C2C Balance Thread

[BlueGenie]

Not quite 10x higher I hope Thunder. If friendly tech reduction is capped at -75% cost you only need to do 4 or 5x.
If you go 10x you might also benefit from rearranging the tech tree so that there are "lines" you can follow and have no need to get all technologies until reaching far later Eras.

Spoiler :

(As in not needing all Prehistoric until some Classical require the last of them, or all Ancient until some Medieval require the last of them, or not needing all at all, some technologies not being Dead Ends but Alternate means to get to the same end, for instance EITHER Camel Dom OR Equine Dom OR Elephant Dom to get Animal Riding where now you have to go with Equine even if you have no horses)

And as we all know that won't happen as part of C2C is built on tech dependancy and needing as many as possible to advance further, thus having the need to get technologies faster instead.

But, one gets to thinking, what about those who might be unfortunate enough to sit on their own little island somewhere, who do not get in touch/contact with other civs until someone gets the first oceangoing ships. Would they effectively be at 1/4 the technologies that the group of 8 Civs on that huge continent are?
If so then technology seeping down to those, once contact has been established, might need to be drastically increased. They'll still be a hundred years behind as they'd need to expand (they are most assuredly a much smaller empire), build buildings (where they get many techs fast they'll take a long time to catch up to contemporaries that have had a few thousand years to build on these technologies), while simultaneously needing to build the newer units required to explore the newly opened up world and fight the new enemies that potentially have emerged.

I still think a diminishing return would be a good idea to implement on research rates for larger empires. Even if not considering that it's realistic I still think it's a good idea.
Right now Larger (basically) always wins. Higher production, higher growth rate, unit support, (costs but also income, which in early games is negligible but in later games gets to a staggering difference due to size matters), culture (well, culture matters little still, should have a bigger impact?), and of course Science.
Of those several have a staggering effect, meaning 1+1 city does not =2 cities worth but more, potentially up to and beyond =3. This due to Trade Routes increasing and in all cities. (in one still early game I have 17 cites and 25% of the output is from Trade Routes alone, making the production act as 23 cities)
Somehow diminishing the effect on in a diminishing return (so it's still increased with more cities, just not as much) will help keep the playing field more level and reduce the chances of one actor (AI or player) rushing away too far too fast and, for some, ruining the game experience.
It's easy to set up certain criteria that increase the output again by reducing the effect of the diminishing return. Mainly things like increased or better communication methods, reduced travel times (road technologies could play a major role in this reduction), information conservation (books, libraries), and of course information sharing alá the Internet.
This would also serve to keep technology advancing slower in the early ages and facilitate the Modern wave in technology that we are still riding as diminishing returns might be all but gone by then BUT everyone would share in it as they have contact (as with Tech Diffusing and the RI friendly tech transfer mentioned).

As for realism just consider how breakdowns in communications have hampered joint efforts in tech advancing over the ages. 10 people working on the same thing with no communication between each other are bound to repeat and recreate each others steps to reach the same goal or even different goals, making their combined work maybe reach 25, certainly not the 100 one would expect.
There's a reason areas and cities were considered the apex of a civilization as where the wise flocked progress was made. Most (if not all) other cities were basically only supplying production, food, manpower, and so on, while technological progress were mostly limited to this single city or area in the empire.
With time and better tech (roads, communication, storage,and so on) more areas in a nation could be science havens, thus the use of reducing diminishing returns.

Oh, well, enough from me.

Cheers

 

[Faustmouse]

Sounds like an awesome system! Like finally the best strategy is war but diplomacy is also valid

As you said about cities, this could make Cottages moreworth building. Vanilla hat 2 main strategies (Farms or huts) and I'dlove to see this in c2c as well.

 

[Rwn]

I'm not that fond of tech trading in its current form either as it can quickly become far too powerful a tool that can give an uncatchable edge to a limited number of civs. On the other hand, having a mechanism to allow technology-backward civs to get back in the race is nice.

