[BTS] NEW BALANCE v4.2 (for BtS v3.17)

Dearmad

Dead weight
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Aug 18, 2001
Messages
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New Balance v4.3
Jun 2010
by Dearmad
Works with Civ IV BtS v3.19

INTRO:
This venerable mod lengthens the game without increasing unit costs, that's the basics of it. However there is a LOT more to it:

It also makes numerous other tweaks to the game, graphics, a few sounds, units, technologies, buildings in order to improve the flavor of each age as much as I could.

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The speed this mod is DESIGNED for is NEW BALANCE- make SURE YOU SELECT IT!
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The file is at:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=8952

I've played through a few games with this and find it quite challenging. Give me feedback in this thread. Do not expect that I will make huge game changing "fixes" which have been argued into the ground regarding my mod, such as the following issues:

1. Jungles WILL remain until the later tech.
2. The ECONOMY WILL hurt financially until you figure out how to balance your books better
3. Resources WILL remain unused in jungles (sometimes) until later techs...

Enjoy!

The README:
Spoiler :
New Balance v4.3
24 Dec 09
by Dearmad
Works with Civ IV Beyond the Swordpatch v3.19

INTRO:
This mod lengthens the game. TECHNOLOGIES drive the pace of the game- they come slower and a new Gamespeed.xml regulates the dates to match this nicely. You can mess with units more before the next tech obsoletes them. Other things are slowed down a too: city growth, etc... proportional better than the vanilla EPIC/MARATHON game.

It also makes numerous other tweaks to the game, graphics, units, technologies, buildings in order to improve the flavor of each age as much as I could.

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The speed this mod is DESIGNED for is NEW BALANCE- make SURE YOU SELECT IT!
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USE:
UNZIP to the Civ IV\Beyond the Sword\Assets\mods\ folder like any other mod. So you should have a "New Balance" folder right under your MODS folder in your main CIV directory.


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v4.3
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Basically updated to work with BtS v3.19 patch.

Updated city graphics to reflect GeoModder's latest work.

Updated GameCore to the unnofficial patch v1.5 for Civ IV v3.19


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v4.2
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Rebuilt the entire mod from the ground up using patched v3.17 files!


EXTERNAL ADDITIONS:
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Sevopedia for BtS 3.17 included.

Better AI v0.36 included.

New Custom made ICBM select sound and submarine sounds. I htink they are much betetr and more dramatic.

New music for the Irish red-headed lass, the Byzantines (I got some REAL Byzantine music from the 1200's!), Elizabeth late period. I just couldn't stand some of the music selections.

Added in Ethnic City Styles for a more diverse looking map and really NICE city graphic! WOW!



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NEW BALANCE MOD CHANGES:
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GENERAL CHANGES

Turned DOWN the volume when cities are selected (and only those city sounds), so it's not so overbearingly noisy when you're tweaking a city and you can still have your game volume up for the other sounds.

SELECT "BALANCE" gamespeed to experience this mod at the speed it was intended. The game is 970 turns long, begins more appropriately to history in 10,000 BC (so you may have a little empire by 1000 BC or at least by 500 BC, and a busy classical era).

Conscription Anger reduced to 1 from 3: Wow, big change... but... Nationhood Civic needed this, AND ANGER is a bit more prevelent in this mod, so this stood to be reduced.

Message pop-ups last longer.

Culture level increases defenses more slowly: 10, 30, 50, 70 and finally 100 at Legendary. So city walls are more helpful early on.

Map revelation from goody hut reveals more.

AI no longer gets 10 free production at start of game.

AI HANDICAP is now truly much closer to EQUAL with the player on NOBLE difficulty.

Most espionage missions cheaper.

War Weariness factors raised to 3 from 2 (the patch 3.17 lowered it from 5 which I felt was too much of a bonus).



GRAPHICS:
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NUKE animation is the improved animation with more... well, flash, light, smoke, everything.

Ship of the Line sail graphic changed to something more pleasant.




UNITS:
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Units after Warrior and up to Musketmen are 5 prod. cheaper to produce. This has the effect of making the classical/Medieval age more populated and a bit more "lively."

Units from Infantry onward are more expensive (about 25% more). What this amounts to (from my testing) is that you cannot field as many of them as quickly as before, but you never needed to as they are still hugely effective versus units of the previous era. So, what happens is you won't have masses and masses of units clogging up the late game. That's all. I noticed that in ALL my games I end up with armies coming out of my ears by the late game... in a proportion that was just not... well it made the late game a mess.

Spies (Great too) gain sentry (+1 sight).

Limited to 4 Spies at any one time.

Guided Missile and Tactical Nuke +1 range to 5.

Caravel requires engineering so it appears just a tad later if you thought you could simply beeline for it.

