Beta v4.X - General Discussion

[Seek]

I did reduce the production bonus on resources from the seaport to 1 for v4.12 beta.

Looking at the release notes for v4.13, this change didn't make it in? (I hope!) Hammers are rare enough, and the Seaport is one of my favorite buildings. Otherwise the changes seem great, particularly the NW requirements. You never cease to amaze!

My take on other topics discussed recently:
*I think the smokehouse is fine the way it is now, but I'd go with removing the base food before increasing the cost if you decide it needs a nerf.
*I've mentioned it before, but what if Archery's beaker cost was lowered to make it more tempting? (And by a noticeable amount, like 25%.) Archer/warrior rushes might be a little more feasible and archer UUs would get an indirect buff. I doubt the Barracks would do much for me to grab it early. Moving the camp doesn't sit well with me - it's more interesting to have some luxuries not immediately available.
*I've been meaning to suggest a small increase for tech costs for a while now as well. Around 10% above current values across the board.

On another note, watching Bibor's excellent Let's Play, when a civ was liberated it showed "Emotionless", which I've never seen before - I haven't liberated someone in months. So at least liberated civs don't irrationally hate their liberators any more! Do you have any more info about this, I'm curious.

 

[Thalassicus]

About the early techs... I very rarely get one of those without the intent to go for the next one. It depends on where I start...

• Most luxuries: calendar
• Marble: masonry
• Camp resources: trapping
• Sea resources: sailing
• No luxuries: writing

In other words, I don't usually get even two of the four first-techs right away. The above priorities are a good reason I always get Archery last, it's just so useless overall compared to unlocking nearby luxury and strategic resources.

I think trapping will always be useful, trading posts are a good source of gold (especially with nerfed rivers), trapping does lead to Civil Service, and I could reduce the tech's cost. Many techs have greater or lesser cost than others of their era.

Also, I noticed it was a common annoyance expressed by many people when the game came out that we spam "trading posts" everywhere that litter the landscape all the way to the modern era. Maybe rename 'trapping' to "Sanitation", move it to the classical era and rename "trading posts" to "villages"?

This would also be a buff to trapping, since it'd achieve an era-jump and the bonuses that entails.

 

[Ahriman]

On Deity, without the pacifying effects of WWGD, archery can often be a priority because an archer is by far the best way to fight off a rush from a nearby AI.

Also, I noticed it was a common annoyance expressed by many people when the game came out that we spam "trading posts" everywhere that litter the landscape all the way to the modern era. Maybe rename 'trapping' to "Sanitation", move it to the classical era and rename "trading posts" to "villages"?

I don't think trapping should be classical era, and I don't think sanitation makes logical sense that early.
Name changes are fine (though I can't think of a good alternative) but I don't see a gameplay problem here.
This doesn't really seem like a balance issue.

 

[Seek]

Why not simply make Archery a prereq for The Wheel instead of Mathematics? That's a tech that's hard to pass up and it's right next to it, so no crazy tech reordering necessary. It would also make chariot archers less immersion-breaking at the same time.

 

[rhammer640]

Again i dont know that making archery a pre-req for the wheel does much. All four base techs should be at least somewhat appealing to go for right away and right now i think we can agree (minus maybe those playing at diety which is way beyond me ) that archery is never the first chosen and at least for me is always the last and only chosen when i need the techs it leads to. I think the issue and what i think thal was thinking of when he suggested moving the camp is that each other tech has worker techs either on it or on the next techs in.
pottery has two techs with improvements after it,
animal husbandry has improvements and leads to trapping,
mine has improvements and leads to masonry
archery.....nothing

Anyway on a side note, i just finished playing the beginning of a game with 4.12 and had a few balance issues.
1: i think the watermill is way too expensive considering it replaces all the gold from rivers and at the same time is only useful if you are working more than 3 water tiles due to high maitenence. I think it needs a hammer reduction and maitenence reduction to even be viable.
2: i still think the smokehouse is too powerful, im fine with the cost and additions to food resources but the +2 extra food is too strong. My second city in my latest game had access to 5 deer and 2 fish total, 4 deer and 1 fish were all within 2 tiles of my city. After buying a tile or two and expansion that cheep smokehouse was netting me +8 food a turn which left me with 4 citizens i could put on mines without worrying about it if i wanted to. Its a good choice even with no resources which i think is the problem.
3: Id like to see the NW requirements be lowered to 75% down from 80% not that its a huge change but it lets you build in 3 out of 4 instead of 4 out of 5. This one isn't a huge deal, just a personal preference.