I really like the mechanism that was described for Realism Invictus ; there could also be a (smaller) bonus for any civ that you know that has the tech without border treaty.
Say, the reduction is 10% per civ or 20% per civ with an open border treaty (this would probably need to be adjusted depending on number of civs or map size). You're the first to research a 1000 tech, it costs you 1000 . If you know 3 civs that already discovered it, it would cost you 1000 * (0.9)^3 = 729 . If you know 4 civs that discovered it and have an open border with two of those, the cost is reduced to 1000 * (0.9)^2 * (0.8)^2 = 518
This bonus could even be increased the longer the tech has been discovered by somebody else, but it might start to get too complex...

 

[Northstar1989]

As for realism just consider how breakdowns in communications have hampered joint efforts in tech advancing over the ages. 10 people working on the same thing with no communication between each other are bound to repeat and recreate each others steps to reach the same goal or even different goals, making their combined work maybe reach 25, certainly not the 100 one would expect.
There's a reason areas and cities were considered the apex of a civilization as where the wise flocked progress was made. Most (if not all) other cities were basically only supplying production, food, manpower, and so on, while technological progress were mostly limited to this single city or area in the empire.
With time and better tech (roads, communication, storage,and so on) more areas in a nation could be science havens, thus the use of reducing diminishing returns.

You're so absolutely and completely wrong, I don't even know where to begin. Technology did NOT, until recent centuries (starting in about the 1600's), ever progress in an organized manner in any serious way. Rather, somewhere in an empire somebody made a discovery, like how to make bronze from mined tin and copper (basic metallurgy and how to work these metals independently already being known throughout the empire), and then that discovery DIFFUSED throughout the civilization and to neighboring civilizations. You never had a scientist on one side of an ancient empire, and a smith on the other side of that empire cooperating to develop new metallurgical techniques, for instance...

Nor did most technologies progress from a single technological center. In fact, the very concept of technological centers largely did not exist (with a few notable exceptions- like ancient Alexandria during the Hellenistic Era...) Most were invented multiple times, but usually only caught on when they were discovered in highly developed, populous areas where the knowledge could be quickly passed on and spread- or otherwise died out. The current mechanism of science points (which larger cities generate in much larger quantities) reflects this well enough... The basic idea of a Printing Press, for instance, was discovered several times throughout history- locations including such provincial backwaters as Crete shortly before the time of the Roman Empire. But it only caught on when it was finally invented in Germany in the midst of religious controversy that made large-scale production of copies of the Bible extremely important at that particular time and place...

I HIGHLY recommend you read "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" (by Jared Diamond) some time if you want to understand the basic mechanism by which technologies developed and spread for most of human history. The author isn't 100% perfect in all the inferences he draws from the basic patterns of how this worked- but he gets the fundamentals deadly accurate.


Regards,
Northstar

 

[Northstar1989]

I didn't come to this thread to criticize people about inaccurate notions though, but rather to recommend some important improvements to the late game (Modern Era and beyond)

- Many technologies in the Modern era, as any veteran player will quickly inform you, currently have absolutely no use except as prerequisites to prerequisites to useful technologies. While I can't recommend a use for every single one of them at the current moment, I think I can suggest a use for at least one class of them at the current moment:

+ Technologies related to spacecraft propulsion, such as VASIMR Propulsion, should add gold and/or (additional) hammer production to many of the orbital and space-related buildings/wonders (the gold production could be used to effectively reduce the maintenance costs in many cases- the hammer production to reflect decreased need for rocket fuel and reduced required launch/lifting vehicle sizes- which are normally continuing drains on industrial infrastructure necessary to maintain a space program or infrastructure, as installations would and/or do require regular maintenance visits, fuel dropoff for station-keeping, new clothing for astronauts or orbital prisoners, etc.) These technologies, even when they do not enable novel things to be done, could or did make it cheaper or less resource-intensive to carry out existing types of space ops (such as lifting satellite payloads to orbit). VASIMR Propulsion, for instance, is a near-future space propulsion system which promises to allow us to carry payloads to orbit with a smaller upper (extra-atmospheric) stage- as this system enables a rocket to get a lot more Delta-V from a given propellant mass due to much higher ISP (for those of you who have never played Kerbal Space Program or read up on orbital mechanics and rocket science, don't worry what this is- only that improving it makes rocket launches cheaper and/or capable of carrying larger payloads to orbit in a single launch...) The Wikipedia article for those of you wanting to read up on VASIMR (a currently useless late-game technology in C2C) :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket


