buildings in the community patch.

Lastly, we can set the number of units a minor civ starts with. This should make minors less weak at the start, and reduce the risk of the gamey 'steal a worker' mechanic (along with the other, jerk-related element I added).

Okay, so, on to your questions/responses.

1.) Sounds good (re: leaders). I think we can do anything CEP did. If not, we have new traits to fill in the gaps.

2.) I think we should import CEP's units. I also see no reason not to have scouts transition into horsemen (requiring a horse to do so). It makes sense, as they serve similar military roles. I'd rather start with that optimized unit build than start from scratch.

The melee for ranged units may not be necessary. The AI would be able to use them (it looks for units with any melee skill that can take a city - it does not discriminate).

3.) Piety needs to just not be about religion. That's the problem: it is a branch with the expectation of having a religion. No other branch is co-dependent for success like that. I say we just drop the 'religious' bit, and make it more about happiness and culture (taking the culture from tradition). See my post on the rationalism thread- I really think we should move in that direction.

(Side note: we also need to just import CEP's beliefs and tenets, and go from there)

4.) I like CEP's buildings, though some things (instant yield boost) will not work without a dll function. We can manage that, though - there are other things we can do with those. Bring em on!

5.) Wonders will be fine. Machu Picchu can use the PlotYields table to grants it bonuses (that's already in the DLL)

6.) Yay

7.) That's fine with me, though I'm honestly keen to just say let's use Barathor's More Luxuries mod as this mod's 'resource balance' mod. It is really, really well polished. I'm sure he'd agree, and be happy to join the borg. I also think snow should have a yield (that'll help the sometimes-dumb AI).

Hooray! Things are coming together.
G

 

[Gazebo]

Oh, and we also now have the ability to give any policy any number of any building, buildings/policies/beliefs can modify plot yields (like mountains), and buildings/policies/beliefs can grant GGeneral/GAdmiral points, or Golden Age points. Whew!
G

 

[mystikx21]

1) For Leaders if there's a free building desired, a barracks for the Huns/Assyrians or a stable would for Huns/Mongols could be useful. Basically the best civs that this would make sense to use are rush-dependent conquerors who are otherwise considered weaker. (Do not put it on Rome for instance), or possibly religious dependent ones like Byzantium (free temple say). - Alternatively there's a few civs that maybe a free unit at a tech would improve them also (Carthage or England could get a free ship, US could get a free airplane, etc).

For 2) CEP set the Gatling - MG - Bazooka line as higher melee strength than ranged, which would be complicated for attacking cities (they'd always be better using their melee attack) if that's the change you're going for. We could compensate by giving them an attacking city penalty. If we are using Whowards unit promotion lines, it should be possible to set up some distinct promotions where needed, but it would mostly be about unit specific innate bonuses that CEP uses (city attack on swords, defence on spears, land/sea attack on bombers, etc) which shouldn't be a problem.

3) I posted some extensive thoughts on the Reform and Rule in the Rationalism thread. There's about 20-25 things I really like, and about 45-50 I didn't (I concur that the Patronage tree in there was terrible, but I didn't much care for many of the other designs in that they lacked coherence at times. So did CEP too at times).

Piety - There isn't really much culture in Tradition (the opener and the border expansion, and the free culture buildings, which has a mixed reputation as it is and could be removed anyway). I'm leaned heavily toward the expectation that happiness should be from the beliefs/religion rather than the tree itself, but piety could impact that in some way. I'd be fine with it having its own sources of culture/expansionism however. That is a major weak point in the tree. I do not think this would be a tree you would take seriously unless you have a religion or intend to get one, but it should always be a tree you will take if you do. Right now this is not the case. It should work similar to Patronage/Aesthetics but somewhat stronger (than it is now) or more flexibly. Patronage and Aesthetics have narrower functions that they execute reasonably well, but could easily be improved upon. Piety could give a broader array of options but each giving a narrow function

4) Isnowater, I'd like to use the wind power building. That idea intrigued me (+1 on flat grassland?). I'm not as sold on the need for a garden or watermill alternative. I like having rivers mean a little more to the game than a modest trade route boost. But if they are more expensive or available at a later tech, that could be fine. We could improve rivers by making more +1 freshwater yields on techs for an earlier growth/production bump.

Agreed we should avoid the CEP confusing name changes on buildings where possible. It did dump the recycling center, the bomb shelter, and the forge (I'd leave that name in instead of the "smith", but change the effects), plus a few UBs.

