Balanced Game Playthrough, Strategy & Analysis

[Tomice]

I'm still playing a game with the romans, using CCMAT with your balance changes (not most recent update, but cities v7 beta and combat v13, so very similar to the game shown here.

I've also hardly seen the lategame, due to often-updating mods and twice due to the now fixed endless peace bug

In terms of feedback, the modded game plays great, way better than vanilla. I also believe the AI got better to a certain degree.
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Regarding strategy, I tend to have troubles in the very early stages of the game, when everything seems important. I found myself having almost all of the classic techs before having any from the medieval, which seemed stupid after a second thought.

My first priorities usually are revealing horses and iron, since I tend to REX on the sweetest spots, hoping to survive with 3 or 4 cities and only one or two units (When my neighbours aren't too close - or Monty ). I do build workers, though. Then I catch up in military strenght and try to get my luxuries improved, since i'm usually out of smilies.

Further steps are getting libraries and collosei, since those are the buildings I want almost everywhere after monuments, and then getting the yield boosts from civil service and engineering.

Somewhere here the first war is inevitable, and either am I eliminated or I eliminate someone and have few problems after this*.

Regarding wonders, to me the early ones seem nice to have, but not crucial.

The great library seems less powerful now that engineering seems better to beeline than civil service, and without second scientist slot in the library the lower part of the techtree seems even better.



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*) One thing that came to my mind: In early wars, razing cities is almost always better than puppeting, since happiness is rare and the cities have no buildings anyway. I'm not a big fan of paying thousands of years for courthouses, either.

Is this situation OK from your perspective? Or do you plan any changes in this regard?

 

[Thalassicus]

For most civs I get Calendar first, then focus on going for just horses or iron. It's easier to do this now that Bronze Working reveals iron, less risky to go that path. I drop down my first few cities directly on or adjacent to luxury resources, and use the ~350g trades to buy more settlers, until I have 3-4 cities.

I'm playing Rome this game now, epic immortal large pangaea (same as before except larger map size). I'm recording it and might do a discussion of the playthrough. I went for an early Iron Working and rush-upgraded 4 Legions, knocked out Mongolia by turn 100 and now taking down the Songhai, with ballistae building from my military city to support the legions. I've been building monuments and barracks in my cities, trying to get the heroic epic. Since Libraries aren't totally OP anymore I focus on military and luxuries first, before getting writing.

 

[Tomice]

Thx for your thoughts!

I'm also focusing on one type of combat unit first, with Rome it's Legions, of course. I had almost no other units during the first war, adding support troops very late (I hardly ever use archers for some reason, although you buffed them).

But I often grab animal husbandry anyway, even if no cows or such are near my first city. Often one or two horses appear, which are valuable for their yield alone. And I can plan my empire better this way.


What I really have to try is the newly buffed specialist economy. How much does the strategy rely on your recently added national wonders (and additional specialist slots for existing NWs)? Sure, they are probably very important, but would a SE make any sense if you wouldn't focus your strategy completely on getting them early? I can imagine that short-term problems can delay them quite a bit. How sleazy can one play before the whole concept collapses?

 

[Niniux]

I've been playing a game as the Modded Canadian Civ with the balance tweaks and I find it actually made King difficulty a bit more challenging for me, which is great.

I started out going to Bronze Working but Iron availability was a bust and AH revealed a number of Horses nearby. I jumped into Liberty and quickly REXed a few cities. I have found happiness is much more of an issue early game for me. Especially with Aqueducts (which I LOVE). This is a great change and kept me from completely steamrolling.

The Aztecs and the Ottomans attacked me early but due to a couple Horsemen and a few Chariot Archers the Militaristic CS gifted me, I was able to take Monty's only two cities and demolish the flood of Ottoman warriors and spears and was able to get him to sue for peace.

Later, border pressure was building as both the Songhai and the Ottomans were building cities right on my border. (I play with extra Civs per map size, precisely for this early pressure). I went to war with the Songhai, taking and razing their nearest cities and throwing my own down. I saw that the Ottomans were massing troops on my border, so I bribed the Greeks to declare war on them. Greece is now the runaway and is pretty much surrounding me, but surprisingly our relationships are good. Now I'm having fun playing the builders game and working on infrastructure. Having so many larger cities also makes it fun and that's with only one Maritime CS.