- The martian colony wonders should produce more than just gold for the owner (at least in the current release, they only produce gold- and start off actually draining your gold reserves by costing more gold than they produce until you develop certain technologies that increase their gold production). Specifically, they should also produce Science points (scientific discovery is one of the most important motivators for early extraplanetary colonization- and even a mature colony can still independently make scientific discoveries in anything from antibiotics to nuclear power that could easily be transmitted back to Earth), and Culture- which could be useful even before the colony reaches the break-even point in gold production.

+ I know some of you are wondering about the culture- so let me put it this way: any off-world colony is going to eventually produce its own songs, books, poems, movies, etc. in the native language of wherever the colonists are from; as well as artwork, sculpture, clothing styles, culinary dishes, etc. which could at least be documented and in some cases reproduced or imitated back on Earth. These will only serve to enrich and strengthen the mother nation of those colonies (assuming the nationalistic colonization model which is present in C2C- international colonies would more logically produce culture for EVERY nation on Earth) as these cultural fads and achievements are transmitted back to Earth. Additionally, having an off-world colony would be bound to inspire a certain amount of pride in the mother culture: leading to the writing of songs, poems, production of movies, etc. about the colony that otherwise probably never would have been created.

+ A similar case could be made for Great Person points being produced by the colonies- both to reflect inspiration of the native Earth population (in a similar manner to the way most other wonders currently do), AND the achievements of great people born off-planet, who the government might even endure the expense of transporting back to Earth if their potential value were great enough...


Regards,
Northstar

 

[BlueGenie]

You're so absolutely and completely wrong, I don't even know where to begin. Technology did NOT, until recent centuries (starting in about the 1600's), ever progress in an organized manner in any serious way. Rather, somewhere in an empire somebody made a discovery, like how to make bronze from mined tin and copper (basic metallurgy and how to work these metals independently already being known throughout the empire), and then that discovery DIFFUSED throughout the civilization and to neighboring civilizations. You never had a scientist on one side of an ancient empire, and a smith on the other side of that empire cooperating to develop new metallurgical techniques, for instance...

Nor did most technologies progress from a single technological center. In fact, the very concept of technological centers largely did not exist (with a few notable exceptions- like ancient Alexandria during the Hellenistic Era...) Most were invented multiple times, but usually only caught on when they were discovered in highly developed, populous areas where the knowledge could be quickly passed on and spread- or otherwise died out. The current mechanism of science points (which larger cities generate in much larger quantities) reflects this well enough... The basic idea of a Printing Press, for instance, was discovered several times throughout history- locations including such provincial backwaters as Crete shortly before the time of the Roman Empire. But it only caught on when it was finally invented in Germany in the midst of religious controversy that made large-scale production of copies of the Bible extremely important at that particular time and place...

I HIGHLY recommend you read "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" (by Jared Diamond) some time if you want to understand the basic mechanism by which technologies developed and spread for most of human history. The author isn't 100% perfect in all the inferences he draws from the basic patterns of how this worked- but he gets the fundamentals deadly accurate.


Regards,
Northstar

*smile* You are basically only reinforcing my point. The point being that larger nations, aka more cities, should not have a significant advantage in science v smaller nations with fewer cities. The output from a single city should be the determining factor until closer, a lot, to modern times, with roads, communications, being able to actually spread the ideas and technologies to the larger populace, as per your mentioning "usually only caught on when they were discovered in highly developed, populous areas where the knowledge could be quickly passed on and spread- or otherwise died out" where the road/communication part would be in the "spread".

As for your corrections, you are not fully correct either. I'll not get into a debate though as that won't change anything anywhere, least of all in the past which the debate would have been about. I didn't quite mean it literally though, only as a means to get a point through, and a way to get an understanding of taht in earlier times size didn't always matter when it came to discoveries.

