BNW features and Communitas

[Anvari]

Hey guys,

i know it's early, BNW isn't released yet and we all should play it a ton before discussing things that i want to start talking about but maybe we don't. Let's have a look:

1) The new trade route system/missing Gold on ocean and river tiles
This thing is the one i'm note sure if i want it in the game. Some features are cool like the caravan, which can produce more income or the trade within the cities but i'm skeptical with the missing Gold. Is there any chance that Communitas may keep the original design, just take the new features of BNW and do something "different" or do we have to adjust?

2) Adjusting the Civs
This is one of the things that should be too early for a discussion but just to throw that into the room: Changing Germany? What about France (since it's changed with BNW)?

3) The new social policies and Ideologies
Should we keep the Communitas ones or mix them?

And that doesn't even scratch the surface, there are so much more topics like integrating the new World Congress & Tourism, Great Works and Building/Wonder changes but like said above, i don't think we can talk about them. Some things to keep should be a no-brainer like the improved AI and interface-improvements, but what about the features that unique here but will get changed with BNW?

Thanks

 

[mystikx21]

1) I prefer the gold on coastlines and rivers as an inducement to settle in those locations (same with extra food/production earlier on rivers in vanilla/gem and extra food on coasts in gem). This also improves the value of amphibious promotions (to attack across those rivers), and naval forces, to attack or defend coastlines. Which is good design. Thal's change also to require development on the rivers was a good balance to make rivers powerful, but not overpowering.

However. If there are other good reasons to settle there, such as improved trade routes or more of them, I'd might be okay with somewhat less gold upfront in exchange for those more powerful bonuses available later. As long as there are still good incentives to have river or coastal cities over interior cities. Right now I'd lean toward extra food on coasts staying at least, and then determining the value of trade routes versus gold as we get into it. We can always have buildings that improve the gold (seaport?) later still or improve the value of the trade routes via coastal or river buildings (lighthouse, water mills?)

2) I'm not sure if we know enough yet what has been changed with all the old civs. But we can certainly open a debate about new things we can do now because of new powers available to move around or modify easily and what civs we could to apply those to. Also the new civs powers and uniques themselves would be open for discussion. In general, the leaders changes that emerged from our months of discussion have been more interesting or more powerful in most cases, if we were to finish them at least. I doubt this would be any different after looking over the new civs and changes and making adjustments back toward VEM/GEM modified ones where it seems practical.

3) I tend to find that the vanilla trees are very weak or poorly designed for strategic value and much prefer the communitas versions. I did like the ideological alignment idea as a lock-out for later trees for the impact on diplomacy and CS alignments but I think it was poorly implemented in vanilla GK and easily abandoned in GEM. We'll see if it does better this time around. The World Congress should help in that approach.

It does sound like there are tree-based limitations on building some wonders? Which might be interesting to explore.

4) I think we decided on renaming tourism to "prestige". But it was a brief debate. And we could easily come up with something else if we wanted. (I liked it and will at least use it in my own modifications off of Thal's)

 

[mitsho]

It IS too early, one should at least play a few games to be able to judge the new systems. This leads to:

1) You can't cut out the Trade Routes, those are the heart of BNW after all. I'm looking forward to that feature. But we can't tell at all how the "no gold on coast" and "sea trade routes" are linked. So to rebalance it without those is impossible. What is doable is to set a goal for coastal tiles now and then balance it later on towards this point. Rivers should be the preferred settling point and coasts should get some 'difference' to in-land cities, the old 'more gold, but less production' is a good scale in my mind.

2) Agree, port over the decided on leader changes, maybe with a quick discussion of refinements first. Then look onwards...

3) Copy over the GEM changes for the policies of course, then rebalance the ideologies. There's quite a few logical changes going towards the new Exploration and Aesthetics trees. But again, need some playing experiences

4) I don't really care about renaming tourism. On one hand, prestige or whatever fits the system better, but then the icon is a baggage and hotels are the buildings and the whole flavour of the system is tourism related. In the end, it really doesn't matter that much, at least to me.

 

[Anvari]

Thanks guys for the answers.

Good to see, that we have different opinions about the new gold/trade route-thing. I think BNW is going a horrible way with Ocean and Coast tiles, making them the worst tile in the game. At least you can improve Desert tiles to get some use out of it, this won't be a thing. Maybe they get a little bit better with a Harbor, Lighthouse and Seeport but in the end even a Desert tile should be better. And in my eyes, this is the wrong way. We should however keep the Caravans and See trade routes because it seems, they are just another way to generate more income and giving more freedom is great. SO we could either focus on Religion and Food for Gold, build more Trade Routes and Caravans or get the Market-buildings.

This whole "we cut something out from Civ that has been in the series since the start" just doesn't feel like an improvement. At least in my eyes, an Expansion should improve and enhance the gameplay, not cut a huge part out to replace it with something other that is the exact same thing.