Anyway, like I said before, thanks for the mod.

(Oh, and the problem I PMed you about was because of the Copa UI mod, I forgot I had it enabled, thanks)

 

[Thalassicus]

In addition to Legions, with horses I build a few Chariot Archers. They provide decent ranged support (good for whittling down cities until you get Ballistae up) and are highly mobile (moreso now that they can move after attacking). Best part is when upgraded to Knights their ranged promotions get swapped to melee versions, due to the code I added to the Combat mod, giving you a very powerful medieval mounted force. Patch 1.0.0.62 also made them Archer class, which means they don't get penalties attacking spearmen anymore.

From my two games as Suleiman I've found that even with the change to the Tradition tree, a specialist economy can't really surpass a tile-based economy until the renaissance era. (Even with the buffs I don't ever go Tradition unless I have Marble next to my capital for some wonder spam.) Renaissance is the point Fertilizer and Rationalism/Freedom unlock, vital things to run specialists. With all of this and some planning (lots of farms and population ready to go), you can do very well in the industrial era onwards.

National wonders give a huge benefit in this regard, a total of 12 additional specialist slots. You can't fully utilize all those slots until the Renaissance, however, so it's not imperative to rush them early.

I'm glad the balancing is making the game more challenging Niniux, that's one of my goals... vanilla seems too easy.

Happiness definitely becomes a concern if you build Aqueducts. It makes the Baths, Notre Dame & Eiffel Tower more valuable (the latter two also have a 50% buff in City Development). I've found the adjustments to early-game happiness makes luxuries more valuable to keep than before... I really try and avoid dipping into unhappiness now, especially since I have Emigration installed.

It's good to hear you're having such fun in your game!

 

[Tomice]

I find it very hard to understand how one single person with limited tools could improve the game so much in such a short time.

Something seems to be wrong with the development process...

 

[Niniux]

I agree! And the best part is that all the tweaks seem to stay with the original spirit of the game too. It's not changing the mechanics radically to a totally different one. Don't get me wrong, I k ow there are or will be great total conversions but it's not what I was looking for yet.

 

[Slowpoke]

How much is tech diffusion affecting the game btw? It sounds like an interesting concept, but I wouldn't want to add it to my own mod if it's unbalancing.

 

[Tomice]

I yet have to see it's effect, I never got a popup something happened (I did activate it in CCMAT, which is not default, though).

But the overall effect of all mods together is that I've reached the medieval age and no civ has been eliminated, except the Iroquis, who died in a glorious (and initially very tough, since they started it) war against me. Egypt is reduced to one city, so they'll follow soon, I guess. There are still civs that are way more dominant than others, but it's no steamrolling any more. Tech diffusion might have contributed to this.


What I find missing, though, is a mechanic where a civ can recover after its initial force has been crushed. In Civ4, when you SoD was destroyed, you could build another while some cities were being taken. Overall, most wars had to be waged in multiple attempts (also due to economic reasons).

 

[pi-r8]

I played a few turns with these mods, and I have to say I don't think they really changed the basic balance of the game much. It still seems like the best strategy is some sort of initial city-spam followed by maxing out on scientists. The balance changes delay this a bit early on, but once you've got universities and you've reached the renaissance era, it's the same exact game (because food and happiness are not really limited, and there's not much benefit to growing big cities). The higher tect costs just make great scientists and RAs even more powerful than they already were.

 

[Slowpoke]

I find it very hard to understand how one single person with limited tools could improve the game so much in such a short time.

Something seems to be wrong with the development process...

I think there's two really big problems for why developers are not ideal for balancing their games

-I can definately say, when you've worked on a long coding project you just want to get it done. You just stop caring after several hundredth hour. Us modders have the privelage of just starting our projects

-They really need to hire someone reliable to read fan forums and play the game as a job. Anyone on these forums can pinpoint massive problems, and yet I bet the developers have no clue what to do. I looked at the new patch's projected changes. Honestly? It's junk. Sure what they're doing is positive but they have no clue what really needs to be changed compared to even the most casual of civ fanatics forum goers.