Cheers

 

[Northstar1989]

*smile* You are basically only reinforcing my point. The point being that larger nations, aka more cities, should not have a significant advantage in science v smaller nations with fewer cities. The output from a single city should be the determining factor until closer, a lot, to modern times, with roads, communications, being able to actually spread the ideas and technologies to the larger populace, as per your mentioning "usually only caught on when they were discovered in highly developed, populous areas where the knowledge could be quickly passed on and spread- or otherwise died out" where the road/communication part would be in the "spread".

As for your corrections, you are not fully correct either. I'll not get into a debate though as that won't change anything anywhere, least of all in the past which the debate would have been about. I didn't quite mean it literally though, only as a means to get a point through, and a way to get an understanding of taht in earlier times size didn't always matter when it came to discoveries.

Cheers

Size is exactly what matters. You're missing my point. Because civilizations did not make coordinated research effort across many cities, each technology had to be developed in essentially isolation- but then would SPREAD through an empire. This spread DID NOT have to wait until roads or communications (which were around MUCH earlier than you think, by the way. Humans have been building roads for over five thousand years, and the first mail systems originated as early as the begging of the Classical Era- a fact the current C2C release's tech tree gets *precisely* right...), it happened thousands of years before that through neolithic trade and mass migrations of population.

Migrations of thousands and tens of thousands of people were not uncommon early in human history- long before the development of roads. From the first Americans crossing the Eurasia land bridge to the massive Indo-European migrations that have left their legacy in certain base similarities of language and religion between nearly all Western language groups; humans have carried their bodies, goods, and knowledge with them for thousands of years. Technology more often spread through the movement of people than through the movement of written or oral knowledge in early human history.


The bottom line is this:

When technologies had to be invented in isolation, there was no potential for the massive inefficiencies or expenses of coordinated research. If an empire contained six large cities, it has approximately three times the chances of discovering a technology of an empire with only two.

Because the actual development process for a technology was trivial (unlike today, where a single discovery takes years of accumulated data and research- an early copper smith could have figured out how to work bronze in just a few weeks, for instance...) the main barrier to progress was the number of people, and thus brains, in an empire; and the receptiveness of that empire's populace to new ideas. Empires that adapted new technologies thrived. Nations that rejected progress, quite simply perished (as they were conquered by their more advanced neighbors).


As there is no way to simulate these processes more realistically in-game (except for the tech diffusion part- which some other mods have figured out how to do), the current system works quite well. Once again, if you feel technology currently advances too quickly (I do), then INCREASE THE TECH COSTS until progress occurs at the desired rate. Don't try and revamp a system that already works well, and is a lot more realistic than you think...


Regards,
Northstar

 

[Northstar1989]

Once again, I didn't come here to debate the technological progression system (which I feel works quite well enough to suit our purposes- with the increase of tech costs by at least 30% being desirable to suit our purposes...) I came here to suggest yet another improvement to the game completely unrelated to this topic.

Is there a separate thread or sub-forum where I could/should post these tweaks and suggestions?


This one relates to the World Wonder "Hadrian's Wall"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian's_wall


As any scholar well-read on Roman history will tell you, the emperor Hadrian's series of fortifications (which included not only his famous "wall" in northern England- which was actually more of a series of forts connected by various barrier-ditches and fortifications, in some places only a few feet tall), which actually also included an equally important number of strong-points along the German border, was far more than just a defensive barrier and engineering achievement meant to keep the Picts and other barbarians at bay...

Hadrian's Wall also marked a psychological turning point in the history of the Roman Empire...

Before this time, the Roman border had been fluid and surprisingly porous- with trade, goods, and people moving freely across the "borders", which actually were not well defined as such. Roman influence freely extended these borders over time- and they could also shrink was small barbarian incursions (which were common) along the frontier.

After this time, the Roman frontier became much better-defined, the border far less porous. Roman soldiers kept more careful watch over a more permanent "border", and simple increases in cultural and economic influence alone no longer served to extend this border without concomitant increases in military power and intentional (organized) expansion of Roman control... Trade and people still moved across the border- but much less freely, with increased monitoring. This also marks the point at which the roman economy began to transition from an expansion-based system to one more dependent on ever-better utilization of the existing controlled land and populace.