 

[mystikx21]

@Mitsho/Anvari I'm not suggesting we "cut out" the trade routes. My concern was whether they will provide a sufficient balance toward coasts and rivers to cut out the gold, and I'm not sure that it does. It will depend on how strong coastal trade is.

If it's not strong enough, it might be easier to bring back the gold on coast/river developed, or put it on a building, or we could (also) improve the existing trade route powers to skew more toward coastal/river cities.

I don't know if that qualifies as a distinct opinion or not. I don't think it does.

 

[mitsho]

But there's no way of knowing how far this will go. And we know how difficult it is to balance the available gold. Just look at the multiple pages after we saw the 'upkeep' distortion for later era units...

That is one first should look at the gold that should be available at each era and then to balance that for trade routes (in comparison to food/production trade routes and preferably for me a distinction between gold routes to major civs and to CS (= influence gain)), for terrain (coast/island city, river city, river+coast city, desert (river) city, forest city, hilly city, open terrain city), for buildings/improvements and for social policies.

Set the goal, then go back from that is all I say. I do feel there should be two ways to get gold (trade routes or highpop+terrain) next to the conquest option...

 

[mystikx21]

Trade probably should have been higher in value than it was relative to city income, but it was limited in how to do so with the way Civ5 routes were set up. I am happy to see it get some more investment.

I think the question here is whether nuking river and coast gold (on top of vanilla's lack of extra food on coasts) is the appropriate way to reduce city income to compensate for increasing the value of trade in order to keep gold as a relatively stable level of income. That could be done by changing city buildings that provide it or upping the cost to maintain infrastructure for example. Or it could be that coastal cities provide enough additional value in trade to compensate. We'll have to see. From looking over the current listed as known bonuses (that the coastal trade routes are worth 2x and rivers give +25%), I'd say it's not terrible, assuming trade routes are worthwhile. Just requires more investment in caravans rather than workers.

Balancing it gold income over time isn't too hard, we can attach or reduce bonuses to techs or buildings as desired.

One thing that does stand out is the exploration tree seems to sap off the maritime effects (or at least some of them) from commerce. Considering how powerful commerce could be with a coastal empire, that's probably a good thing, but it means we'd need to have other bonuses to put into play in it.

 

[Tomice]

I strongly suggest not taking this discussion too far before release. We might easily have prejudices that lead to unnecessary changes.

Personally, I'd prefer if we tried a few games of vanilla BNW and judged it without prejudices. If we declare feature X unbalanced already now, we might be unable to really embrace it and use it to it's best effect.

Don't forget that Firaxis knows about the Communitas mod and Thal very well (and it's no real secret he's in the Frankenstein beta-testing group). Many old issues this mod adressed might be solved already.


ON TOPIC:
I do agree that coastal cities should have the increased value they have in GEM. But I have a strong feeling that coasts and ships will already be WAY more valuable now. Maritime trade routes are much stronger, and we need a navy to protect them. It might already be beneficial to have as many naval trade routes as possible and land-based ones might already be the clearly inferior choice.

 

[Seek]

I strongly suggest not taking this discussion too far before release. We might easily have prejudices that lead to unnecessary changes.

Personally, I'd prefer if we tried a few games of vanilla BNW and judged it without prejudices. If we declare feature X unbalanced already now, we might be unable to really embrace it and use it to it's best effect.

Don't forget that Firaxis knows about the Communitas mod and Thal very well (and it's no real secret he's in the Frankenstein beta-testing group). Many old issues this mod adressed might be solved already.


ON TOPIC:
I do agree that coastal cities should have the increased value they have in GEM. But I have a strong feeling that coasts and ships will already be WAY more valuable now. Maritime trade routes are much stronger, and we need a navy to protect them. It might already be beneficial to have as many naval trade routes as possible and land-based ones might already be the clearly inferior choice.

Agree wholeheartedly with all points here.

Also, in case anyone missed it, Thal has posted this on the website:

What I like most about the new expansion is the developers' focus on making interesting, important choices in each game. I'm very happy with the World Congress. I think it's a great idea, one of my favorite features when the concept was first introduced in Alpha Centauri. I think it will be even better in BNW. I especially like how they tied together many parts of the game like trade, espionage, diplomacy, and religion.

I want to organize this mod project so it's easier to maintain in the future. The project started small and grew over time. This gradual approach works well for tackling big tasks like improving Civ V. However, the process eventually creates some code and files which don't quite mesh well together. This can make it difficult to add new features or fix bugs. There's also code from many authors in the unofficial patch. It doesn't always fit together perfectly, and we can improve that.

I plan to reorganize the project from the ground up, focusing on the most important features. I am going to start with the core tools used to alter yields - food, gold, and so on. I'm strongly considering moving those tools to a core-game dll type of mod to improve efficiency and reliability. Once I finish that, I'll work my way outwards, adding the interface enhancements from the unofficial patch, then finally the game-balance and fun improving features of the "enhanced" part of the project.

