C2C Balance Thread

[JosEPh_II]

@Is612,

My research slider while in Preh rarely gets off 100%. Since I normally (and this is key) have an isolated start I don't need to put any gold into Espionage until I meet my 1st neighbor. Culture Slider isn't normally activated until Ancient or Classical Era. So I don't understand some ppls squawk over Research being at 100% during Preh Era.

@8500BC the AI has founded 4 of the 6 available Religions.: Druid, Shaman, Ngai, and Naghual (founded 8500BC). I founded Tengri and Mesopotamian. For sometime now I generally found 5 of the 1st 6. So the new arrangement of the tech tree in Preh Era has made an impact here, for the better. One caveat is that I could have gotten Naghual after reaching Sed Life 1st but took Mesopotamian instead. And Again when I completed The Oracle Naghual was a choice. But I chose a different path instead.

My Gold is actually better than last version. I'm avg now about 40-50 gold/turn with 11 cities. Part of this is my start position had some very good resources like Gold, Rubies, Jade, and many rivers. I also have horse, camel and donkey coupled with Bison and water buffalo. My Treasury is actually 4000 Gold, which I rarely ever accomplish during the Preh Era.

One thing I have been noticing in the last 2 versions is that Copper is rare. You'll get more Jade, Rubies, Sapphires, than Copper resources.

I have a southern temperate start location and the tip of my Island continent reaches to the polar region. But one thing that keeps standing out when I get such a start position is the Polar outcroppings with permafrost will show up beyond the tundra border. Very out of place. Permafrost itself shows up too much before you hit tundra. It should be more polar after the tundra line.

While it's nice to have a worker that can defend against the weaker animals, but that armed worker at str 4 is OP. One of mine killed a Neander. It was stationed on a forested hill at the time though.

More later today. Last night T-Storms killed the power to the house and I probably lost several turns.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

One thing I have been noticing in the last 2 versions is that Copper is rare. You'll get more Jade, Rubies, Sapphires, than Copper resources.

JosEPh

Is this with the latest SVN? I made some changes to the map placement of resources; mostly the food ones.

 

[ls612]

<snip>
More later today. Last night T-Storms killed the power to the house and I probably lost several turns.

JosEPh

Yeah, my area has been having on and off severe thunderstorm warnings, so things have been a tad spotty for me with the internet.

On topic now, thanks for your feedback, it is always helpful for balancing things on a macro-scale. It would seem that now you have some gold. I must take that away somehow so as you will start complaining again.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I have a southern temperate start location and the tip of my Island continent reaches to the polar region. But one thing that keeps standing out when I get such a start position is the Polar outcroppings with permafrost will show up beyond the tundra border. Very out of place. Permafrost itself shows up too much before you hit tundra. It should be more polar after the tundra line.

I think that's more of a problem of the map script. That's why I prefer "perfect world" map scripts.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Is this with the latest SVN? I made some changes to the map placement of resources; mostly the food ones.

This current game was started with SVN version 2692. So your recent changes were not there for map setup.

@Hydro,
I like maps with varied landforms and islands. Navies are a must. So I take what I get in the way of resources. To bad Jabarto isn't around any more.He could help on the map scripts. He did good things during the RoM heydays.

Today I updated to SVN version 2710 at 7025BC on the game time.
6350 BC I founded Judaism- 2nd specifically targeted Religion, 3rd founded so far.
6150BC Mathematics, Founded Shinto (#4), Entered Classical Era, changed to Civic Patrician. Shinto really needs to be set back a tech or 2 from mathematics. Or be a side tech off of Math so that the Tech Leader doesn't found 2 religions in a row. We moved Poly but placed Shinto way too close to Mono.
6075BC Started Great Wall buld in Tel Aviv. I have 20 cities now, several are captured Barb cities.
5925BC GW completed in Tel Aviv (7 turns total)
5900BC Alphabet researched, Civic change to Open Borders. Research slider @100% with a -32 gold/turn. Treasury at 9200.
5875BC changed Res slider to 85%, +11gold/turn, 21 cities
5775BC Baal-Eser II Hero built used for Ind Achievement.
5725BC Bronze working researched but still no bronze to be found on my island.
Current Civics:
Gov't: Chiefdom
Power: Patrician
Society: Tribal
Econ: Barter
Mil: Banditry
Religion: State Church
Welfare: Survival
Garbage: Anywhere
Immigration: OB
Education: Oral
Language: Interpreter
Agri: Subsistance
5675BC Research slider down to 65%, Esp slider at 5%, -1gold/turn but Treasury at 9498
I just put down 2 cities and captured 1 Barb on an adjacent island that has the Egyptian Empire. Ramses is not happy with me right now. I beat him to the barb city and cut off a peninsula that he had a settler and escorts heading for. The I got an Event of a marriage in his religion and my ppl are pissed.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

I ment it has a temperature map built in i believe to the terrain show up in realistic locations. I have no idea if Archipelago has that sort of thing.

On a side note you really need to do a "Let's Play" video or forum post with pictures.