7) Barathor's mod change any yields/tech changes, or just add some luxuries for variety (which in turn could be impacted by buildings/tech changes for improvements)? The CEP tile yields were not well-balanced until late-stage (recently), which means they're still unpolished and not quite done as it is. Resource distribution was generally better (spread out the horses/iron/alum/etc to more tiles at fewer per tile), with somewhat fewer overall and better islands and coastlines. If luxury distribution is likewise improved there, then the combination should be pretty solid. I'd have no problem adding more luxuries as it appears he doesn't add more per game, just more options to use. This could in turn impact beliefs.

I'm ambivalent about snow yields. I think if the coast is good and resources well distributed, the snow isn't a significant issue (snow hill should have a yield though). If the problem is the AI settling meaningless snow cities, maybe we could just try to reduce the amount of snow on the map, replaced with tundra.

Mountain yields from beliefs or buildings could be interesting, but rarely likely to overcome the lack of improvements that I'd want to use them over specialists or regular tiles.

Also: I assumed this would be a part of it, but Natural wonders would absolutely need to be balanced. CEP sort of does this well but I'm open to alternatives there.

 

[Wodhann]

Comfort concept is starting to die silently in the corner. Let's try one more iteration.

Dissatisfaction Level | Multiplier
Satisfied|x0
Discontent|x0,25
Frustated|x0,5
Miserable|x0,75
Abused|x1
Oppressed|x1,25
Tyrannized|x1,5

For every city, the following parameters are accounted:

• Cultured: City's culture output must be producing X* or higher
• Prosperous: City is producing X* or higher
• Secure: City must have X* or higher
• Free: City must not be occupied or have a courthouse.
• Devout: One religion has at least 66% of the population as believers (certain SPs get rid of this).
• Connected: City is connected to the capital.
• Healthy: City is not starving.
• Peaceful: There are no enemy units within city borders.

Each parameter that returns false moves dissatisfation level up 1 rank.

All you do then is multiply the number of citizens by the satisfaction level multiplier (rounded up).

This spreadsheet shows how much unhappiness would be produced by cities up to 20 citizens:

Satisfaction/Size | 1  | 2  | 3  | 4  | 5  | 6  | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
Satisfied|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|
Discontent|1|1|1|1|2|2|2|2|3|3|3|3|4|4|4|4|5|5|5|5
Frustated|1|1|2|2|3|3|4|4|5|5|6|6|7|7|8|8|9|9|10|10
Miserable|1|2|3|3|4|5|6|6|7|8|9|9|10|11|12|12|13|14|15|15
Abused|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20
Oppressed|2|3|4|5|7|8|9|10|12|13|14|15|17|18|19|20|22|23|24|25
Tyrannized|2|3|5|6|8|9|11|12|14|15|17|18|20|21|23|24|26|27|29|30

This is pretty much it, it probably doesn't get much simpler than that.

 

[JFD]

[snip]

I could get behind this mechanic; although perhaps as an offshoot component, not a part of the balance patch. Being not so strategically concerned (immersion player) and more of a casual player, too often I don't know what to build. This system would give me a soft guidance that would ease the frustration of having too many choices - especially in later cities. But, this would not net any balance for me; which is why I'd prefer to see it as an independent component.

 

[Wodhann]

I could get behind this mechanic; although perhaps as an offshoot component, not a part of the balance patch. Being not so strategically concerned (immersion player) and more of a casual player, too often I don't know what to build. This system would give me an soft guidance that would ease the frustration of having too many choices - especially in later cities. But, this would not net any balance for me; which is why I'd prefer to see it as an independent component.

The reason I'm posting this here is because of how fundamentally unbalanced I think the current system is.

To me it got to a point where just juggling the numbers won't seem to suffice. It's all based on the same faulty, arbitrary system.

I also disagree it doesn't net into balance. On the contrary.

 

[mystikx21]

Wodhann, I think there's a general consensus that the idea has considerable merit, but whether it should be part of a balance patch or whether it should part of a much broader modification of its own has leaned much toward the latter as there are a couple of complicating factors.

1) It itself isn't balanced yet mechanically. It's ironing out, but we'd have to see how it would work in a game and juggle it some still. Versus deploying a system that amounts to juggling what's already at play, which would be simpler to do. Numerically it looks simple and looks to be "about right", though that's different from how it feels to play it and how it works out game wise. We know how the current system works game wise to see what juggling it would do glancing at a chart.

We also don't know how happiness as an input works with this system. Does it just generate positive happiness as now to counteract it? Does it negate discontent levels in a city? Etc.