Early Boats all reduced in cost more so that Classical Navies appear and are viable war implements.

All boats speeds +1 except workboats. IRONCLAD +3 (so speed is 5). Why on earth Ironclad's were so slow is beyond me!

Classical ships move in units of three, Middle Ages to Rennaisance ships have two units, and modern ships one. Scales are reduced for the classical ships.

Submarines a little cheaper-

Airships can NOT see submarines. Good lord. They're still pretty good units given that the Flight tech is harder to beeline for now in this mod.

Trebuchet cost 70.

Viking berserker: +15% city attack

Grenadier: +25% vs. Musketman, +10% City Attack, +10 cost.

Musketmen (and UU's based on them): +1 STR to 10. This was a hard call, but I have to admit they feel underpowered in game after game I've played. I don't think of them as uberunits, I know they are less effectual gunpowder units in history and it took hundreds of years to get gunpowder right... but in the *game* they are a little too close to being White Elephants... so a little more STR to them.

Cannon Moved back to Chemistry + Replaceable Parts, and a little more costly: So they'll occur a little later with slightly less numbers. I'm trying to eke out a Musketmen/mixed medieval age (renaissance age?), plus room needed to be made for the Trebuchet.

Trireme upgrades to Frigate only not Caravel. Must build Caravels from scratch in order to begin the Age of Exploration.

Caravel upgrades to Frigate ONLY, not submarine... Wow, I'd like to see that overhaul.

Caravel carries TWO special units not ONE.

Catapult moved earlier to Mathematics (requires Bronze working too though).

Workboat cheaper.

Added base Withdraw chance to some mechanized units. increased Cavalry unit withdraw chances in general. These units were too underpowered for historically how powerful horses make civilizations.

Archer units gained +20% and +10% (when mounted) versus Axemen when attacking. The AXEMAN unit has always made swordsmen worthless, now there is a further reason why you might choose swords men.

Increased graphic size of Spies, Carrier, BattleShip, Workers slightly.

Reduced worker figures and Machinegun Figures numbers.

SUBMARINES gain 25% attack versus TRANSPORTS. Slightly cheaper too.

Added first strike chance to Explorers and Scouts (they're sort of ambushy units). Explorer STR=5 (was 4).

ALL SWORD UNITS gain 25% DEFENSIVE bonus vs. ARCHER (not vs. longbows and x-bows, though).

CARRIERS carry 4 not 3 units, are slightly cheaper (the real cost is the planes). Limit to number of Carriers you can make.

KNIGHTS with Feudalism, MACEMEN and Longbowman with Monarchy (Machinery also required): This is a bit of a compromise but I wanted to have a bit more room for medieval warfare.

CAVALRY upgrades to Tank OR Gunship: I've no idea why cavalry to gunships was in the vanilla game since all the worlds cavalry was usually dead in the intervening 100 years that tanks and artillery ruled the lands... so, now human and AI have a choice.

Paratrooper Range: 6 (was 5), Evasion chance 50% (was 25%)

ATTACK SUB requires Uranium or Oil. 2 Cargo spaces for spies.

TRIREMES require Iron or Copper.

Khmer special unit does not require Ivory. It's way too rare so they wind up missing their UU about, oh... 100% of the time!




BUILDINGS:
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Drydocks moved earlier to Math (requires Sailing too though).

Aqueduct later to Construction.

Hanging Gardens moved much earlier and aqueduct not required.

Pyramids cheaper.

Walls Reduced in cost.

Castles earlier with Mathematics.

Nuclear Power Plants have lower chance of blowing up AND gain +5% production bonus for their city. This makes them much more tempting to build. Just don't let the city go into revolt, right?

Commerce buildings reduced (usually in half) so that money is not so ridiculously easy to come by. Market 20%, Banks 25%, for example.

Research buildings all reduced too, usually in half. Monastery: 5% Library, Observatory, University: 20%, but Oxford is 75% not 50%.

Added +1XP Siege units when made in cities with a Castle. The +5 for Citadels is a lot, and I thought other civs could use a tiny bonus.

Military Academy +33% production, lowered from 50%. In this mod you will have units coming out of your ears as it is, and this bonus is still pretty high.

Shrines are not immune to nukes. Not sure why the patch made them immune. I'm open to hearing arguments for and against, but for now they go up in smoke sometimes. Religious unrest might very likely follow destruction of a civilization by nukes...

BUNKER moved back to ELECTRICITY (earlier). Air power is strong enough... some defense for those without it is justified.

Forbidden Palace significantly cheaper for easier, quicker placement.