As such, it seems perfectly appropriate to make the "Hadrian's Wall" wonder require the "Closed Borders" civic to be active in order to build it. This would not only give greater utility to an otherwise weak civic, that has relatively little appeal compared to the competing "Open Borders" civic (which allows for much more rapid economic expansion)- it would also add to the realism and make it more difficult for empires to build this (overly-accessible) wonder.

It would also put a slight brake on the kind of crazy-fast technological progress we've been talking about here- as most players would probably need to engage in a revolution to switch to "Closed Borders" before building the wonder (most smart players would run "Open Borders" until Hadrian's Wall became available).


There is already precedent for this kind of requirement of certain civics to build wonders- the "Hill of Tara" wonder requires an absolute-rule government civic such as Chiefdom, Despotism, or Monarchy to be active in order to build it; the "Ellis Island" wonder already requires selection of the "Open Borders" civic which directly competes with "Closed Borders"; and most (possibly all) of the religious wonders in the game require the player to adopt that wonder's state religion in order for them to be built...


I like wonders like this that encourage players to have to engage in revolutions before building them- because they add much more of a (very real) price to these wonders in terms of the lost turns of technological and industrial progress, thus slowing down the rate at which most players outpace history (as well as adding a very realistic stop-and-go feeling to the player's technological progress), and also increase the instability of large empires (if you are running with the "No Revolutions" options disabled) through the higher RevIndex instability values of your cities and nation immediately after a revolution- helping lead to the actual occurrence of violent revolts (if the player isn't judicious about holding these revolutions), which tend to otherwise occur very rarely for human players...


Please let me know if you think this (as well as the changes to give VASIMR Propulsion utility, and the addition of science and culture production to the Martian Colony wonders I suggested earlier) is a good idea- and where, if anywhere, would be a better place to suggest these changes so they get noticed by the modders.


Regards,
Northstar

 

[mattchaos]

The problem is that slower speeds don't provide what is wanted. All they provide is games where the speed is slower. Research and build times remain the same in relation to each other.

What is wanted is a game where research times are far longer than unit and building build times. Eg the research times of the speed slower than the build times.

Old discussion, but I personally feel exactly the same, so what I do is I edit the xml for the different speed and I leave the research percentage as it is (or put it a little higher), but reduce building and training (also improvements), it usually does the trick very well and I enjoy my games a lot more with those settings.
The only downside is that AI doesn't handle it as good as me and spend a lot of time building money or research instead of enhancing the cities.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Old discussion, but I personally feel exactly the same, so what I do is I edit the xml for the different speed and I leave the research percentage as it is (or put it a little higher), but reduce building and training (also improvements), it usually does the trick very well and I enjoy my games a lot more with those settings.
The only downside is that AI doesn't handle it as good as me and spend a lot of time building money or research instead of enhancing the cities.

I've been trying to figure out how they fall to that so often... it's really the last thing they should be selecting if the city can do nothing else meaningful. But they seem to do it a lot don't they?

We have a game option that sets those things in the opposite direction - I'd like an option that sets it more like what you have there I think. But yeah, the AI would need to improve a bit somehow to compensate.

 

[mattchaos]

Yes they do, they usually end up richer than me, but they do nothing with their money while I settle everywhere.

We have a game option that sets those things in the opposite direction

Well, to each its own, but ... why ?

 

[Rwn]

Old discussion, but I personally feel exactly the same, so what I do is I edit the xml for the different speed and I leave the research percentage as it is (or put it a little higher), but reduce building and training (also improvements), it usually does the trick very well and I enjoy my games a lot more with those settings.
The only downside is that AI doesn't handle it as good as me and spend a lot of time building money or research instead of enhancing the cities.

I do the same (well, to be precise, I keep building times but increase research time). To compensate I've increased the tech diffusion rate (so that AI behind in tech stay not too far behind) and given a building bonus to AI (as it doesn't seem to be as efficient in chosing its buildings).