I played a few turns with these mods, and I have to say I don't think they really changed the basic balance of the game much. It still seems like the best strategy is some sort of initial city-spam followed by maxing out on scientists. The balance changes delay this a bit early on, but once you've got universities and you've reached the renaissance era, it's the same exact game (because food and happiness are not really limited, and there's not much benefit to growing big cities). The higher tect costs just make great scientists and RAs even more powerful than they already were.

Thal's mod I think is more designed for the vast majority of players, the prince-emperor players. If you're looking for exploit balances, I think you'd do well to look at my mod But honestly, you could just use thal's and just play with your own restrictions. Most of the severe exploits are pretty easily solved by just choosing not to use them. And thal's combat system is so good I think I'm going to use some of it myself

 

[pi-r8]

Thal's mod I think is more designed for the vast majority of players, the prince-emperor players. If you're looking for exploit balances, I think you'd do well to look at my mod But honestly, you could just use thal's and just play with your own restrictions. Most of the severe exploits are pretty easily solved by just choosing not to use them.

Building multiple settlers and running scientists is considered a severe exploit? This game is weird.

 

[Slowpoke]

Heh, yeah the game is a bit off kilter. But like I said, for you in particular, if you're too tempted to do stuff like martin's spaceship rush, you're better off using mega mod.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Slowpoke
While the mods are good for casual players, I consider hard difficulties too. I play on immortal after all.. though I'm not masochist enough to do Deity. I just try and get better and better at my current settings.

I don't think they really changed the basic balance of the game much.

Exactly, you're understanding it right. The basic principle is to keep the game fundamentally the same while adjusting a few over- or under-powered aspects. You can even play the same as before, though it's not necessarily the best strategy anymore, as long as you don't abuse the overpowered lightbulbing (as mentioned several times). Research pacts are a similar situation, we have very limited ways to manipulate them at the moment. Basically only wait time can be adjusted, which is why I increased it 25%.

Perkus has been exploring one possible way to fix the lightbulb problem with currently available tools (link).

As previously discussed, once we have c++ access the issues of lightbulbing and research pacts will be addressed. Until then it's best to just use them sparingly for maximum gameplay enjoyment.

The balance adjustments deal with much more than these two issues, as well: vanilla problems like maritime city states, horsemen, artillery, Babylon/China, ICS, underwhelming policies, wonders, and buildings, and so on.

 

[Perkus]

I believe that my "Harder Free Tech" mod does an excellent job of reigning in free tech bulbing beeliners & exploiters while impacting an average player minimally. Anyone making a rebalancing modpack should really have a serious look at it. I don't think having C++ access would allow for that big an improvement to it unless you wanted to nerf free tech so much that it would be insufficient to fully research even a fairly cheap & easy technology.

 

[Slowpoke]

Yes! I disabled bulbing altogether, and I think I'll be adopting your mod myself if you dont mind. Truly great work!

 

[bryanw1995]

Have you read this thread?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=396275

It seems like none of the changes you made would prevent that sort of strategy from working, and giving ultra-fast tech. In fact you actually boosted specialists, by having tradition give +1 science to all specialists. Moving a slot from libraries to universities doesn't matter much if you're getting fast universities anyway.

yes, but you're not getting many sp's when you ics, and there are many that are more valuable than tradition even with the improvements.

 

[Txurce]

I am halfway through my first game using Thal’s complete mod package. (I will add Emigration, Tech Diffusion, Obsolete Promotions, and Harder Free Tech in my next game.) Like Thal, I chose the Ottomans to test the dramatic new SA. I’m playing standard continents on Emperor, on normal speed.

My preset goals were a science victory via the strategically optimal number of large cities. What’s strategically optimal? Filling a defensible area of my continent with as few cities as possible to cover available resources, counting on cultural expansion to fill the gaps. (That’s my idea of fun.)

I found myself in the north of a thick-waisted hourglass continent, with the Aztecs in the center, England in the south, and CS scattered evenly about. Due to the UA, my plan was to focus on specialists, something I’d never done before. I chose tradition for the wonder building, then switched to full patronage.