Bomb Shelter (anti-nuke) with Mass Media (so later): No one gets all hyped up to build their backyard shelter unless there's mass media, and no one gets the message before it's too late to get INTO it once it's built, without Mass Media. And besides... this building came WAY TOO EARLY in my opinion for nukes to have as serious of consequences as I think they ought to have.

FORGE costs 100 not 120

UNITED NATIONS with FISSION.

GREAT LIBRARY with ALPHABET not literature: Literature is NOT what was in the great library in real life- it was scientific texts and philosophy, this wonder can be one tech earlier.

MARKET is a -1 health building: It brings in a lot of trade, people, and so disease (like the plague) so this needs to be represented somewhat in the game, IMO. (Besides I want something to slow city growth just a tad.)

Workshops come with METAL CASTING. (Earlier than vanilla)

Observatory requires Astronomy and Liberalism (was just Astronomy)



PROMOTIONS:
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Added in Desert Warfare and Arctic Warfare specialist promotions.

Leadership continues to give +50% XP. The human player is the only exploiter of these types of bonuses. +100% is too much in favor of the human for my taste. Stays at original 50%.

Commando promotion requires Combat 2, not Combat 4 now. So you'll see this a bit more often.

AMBUSH PROMOTION not available until you develop STEEL



RELIGION:
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No free missionaries with Hinduism and Buddhism, 1 with Judaism and Confuscianism, 2 with Taoism, 5 Islam, 6 Christianity.

Non-State Religions are -1 Unhappiness: This is counterbalanced by building temples to those religions, obviously. This changes religion into a zero-sum game *except* for the state religion you choose or when you go Freedom of Religion. The other way of gaining +1 is with incense and should you build the large religious buildings associated with each religion when you've built 5 temples to that religion (A cathedral, for example). Overall, this means larger cities with lots of religions in them have a potential for lots of civic unrest, should you choose not to manage them. You need to think a little more now about how to manage religion in your empire. Before this change, I found I never needed to build the other religious temples as religion was always a positive influence on a city, no matter what... this just doesn't follow from history. Finally, I think I have the religion change I've been looking for in my mod! Something simple but which affects gameplay somewhat profoundly, as religion should.



Techs:
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Optics requires Math and Machinery.

Modern techs generally a tiny little bit cheaper to progress that end of the game with a bit more speed.

First civ to COMPUTERS gets the free Great Engineer now, rather than that happening at fusion.

First civ to FISSION gets a free TACTICAL NUKE. Yeehaa... ride 'em Dr. Strangelove. Watch for the little announcement about a "Tactical Nuke" being born in some city at some point if it isn't you.

First civ to NATIONALISM and COMMUNISM gets a free Great Spy.

First civ to FASCISM gets a free Great General.

First to ECONOMICS gets a free Great Merchant

First civ to PHYSICS gets a free Great Scientist

First civ to PRIESTHOOD gets a free Great Prophet

Artillery: Steel + Physics + Rifling: So artillery pushed back just a little...

MAP TRADING with ASTRONOMY not with paper: Because I want larger black spots on the map a little longer... give my sailing ships something to DO!

TECH TRADING with GUILDS not with Alphabet: I think this makes sense to some degreee, plus tech whoring early in the game can ruin it.

Reworked TECH REQUIREMENTS for FLIGHT, ARTILLERY, ROCKETRY, and COMBUSTION to make those a little harder to run for without supporting techs. FLIGHT was too easily skipped completely- I didn't like that for the space race.

MEDICINE requires Military Science too (interesting history I've discovered about how intimately linked to military endeavors is the science of medicine- the Boer War, WWI and II...)

First to Civil Service gets a free unit of Knights: I know this is odd, but I wanted to provide the tech a little something more... and so... well there you have it until I make it something better.



RESOURCES/IMPROVEMENTS:
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Pillaging will yield more gold, 2x for most things, but not that much for the already profitable pillaging of villages.

Spontaneous mineral discoveries are a TINY bit more common now on places you are mining.

Resources on Maps will be significantly rarer for: Oil, Horses, Fish, Uranium, Aluminum. This means wars WILL be fought over them, that you will occasionally NOT have an easy source of Oil, and most likely will NOT be the lucky sod who gets Uranium. Deal. You're a leader,right?

Wine now provides happiness (if you have it) at Pottery, don't have to wait until Monarchy.

COTTAGES built with MONARCHY: The economy heats up too fast too early otherwise. I figure you need a slighty better knowledge of civics before you have suburbs. This change is hard to deal with if you're used to having loads of $$ in the game- you will need to balance your economy much more carefully now.

Horse resource is +1 coin: Horses are still not influencing history the way I like so I upped them here. They are a pack animal like no other and allow distribution of goods across your nation better than any other method other than rivers. An abundance of them in your culture is a good thing. With Horse resource rarer on maps though, they will be truly powerful units on the field if you have them and your enemy does not.