 

[Sgtslick]

Was playing a bit of RoM AND this week and one very BIG difference between the games is the maintenance costs for number of cities & distance.

Generally increasing maintenance in c2c would be good I think. I don't think having costs similar or equal to RoM AND is a good idea, but an increase nonetheless would be.

Maintenance costs are also an easy way to increase the challenge at higher difficulty levels coz its easy to customize - giving ai a big discount and human a big ++cost at immortal/deity while noble remains unchanged.

I was wondering how can I increase maintenance myself?

<iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>8<iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>
Sets the max number of cities that contribute to the city maintainance cost
(4 for chieftain, 5 for noble, 8 for deity) So higher is harder, but what does it mean exactly?? Can it be set to like 24 for example, and if so what does this mean/implication.

<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>100</iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>
Can this be set higher than 100?

<iInflationPercent>90</iInflationPercent>
How come this isn't set to 100 for deity? Can it be set higher than 100?

<iFreeUnits>7</iFreeUnits> Deity, maybe this should be decreased to 2 or 3?


Apart from giving myself a disadvantage or the AI how can I simply increase maintenance costs for everyone universally?

Thanks for help

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Sgtslick

As I recall early on in C2C people complained that maintenance was too much and most of the maintenance was removed. With so many buildings in the game it was very crippling. And once corporations came along it would turn thriving economies into a super maintenance abyss.

 

[ls612]

@Sgtslick

As I recall early on in C2C people complained that maintenance was too much and most of the maintenance was removed. With so many buildings in the game it was very crippling. And once corporations came along it would turn thriving economies into a super maintenance abyss.

Yes, this used to be a problem. It was so bad that it turned me off from C2C the first time I tried the mod. That and the fact that I was playing on Standard gamespeed with a medium map may have contributed to those issues.

 

[Thunderbrd]

That's true but we've gotten the building maintenance modifiers under control now, so he probably has a point about increasing maintenance from number of cities. It does allow for a lot of expansion unchecked which goes a long ways beyond original vanilla balance on that matter. This is one reason I think games are easily beaten at the moment... empires easily become too large too early and it makes it tough to get the game to go to a later era unless you're playing on an enormous map. We can't handle a size that large unfortunately, so we usually have to play with kids gloves on to keep the game going much past the Renaissance. It's tough at first but becomes very easy throughout mid-Medieval and I assign some blame to the nearly unlimited expansion of an empire. AI improvements could help of course, but making it a bit more challenging to economically maintain a sizeable empire could be a balance point that could help.

Sorry Joe

 

[JosEPh_II]

Early expansion already has several "throttles" in place.
1. The Food restrictions from the 1st Civics to start
2. Tribalism's position in the tech tree path
3. Until Sed Life under tribalism only 1 city can be founded and a new tribe can't be built until the previous is settled.
4. And this is without even using the City Limits Option (which I repeat is Obsolete and Now redundant). With City Limits On Expansion is further curtailed for player And AI (And That Is a Major Problem as I see it)
5. Prior to Is612's adjustments to Epic I was getting runaway Inflation and Staggering Civic Upkeep costs, because somehow on Epic the calculations were "off". I don't know the details but Is612 and Koshling worked on it.
6. I understand Sgtslicks concern about not enough maintenance costs but I don't think he is equating them to large empires. At least I hope not. And it doesn't read that way to me either.

Maintenance costs are also an easy way to increase the challenge at higher difficulty levels coz its easy to customize - giving ai a big discount and human a big ++cost at immortal/deity while noble remains unchanged.

7. I don't understand the boohoo over having a large Empire, and a wealthy one at that. What Great Empire in history was dirt poor?
8. I have large empires (and so do my AI opponents) because I don't Start with 15-50 AI to start either. A Huge or giant map with 7-10 AI will produce 8 to 11 large Empires until eXpansion is stopped or war breaks out over a valuable and rare resource ( or settling a sweet spot right before a neighbor gets there ).

I also believe that sarge is just asking for a sliding/escalating maintenance cost as the difficulty level increase with Noble being the base.

This is one reason I think games are easily beaten at the moment... empires easily become too large too early and it makes it tough to get the game to go to a later era unless you're playing on an enormous map.

Please clarify the "..become too large too early.." as you are generally bottled up on expansion during all the Preh Era and only really start to spread by ancient era. As I've already outlined. And with those players that Do use City Limits their growth is even more stymied (Limited artificially thru the Gov't Civics) already. This Mod in it's current state will only let you get into the late Eras by being a Major Pacifist from game start thru the Ren Era. Even more so if you choose a smaller map than Huge and have more than 10 AI.

It's not the number of cities that an Empire has that is the problem sarge is talking about. He can correct me if I'm wrong. But it's how much maintenance each city actually has/generates. (Too much Gold in the Mod for his liking)

JosEPh (That was longwinded!)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

With the latest SVN, Noble and City Limits, I can still get 8-10 happy cities before Sedentary Lifestyle. My neighbours do to, however if they do over 10 they tend to loose a few due to revolutions.

 

[T C]

7. I don't understand the boohoo over having a large Empire, and a wealthy one at that. What Great Empire in history was dirt poor?