Anyway, sorry if this sounds too critical, the mod is amazing and i really like how the changes have turned out up to now.

 

[doktorstick]

Yeah, I'm Emperor level and Archery is never an early tech for me anymore. Before the city capture difficulty was raised, churning out archers when you had a close rival made it attractive, but not so much anymore.

 

[Thalassicus]

Today's v4.14 beta brings the following changes:

The GetYieldModifierTooltip function incorrectly returns growth modifiers in the string, which are not yield modifiers. The GetYieldModifierTooltip function is hardcoded so this bug cannot be fixed directly, though we can write a new function to replace the bugged version.

Second, the GetYieldTooltipHelper function in InfoTooltipInclude.lua is bugged. It should display:

1. Base yield
2. Base modifiers
3. Surplus yield (<Base * YieldMod> - Consumed)
4. Surplus modifiers
5. Total surplus

It incorrectly displays #3 for #1 and does not show #3, which is significant if Floating Gardens are built in a city.

• Fixed the above bug with vanilla city view's display of food income. It now splits display of all yields into base, base modifier, surplus, surplus modifier, and total. Only relevant information is displayed. This was rather complicated, and took about a day to finish rewriting some rather jumbled vanilla code, so please point out any errors.
• Reverted Smokehouse cost back to vanilla 100 (was 80).
• 100 Watermill (was 120).
• Moved the Camp improvement to Archery to improve the value of the Archery tech. Reduced the cost of the Trapping tech.
• Maritime city-states (MCS) now give a fixed total of 1:friend/2:ally food per era. This total food is split among all cities, with each city's allocation based on its status (capital gets more, razing cities get none, etc). The food each city receives is detailed when you hover the mouse over the city's food total in the city view.

For more information on how maritime city-state food distribution works, please see this post in the citystate balance thread.

 

[rhammer640]

Today's v4.14 beta brings the following changes:

• Fixed the above bug with vanilla city view's display of food income. It now splits display of all yields into base, base modifier, surplus, surplus modifier, and total. Only relevant information is displayed. This was rather complicated, and took about a day to finish rewriting some rather jumbled vanilla code, so please point out any errors.
• Reverted Smokehouse cost back to vanilla 100 (was 80).
• 100 Watermill (was 120).
• Moved the Camp improvement to Archery to improve the value of the Archery tech. Reduced the cost of the Trapping tech.
• Maritime city-states (MCS) now give a fixed total of 1:friend/2:ally food per era. This total food is split among all cities, with each city's allocation based on its status (capital gets more, razing cities get none, etc). The food each city receives is detailed when you hover the mouse over the city's food total in the city view.

For more information on how maritime city-state food distribution works, please see this post in the citystate balance thread.

Thal, you are the best! Love all the changes!

 

[Sneaks]

May I suggest renaming the Trapping tech then? Maybe Trading or Bartering

 

[Ahriman]

May I suggest renaming the Trapping tech then? Maybe Trading or Bartering

The problem with these are that both are fairly nonsensical as a technological advancement (though so is trapping).

Barter and trade predate civilization.

Its really hard to have a good name.

"Commerce" might be better, but then thats too overlapping with currency.

I'd go with "Trade" over trapping or barter though.

 

[Thalassicus]

That's why I suggested Sanitation or Plumbing as a Classical era tech. It was in earlier versions of Civ, and the Romans and several other ancient civilizations had relatively advanced sanitation systems. Trading Posts could be renamed to Villages (a name that makes more sense anyway), and it'd be a great place to put the Baths of Trajan.

 

[Sneaks]

I would love making Classical 2 columns wide and throwing in a bunch of techs to thin out the cluster that exists there now.