I declared war on England along with the Aztecs, then made peace with her and attacked him as soon as I had four horses. Horses are good enough, right? The first city fell quickly, but the capital had walls and a defender. My first assault was a disaster, and I had to retreat and wait for my first GG. Even then, it barely fell with horses and one spearman. The third city was just as tough, because it was in hills and forests, but he also had less defenders.

This gave me the continental control I wanted right around 1 AD. I had built all farms plus food improvements, largely keeping cities on production except with specialists unless they couldn't grow, or until they had built key buildings, after which I put them on science. I suffered one wave of just-under-zero happiness before building Notre Dame. I beelined for Medieval to unlock Patronage, and then to whatever wonder I wanted to target. As it turned out, I didn’t research bronze working until I was building my first caravel! That was launched on 1000 AD – my earliest ever.

This was due to heavy expenditure of improvements. But when England built right next to my southernmost city, taking a nearby silver resource, and then sent a settler and spearman north – so much for my bottleneck - I declared war. Her little city had two hills in front, and she had a steady supply of longswordsmen. I had horses, a spear, a warrior, an archer, and a just-gifted catapult. I had to move the siege units right next to the city. They weren’t killed, but did surprisingly little damage against walls. And in the meantime all my building, with markets coming last and no TP’s, had me almost broke.

Luckily my caravel found the other continent in 1040, and I started selling my multiple ivory, cotton and spices. This allowed me to steady my economy and upgrade my horses to knights. Even with the knights, Coventry barely fell. The walls and frequently defensive setups really paid off for the English. I quickly made peace, razed the city, and bought the silver tile.

Afterward I thought – oh yeah! Cities are hard to take now! I loved it. And loved that the other continent had three evenly-matched civs just behind me in points, a mediocre one, and a weak one. I then started to spend my money on cultural an maritime influence, while building more and more city improvements.

It’s now 1585, just past the halfway mark. I just built two cities – a total of nine – to fill in the gaps in my half of the continent. I have the world’s highest pop, and just researched fertilizer. My happiness is at 13, science is at 357, and culture is at 119. I researched fertilizer for the pop boost, but hope to ignore the lower half of the tech tree for the rest of the game, as I await the Rationalism GA.

I have nothing but praise for these mods. On the one hand, the AI plays better, has no runaway civs so far, and cities are harder to take. (Next game I’ll build siege weapons!) On the other hand, I have never had as good a start with my traditional approach (no puppets, or almost none). I have bulbed like crazy due to the SA and my heavy specialist focus. Of course I agree they are OP, and will try Perkus’ mod in my next game. I have also used Great Artists to build academies rather than GA’s, thanks to its increased value.

While I can't directly say how much this dilutes the power of ICS, I can say that using my normal style - essentially ignore ICS and puppeting - I am doing much, much better. Something quantifiable can be drawn from this!

I have one unrelated question, Thal: why do you play Epic – because it’s Immortal? Or because you prefer it?

I’ve been saving playing on Immortal because it sounds unbalanced enough to be a “special” game – is that right, or is it no bigger of a shift than from King to Emperor?

 

[Thalassicus]

Sounds like you've been having a fun game!

I love bottleneck maps, provides for interesting military opportunities. In my current game I've got this fascinating pangaea split by a giant inland sea. The left side of the sea has a long string of 1-tile-wide land I dropped two cities on, and the right side is pictured here in this screenshot. It's the first time I've got really good use out of forts. Best part is those two trebuchets have a +1range promotion.

This setup lets me ignore the two civs at war with me to the north, and focus on conquering my portion of the pangaea.

I updated the list in the first post to reflect the current mods I'm using (lots have changed).

Emperor to Immortal didn't feel like a huge jump in difficulty. I play on Epic because I've always enjoyed slow, methodical games in Civ, and often play on large-size maps which require a little more time to get from point to point.

 

[Txurce]

Thal,

That's a great place. for a fort. I'm always looking for an opportunity to build one. I think the Civ5 maps provide more places. I always regret that there can't be a fort on a mined resource, but on the other hand, it's good to have those choices to make. And as you showed, there are always citadels!

I've put my game aside until tomorrow, when I'll finish. I'll offer more commentary as pertains to the mods, but will note for now that my pop doubled in the 20 turns after fertilizer. I felt like the Sorcerer's Apprentice!