Great empires tended to have many large economic centres. At the moment it is possible to have one great city and many tiny outposts without worrying about maintenance. In fact, this is what happens in most of my games, after tribalism. I think it would be good to increase maintenance, especially at higher difficulty levels. So instead of having a size 13 city and twelve sized 1 or 2, you would need to have several well developed cities to support that kind of empire. So large empires would be possible, but would require a much stronger economic base than they do at the moment.

 

[Koshling]

Great empires tended to have many large economic centres. At the moment it is possible to have one great city and many tiny outposts without worrying about maintenance. In fact, this is what happens in most of my games, after tribalism. I think it would be good to increase maintenance, especially at higher difficulty levels. So instead of having a size 13 city and twelve sized 1 or 2, you would need to have several well developed cities to support that kind of empire. So large empires would be possible, but would require a much stronger economic base than they do at the moment.

This suggest modifying the number-of-cities eleemnt of maintenance a bit. How about if we changed it as follows:

1. Instead of a fixed maintenance per city that increases with the number you have (which is essentially what we have now) have a maintenance cost that scales depending on the average size of your cities (higher average size results in lower per-city maintenance)
2. Rescale the base cost so as to normalise the new system to be equivalent to the old for some defined 'metric' empire

The effect is that more large cities will lower your overall maintence costs, but trying to support a large number of tiny cities with only one large economic center will be much more expensive.

Of course we could go much further and have a more subtle system based on trade route connectivity and distance to other cities, evaluating their economic power in some way. However, I don't think the cost of a complex system is justified.

 

[T C]

That sounds very good. I think it will allow more of a focus on economic development.

 

[Sgtslick]

Interesting idea, AI gets a big +50% growth advantage on deity if I remember correctly, so this would give them near impunity. Also certain traits would become more powerful such as agricultural for example.

In my current game, its unlike any other i've played and I must say its totally awesome. I adjusted my epic speed xml to this (amongst other changes).
<iGrowthPercent>350</iGrowthPercent>
<iTrainPercent>350</iTrainPercent>
<iConstructPercent>400</iConstructPercent>
<iCreatePercent>450</iCreatePercent>
<iResearchPercent>400</iResearchPercent>
<iBuildPercent>300</iBuildPercent>
<iImprovementPercent>300</iImprovementPercent>

So its more of a hybrid snail/epic.

And the AI has flurished. I have had to play very well/strategically to survive and to keep pace. For the most part i've been in the bottom quarter of civs (out of 22) now im in the middle. The GNP leader has consistently been 4x mine for example.

I think my xml changes helped the ai and my settings have helped too, eg. only 22 civs giant world. No revolutions. No city limits. Limited religion. Ruthless AI. No great commanders, and so on.

Also without being able to spam nearly every building my finances have been severely strained. For about the last 200-300 turns (now about 650 turns in i think) i've had to keep research slider below 50%, at one point it was stuck on 0% research.. Never experienced this b4 in c2c and its great

 

[Sgtslick]

Forgot to mention- Orchards seem way better than Plantations for sugar/spices etc yet automated workers build plantations - is this intentional?

 

[ls612]

@SgtSlick: I'm going to convert Marathon to the new Gamespeed system soon, so you might want to try that once I finish it. Don't try it now however, as it is totally unbalanced and broken atm.

EDIT: I have committed now the new Marathon. It has ~4300 turns and is generally supposed to be 1.66 times faster than Snail (approximately). I have also made several small adjustments to the multipliers on Eternity and Snail for almost everything, although none of these changes are very big. Epic has remained unchanged.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Forgot to mention- Orchards seem way better than Plantations for sugar/spices etc yet automated workers build plantations - is this intentional?

1) Orchards are supposed to provide food with some commerce where as Plantations are supposed to provide commerce and some food. They should produce the same amount ie total number of food+commerce.

2) Which is why food resources (apples, lemons and almonds) have orchard and the others have plantations. So you can't build orchards on spice.

I.E. it is intentional, however I may need to buff the plantation line.

 

[Sgtslick]

Do you think this is fair as an interim fix for traits?
CIV4TraitInfos.xml

CIV4TraitInfos
<Type>TRAIT_INDUSTRIOUS</Type>
<iMaxGlobalBuildingProductionModifier>35</iMaxGlobalBuildingProductionModifier>
<iMaxTeamBuildingProductionModifier>35</iMaxTeamBuildingProductionModifier>
<iMaxPlayerBuildingProductionModifier>35</iMaxPlayerBuildingProductionModifier>

<Type>TRAIT_EXPANSIVE</Type>
<iHealth>4</iHealth>

<Type>TRAIT_SEAFARING</Type>
<iHealth>2</iHealth>

<Type>TRAIT_DECEIVER</Type>
<iCommerce>3</iCommerce>

<Type>TRAIT_AGGRESSIVE</Type>
<iGreatGeneralRateModifier>20</iGreatGeneralRateModifier>

<Type>TRAIT_SPIRITUAL</Type>
<iMaxAnarchy>2</iMaxAnarchy>