Plumbing for Aqueducts/Baths
Laws for Courthouse (and CSiplomacy Forum)
etc

 

[Ahriman]

That's why I suggested Sanitation or Plumbing as a Classical era tech. It was in earlier versions of Civ, and the Romans and several other ancient civilizations had relatively advanced sanitation systems. Trading Posts could be renamed to Villages (a name that makes more sense anyway), and it'd be a great place to put the Baths of Trajan.

The problem is that making it Classical has a major gameplay effect, particularly in enabling enabling Piety and Patronage trees. I don't think its worth messing with the game balance just to have a slightly better name.

Plus, plumbing or sanitation don't really make any sense as enablers of a trading post or village.

 

[Thalassicus]

Patronage is unlocked at the Medieval era.

For a while now I've felt the Trapping tech is underwhelming compared to its counterparts, one of several things I've kept at the back of my mind for a while. This presents an opportunity that would tie in well with other things.

The other techs of its period:

• Sailing is required for coastal development
• Calendar and Writing are top-tier for builders
• The Wheel and Bronze Working are vital for warmongers

Trapping's always been "that tech that leads to civil service" for me. Masonry isn't particularly noteworthy either, but at least it has a world wonder.

For me, gameplay outweighs aesthetics. There's no point playing a nice-looking game if it isn't fun and rewarding. This is why I focused exclusively on gameplay balance for the first few months, and only now in the past month or so have I started fixing problems with the user interface. Making the tech more interesting is what's behind this thought process. I actually like the name, but feel it'd be better to move camps to Archery, and drop something more valuable on Trapping, to balance both these techs. Doing this would make the current name obsolete though, so I started thinking about how to integrate a new name into its balance changes.

Basically to sum up my thoughts:

• Camps on archery makes the tech desirable when near furs, deer or ivory. It gives the tech the sort of variable importance that's been successful in boosting the game's "fun factor" elsewhere with buildings like the Smokehouse. It also makes sense considering that archery allows for more practical hunting than melee weapons.
• Aqueducts and the Baths of Trajan crowded the Construction tech when terrace farms were added there, so I needed to find a new place to put them. Engineering seemed too late for the baths so I tried it at Mathematics, but don't particularly like it there either.
• Moving aqueducts or the baths to the tech currently called "trapping" would make for an excellent balance of classical era techs. Construction is already highly desirable with colosseums there, and mathematics has the vital catapults for warmongers. Trading posts aren't especially important when there's better economic and military techs elsewhere in the tree, so it tends to be a low priority, at least for me personally.

 

[black213]

Is it intended that Jaguar lost it's Woodsman promotion?

 

[Ahriman]

Patronage is unlocked at the Medieval era.

Oh, of course. Sorry, my bad.

Camps on archery makes the tech desirable when near furs, deer or ivory.

Agreed, I think this is probably good for gameplay, though I worry it actually makes archery too powerful; a very good military unit *and* a luxury unlock in the same tech?
Compare to calendar.

Anyway, my objections aren't that strong. I think I'd mentally messed up some of the classical era vs medieval era issues, I'd forgotten classical was only 1-tech wide.
So: move camps to archery (and maybe increase the cost slightly), shift trapping right so that it is positioned between philosophy and horseback riding, in the classical era, increase its cost slightly, rename it sanitation, move the Aqueduct and the Baths there.

Its also slightly more sensible as a Civil Service pre-req; some kind of waste management makes some kind of sense as a pre-req for massive public irrigation projects.

Construction is still probably ok; the Colosseum is very important, and bridge building is pretty important too.

 

[rhammer640]

Ok so I played a game last night and had some comments on the latest beta 4.14.

I think the camps to archery move was a good one. I dont find it OP cause i find i usually have less of a need for camps then the other improvements. I cant comment on researching it as i popped it from a goody hut, but i definitely wasn't disappointed like i would have been.

One thing i noticed is that with the increased military costs and decreased gold after moving river gold to watermills that the game has gotten interesting. I was torn as to whether i liked it or not but i think im in the like camp for now. Even though you increased starting gold i still found myself with a lot less gold (AI had less as well). This made me have to concentrate a bit more on units just to protect myself (cause i couldn't just buy them) which i find fun as if i never feel in danger i find it boring for a builder game. It also made my city placement a tough decision, should i build next to a river to get watermill or a tile away because it has access to more resources? The watermill is also less painful to build due to the hammer reduction.