2) The AI. Your contention focusing on MP is all well and good, but not everyone plays MP. We would need the AI to know how to use and mitigate this system. It is more elegant than the often arbitrary system being used now. Which means the AI may not do as well with it unless we can teach it how to manage it, versus a system which it should already understand how to manage, even if the system is clunky and sometimes unrealistic. It isn't just the unemployment effect you originally suggested and has been removed from the idea, it's the entire system that would need to be overhauled and instructed that the AI would need to manage food, happiness sources (however they would work), religion, culture, profits, expansion, growth, defence, and its borders to maintain a happy empire. Right now it just needs to manage growth and happiness and expansion and to a lesser extent its borders (pillaging luxuries).

That objection isn't wiped away by stating the project overall should be for MP use too. If it should be for MP then we can make it into an MP modification. But if it won't work in single player also, it shouldn't be in the balance patch.

3) We don't know that it won't work either but if the coding required is significant, that's a serious obstacle versus making some data edits. (that doesn't mean it isn't worth the effort, but it may not be as immediate a priority, for the same reasons that the yield library has frequently fallen off the list for coders to fix).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Just my 2 cents worth, but I definitely feel that negative happiness should have a much greater impact than in the Vanilla Game-& I think that staying away from negative happiness-especially for wide empires-should be difficult, & you could even have "distance from capital" impact on # of city unhappiness....assuming you want to go the happiness as a speed bump route.

Another option might be for building maintenance costs to multiply according to how far from the capital the city is. If this option were taken, then you could have things like Provincial Capitals, Versailles & The Forbidden Palace act as capitals for the purpose of calculating the multiplier, & have Court Houses reduce the modifier by a set amount (courthouses are completely useless for anyone except conquerers at the moment, which really ticks me off).

Of course, a combination of both factors could be adopted, in which case Courthouses could reduce unhappiness/distance from capital unhappiness modifier....even for non-occupied cities....& reduce the maintenance cost modifier of buildings.

Then, of course, there is always the Social Policy/Ideology path to improving the Tall vs Wide Balance.

Anyway, forgive my rambling....hope that all makes sense.

Aussie.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Be careful with adding new concepts like War Weariness or Corruption. It would run the risk of greater incompatibility with larger mods, which I expect is undesirable.

If it's of any thought, in my Social Policy overhaul mod, unhappiness increases the cost of Social Policies instead of cities doing as much.

For me, corruption was the single suckiest part of Civs 1-3, & I am glad they scrapped it in Civ4 & Civ5. I do like the idea of a very limited war weariness system-one which applies only to units on foreign soils-either in the form of increased unit maintenance costs or a happiness penalty every X turns of war. Such penalties could then be mitigated via some Honor & Autocracy policies-as well as the Cassus Belli World Congress "policy".

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Speaking of Luxuries, Gazebo, I would love it if they worked like strategic resources....i.e. be size based. Maybe size 1-5, with each size being equal to 1 happiness. That way, having multiple copies of the same luxury-even for yourself-would be beneficial. Without wanting to get too complicated, each new source of the same luxury is slightly less beneficial than the first (2nd one only grants 0-4 happiness, 3rd one grants 0-3 4th one grants no additional happiness). Also, another possibility could be that every 4th city you build, you get a -1 happiness per luxury (to simulate having to stretch it thinner). This way, you could still trade a luxury to someone who already had said luxury, especially if they were trying to maintain a larger empire.

Anyway, I confess I'm mostly just spitballing. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Aussie.

 

[JFD]

The reason I'm posting this here is because of how fundamentally unbalanced I think the current system is.

To me it got to a point where just juggling the numbers won't seem to suffice. It's all based on the same faulty, arbitrary system.

I also disagree it doesn't net into balance. On the contrary.

I said it didn't net into balance for me. The perspective and actualisation of balance is altered by the way I play.

 

[Gazebo]

Wodhann,

I really like the idea, I do! I swear. I just don't think it qualifies as part of the core balance patch. The idea with the balance patch is to balance what already exists, not throw new features on top of it. That's why CSD isn't part of the balance patch, but rather an optional component - it 'fixes' a lot of the problems with the base Diplomacy Victory, but it is a lot of additional stuff that isn't necessarily appropriate for a balance patch.

It may pain you to do so, but let's focus on balancing, as best we can, what we have, then, in a few releases, we'll see what we can do. I'd like to see us get a v1 out the door before we starting adding a ton of new content anyways.
G

 

[Wodhann]

Well for one I think it's too early to for a v1. We need to iterate a lot more not only on WvT but on social policies and other significant stuff. The overall vibe I'm getting right now feels like you guys are rushing it a bit, like some loose ideas are being picked up and on the verge of becoming a reality without much back and forth to it (that's only how I feel though).

Also, if you guys want the balance patch to be merely a number adjustment, then just tell me right now as I will completely lose interest in the project. I understand the comfort idea being too much for you but there is no way to balance the game right now without actively changing how things work rather than just replacing numbers.