 

[JohnS]

I can see why Thal would be reluctant to make a new DLL, but are there any downsides for us players if he decides to do so?

 

[Seek]

I can see why Thal would be reluctant to make a new DLL, but are there any downsides for us players if he decides to do so?

Compatibility is the main concern; from my understanding, any other mods that use a custom dll will not be able to run alongside Communitas. Others more knowledgeable than I may correct me though.

 

[mitsho]

No I think that's the main problem. But I feel that's a low price to pay for faster turn times. After all, most "content" mods like f.e. the wonder ones or the additional civ ones or the More Mercantile Mod doesn't use them. Maybe some of whowards do, like the canal one? Can somebody confirm that?

And yes, I do agree with Tomice's points as well, but after reading Thal's post I'm just very curios on what he thinks on Venice. (I don't like the gameplay and its implications at all, but many people do...). I'd also bet that the reworked Terracotta Army was his idea, the concept just sounds so Thal-like.

And we were right. We're starting with the core yields for food and science (and the tools connected to it to be able to alter them "automatically", not manually), then going to the UI stuff and then only to the Balance and additional content stuff. It's going to be a long long time. But hey, I'm willing to help, just not very good at it

 

[ExpiredReign]

Just spoke to Thal and mentioned the idea of dividing up the tasks and asking for others to help with the coding.

He quite liked the idea and said he will post shortly about a new GitHub project to get things underway.

Also apologized for the prolonged absence from the forum. So to everyone hanging out for updates, all is good.

Lastly if anyone wants to help out, stay tuned for his post and don't feel shy about lending a hand.

From his enthusiastic comments about BNW I can assume he will be active with this mod for some time to come.

 

[mystikx21]

I was planning on helping out. The xml/sql edits are pretty straightforward though if/when it comes to that.

If it's more "complicated" coding for a while though, I'll help to deal with play testing and debugging, and eventually updating the wiki page.

 

[ExpiredReign]

I was planning on helping out. The xml/sql edits are pretty straightforward though if/when it comes to that.

If it's more "complicated" coding for a while though, I'll help to deal with play testing and debugging, and eventually updating the wiki page.

Excellent. I knew you would.

I have a good feeling about this!

 

[mystikx21]

I also look forward to some extensive debates over some of the changes and proposals.

 

[Stalker0]

I also look forward to some extensive debates over some of the changes and proposals.

My favorite part!

 

[Thalassicus]

Rivers still have strong incentives for settlement, like watermills and the early civil service farm food bonus. I think if we include GEM's early river bonuses from the other improvement types we'll still want to settle near rivers. There was always the issue of rivers being too good in the past, so this will help with that.

Coastal cities also have strong incentives - when there are fish resources nearby! Those tiles get really amazing with a lighthouse and workboat. Fish become the best tiles in the game. In addition, sea trade routes are so much better than land we'll want to have at least one major port. There's also the powerful policy giving happiness on port buildings (lighthouse/harbor/seaport) which can dramatically ease happiness problems in late game.

I think the incentives simply require more development now. We used to see our bonuses right there on the terrain without any development. Now we get rewards from other parts of the game like trade, buildings, and policies. It's difficult to get used to, and I didn't like it at first, but I'm starting to come around. I've always talked about how we should reward developing our cities. This encourages development, so I think it will be good for the game.

The main problem with removing terrain gold is we have no gold income in the early game before we can hook up trade routes. This can easily be solved with an innovation from GEM: start players with a decent supply of gold income, like how everyone gets some basic culture income. This also helps balance the super early game when players get too lucky (or unlucky) with random map generation. Everyone will start on roughly the same footing.

Gaining gold from sea trade routes (instead of terrain) also fits a lot closer with history. We founded cities near water because floating heavy loads makes them a lot easier to transport. For the past two decades Civilization represented that trade abstractly with gold on coast tiles. Now we have actual trade routes, which are so much cooler! It also gives us incentive to build a strong navy to protect those trade routes, since they are so vulnerable, and give so much gold when pillaged.

 

[mitsho]

Seems like policies do really need a lot of improvement

How does the AI hold up to this new stuff?

Don't the amazing fish end up in a "Fish + Specialist" city? That might be realistic, but may be a general problem even on land when most non-ressourced tiles aren't that amazing?

 

[mystikx21]

I think I am coming around to the idea of using caravans instead of workers myself. It's definitely an active choice, which is different and takes time to get used to, but it seems much better strategically and more engaging. Which is a very good thing. The fact that they interact with other game mechanics is even better.

The other thing VEM/GEM did to make coasts better was park some extra food on coastlines (but not oceans). That's a separate issue from extra gold in my mind, as it does help alleviate the fish+specialist city issue (albeit by making for some "farms" that can help create more specialists in an otherwise very large city).

GEM's watermill I think was finally about right in value (cheaper upkeep), so it's probably a wash with the river gold to do minor things like that to take up the changes in the long run.

Policies and probably leaders will definitely need some adjustment. And debate.