Mostly my overall gold was way down because all my cities that were near rivers but not next to them couldn't get any of that gold. I liked this reduction because i felt that i needed to do something to get more gold and not just have it there. I had to either build watermills if i could or trading posts or lighthouses. I found myself working water tiles for a while cause i couldn't get gold anywhere else early game.

One thing im having a problem with is that i think the techs all need another boost in cost cause i feel that im moving way to fast in epic that i never have a chance to use units or build all the required buildings to get national wonders etc. I think this might be due to increased amounts of food making it easier to have larger cities and thus get more science faster. I know that in my last few games i have felt that im progressing through the techs way too fast for epic. I like having to choose what to build and that to have consiquences (aka not being able to build other stuff) but i find myself not being able to build hardly anything before advancing through the eras. I think this might have something to do with having to build more units due to having less gold.

I like the proposed changes to the old trapping tech although if your moving it to the classical era i would make sure its not too easy to beeline to the tech.

 

[Thalassicus]

Something of importance for Aztec fans: I greatly increased culture gain from kills and removed Jaguar's starting Woodsman promotion. I liked the idea of woodsman at first, but over time decided it didn't really feel all that unique (too similar to the Iroquois trait) and Jaguars already have cool promotions. So I strongly emphasized the one true unique thing about playing Aztecs, getting culture directly from warfare. I really like this civ and play them mainly for the nifty trait.

In addition, Jaguars are now buildable all the way to Metal Casting like in vanilla (instead of getting cut off at Iron Working with other warriors). I also renamed the "Floating Gardens" to the local name of "Chinampa." Local names are used for most unique units/buildings, so it was a little odd this had an English name that wasn't even really accurate (they don't float ).

Aztec cultural bonus was buffed a lot.

@Ahriman
Right, classical is rather short. The Cultural citystate bonus jump occurs at the Medieval era, which also unlocks the Patronage and Commerce trees. Overall the important things about getting to classical are we unlock Piety and get 1 policy.

@rhammer640
Here's my perspective on building costs:

• General use: high cost, low maintenance means a building is very desirable in all cities, but take a long time to get, so there's an opportunity cost of the time investment.
• Specialized use: low cost, high maintenance leads to not desirable in most cities, but very useful in a few, and once the decision is made it's easy to get.

An example of a type A building is markets/banks. Always desirable, but since it takes time to build them, there's often more important priorities. Type B buildings are like the Harbor, builds quickly but only useful for certain coastal cities. I'm starting to think that I like the Watermill as a type B building, for specialized cities that want extra gold output near a river, or need extra production regardless of expense (useful for the primary military city).

 

[Sneaks]

I am starting to think that you should move trading posts to Pottery when you do your Trapping = Sanitation change.

 

[Joneill]

@rhammer640
Here's my perspective on building costs:

• General use: high cost, low maintenance means a building is very desirable in all cities, but take a long time to get, so there's an opportunity cost of the time investment.
• Specialized use: low cost, high maintenance leads to not desirable in most cities, but very useful in a few, and once the decision is made it's easy to get.

An example of a type A building is markets/banks. Always desirable, but since it takes time to build them, there's often more important priorities. Type B buildings are like the Harbor, builds quickly but only useful for certain coastal cities. I'm starting to think that I like the Watermill as a type B building, for specialized cities that want extra gold output near a river, or need extra production regardless of expense (useful for the primary military city).

I think I'd rather see the watermill pushed towards option A. It's already a situational building since it requires a rivercity and it's also primarily a goldgenerating building, which makes a large maintenance cost rather awkward.
While it may be a decision a human player can easily make, I don't know if the AI is actually setup to calculate a rather special building effect like +gold on rivertiles to choose to build this only if it actually has access to enough useful rivertiles to gain a benefit. I see it as pretty similar to the mint in effect now, which imo works just fine at no maintenance.
If needed, the foodbonus on spices/sugar could always be moved to another building, as could the engineer slot (which I think would fit better on the aqueduct anyway).