SHEEP: +1 food, prod. and trade w/pasture (was +2,0,+1).

WHALE: +1 Prod and food as base tile. (was +1 food)

Oil +1 Prod +1 Coins.



LEADERS:

Justinian (Byzantines) changed to Financial instead of Spiritual. So he's financial/imperial.

Saladin is financial/aggressive.

Scaled back to 33% the bonus Industrial gets for making wonders.

USA and England Flags changed to Betsey Ross and Union Jack. I find them more colorful.

Organized leaders make great generals 33% faster when fighting domestically.



EVENTS:
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Tsunami event is added back in- but it is not quite as bad as in Vanilla, and it is rarer, but I have seen it...
Some events made a little more common, others

Special Barbarian events spawn larger stacks... I mean 4 Huns on a Standard map!? Uh... underwhelming... try 8.



The JUNGLE changes:
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Jungle can NOT be cleared (with some exceptions) until you develop Biology, thus simulating how it was disease not mechanics that really stopped jungle clearing (rea dup on how the Panama canal was built).

Here it is summarized:
ROAD in JUNGLE with IRON WORKING
CAMPS/QUARRIES in JUNGLES with METAL CASTING
PLANTATIONS JUNGLES with GUILDS and CALENDAR
PASTURE/MINING jungle with GUNPOWDER
FARM/WELL/CLEAR JUNGLE with BIOLOGY

In addition roads through forests requires bronzeworking.

So what this all means is expect Jungles to stick around mostly and even grow until the 1800's or so. While you can harvest some resources from them earlier than that, not everything in a jungle will be available. This also means settliong near them is riskier (health) for longer, but claiming these potentially rich lands may be worth it. Then, as with real history, in a few suddens swoops they will begin disappearing and those lands will be rich for plunder.

What this does NOT mean is that you complain to me about this part of the mod being changed. It's been in the New Balance mod since Civ III and I like it- and it's been debated in threads for hundreds of posts... I can't imagine playing civ any other way. I've debated this inclusion to the mod years ago into the ground... I will not comment on it anymore at all nor respond to emails about it. I do take suggestions to improve it though.



GREAT PEOPLE:
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Thresholds lowered little bit, as the economy is generally harder now you will need them.



CIVICS:
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HUGE changes to CIVICS. Look at the table in the game, for the details. Each change has its game reasons, all of them I try to rationalize through what might actually happen in each system... for example Radio Towers bring unhappiness in Caste system due to spreading media that show the inequalities, or, another example, Courts bring -1 unhappiness in FREE MARKETS due to the stifling effect laws have on truly "free" markets (OK this one's a bit tongue in cheek, but with an extra trade route, there needed to be a balance of some sort). At any rate, I expand the advantages AND disadvantages here and there to further differentiate the Civics. It plays a lot more fun for me now, and commands a real choice at times.




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Credit to:
Zuul's mod for some promotion graphics. Cool looking.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...ght=promotions

Sevo for the kickin' pedia:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downlo...do=file&id=267

GeoModder for his Ethnic City Styles materials:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=274830
 
If I have time I'll try it out.

"GREAT LIBRARY with ALPHABET not literature: Literature is NOT what was in the great library in real life- it was scientific texts and philosophy, this wonder can be one tech earlier."

Seems to me that you'd need WRITING for any library first.;)
 
Good to see an update. 1st thing tho Im getting errors in unzipping this file. Error 2-7 are egyptian art related & 8-17 seem to be European art related. The mod loads fine altho I haven't tested a game yet. The 2nd issue Im having is I can't remember how I combined aMod called 34 man which allows 34 civs to play, its just a Gamecore.dll & used to be combineable w/ the old new balance but crashes your mod on load now. If u could incorporate a 34 man or similar mod ( theres another called 40civsV50 ) on civfanatics that seems a lot more updated into New Balance or if u know the steps where I could it would be appreciated.

Also not sure if this mean anything but Im on a pocketpc (htc mogul) & that's how I d/l my files, so if no1else is experiencing the errors in extracting that may be why.
 
I've been away from Civ for some time I'm really glad to see New Balance mod to be up to date... thanks for the good work :goodjob:
just one question: is it possible to merge New Balance and BTS Unaltered Gameplay (BUG) mod?
Now when I try use them both 'in a quick and dirty way' (standard install of BUG + load NB as a mod) the interface is missing...
 
Will have BtS v3.19 version of this mod ready in a few days I think.

Have updated Better AI and the ethnic city graphics, plus a few more tweaks to get things right.
Great, I always did like this mod...what will we see in the new version? Can you give us any hints?:hmm:
 
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