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yes they do, they usually end up richer than me, but they do nothing with their money while I settle everywhere.



Well, to each its own, but ... why ?

If you're playing on the latest SVN, that could be an indication of how a recent change has negatively impacted the AI determinations and could now be easily reversed - or if not perhaps it has been somewhat addressed by that recent change (hard to say.)

Why? There's two schools of thought that can argue very vociferously regarding that subject. You and I are in agreement but others feel that if you don't limit the amount of buildings that can be built in a city within a given tech progress rate then you take away a strategic element of the game and make all buildings 'brainless' decisions.

This 'more expensive builds' school of thought is not invalid but I find it takes away from the combat strategy layer and puts it more into the builder strategy layer and I'm more preferable towards combat strategy. I'd prefer units were cheaper and easier to put into play and buildings were something you could more easily stay on top of in your cities. But the other school of thought states that 'inactive' cities should be nearly impossible to achieve.

Again... both schools of thought are valid thus why the option was made. And the game balance to the core is probably fairly accurate to produce a bit of both sides of view at once.

But I'd like an option that opens it up for the other side of the coin too... I just haven't gone forth to produce it yet. And it might be a while before I do - but if anyone wants to I can tell them how and help where needed.

I do the same (well, to be precise, I keep building times but increase research time). To compensate I've increased the tech diffusion rate (so that AI behind in tech stay not too far behind) and given a building bonus to AI (as it doesn't seem to be as efficient in chosing its buildings).

How do you give the building bonus to the AI? What tags? (Just curious)

 

[Faustmouse]

In my experience, combat dominates this mod completely. Whenever I play a game, there are always the same brainless warmongers (Shaka, Monte, myself...) that are the most advanced. With capturing techs, pillaging money, captives, more cities... this is the way to go. And it's steamrolling. You get more Generals, thus your units are stronger (more XP and also great commander) and become even more powerful. Builders with mostly defending units have almost always way fewer units which are also not good promoted since they don't get any XP after beeing build. Sure, they have defense structures, but Catapults, Planes and Missiles are can take of these <10 Defenders easily while you have a lot of trouble to deal with 50+ attackers at once.

Next thing is diplomacy. You can make some friends with trade and such, but IMO it is easier with defense pacts, mutual military struggle and other war related things.

It would be nice if builder had some other boni, so they can compete with warmongers - with stronger yet more expensive units, with more and output etc.

This is the view from a warmonger, but since bigger empires rule c2c, you can't go around wars if you want to play in the top ranks...

 

[Thunderbrd]

In my experience, combat dominates this mod completely. Whenever I play a game, there are always the same brainless warmongers (Shaka, Monte, myself...) that are the most advanced. With capturing techs, pillaging money, captives, more cities... this is the way to go. And it's steamrolling. You get more Generals, thus your units are stronger (more XP and also great commander) and become even more powerful. Builders with mostly defending units have almost always way fewer units which are also not good promoted since they don't get any XP after beeing build. Sure, they have defense structures, but Catapults, Planes and Missiles are can take of these <10 Defenders easily while you have a lot of trouble to deal with 50+ attackers at once.

Next thing is diplomacy. You can make some friends with trade and such, but IMO it is easier with defense pacts, mutual military struggle and other war related things.

It would be nice if builder had some other boni, so they can compete with warmongers - with stronger yet more expensive units, with more and output etc.

This is the view from a warmonger, but since bigger empires rule c2c, you can't go around wars if you want to play in the top ranks...

I think the Ongoing Training modification that I've been hinting around I could use some help with would go a long ways towards letting builder/peaceful nations be competitive when war does come to them.

And maybe there IS a little too much benefit and not enough penalty for larger nation sizes. Not sure how we should tackle that yet though. There have been some interesting suggestions but nothing that really seems to fit and be acceptable.

 

[Faustmouse]

first, we could buff pacifism a bit more. So you have to pay even more for military units but have more bonus from it. hard to balance but since our civic guy is back we should be good
Then we could have another military civic, like "defense only". It should give some bonus for builders, increased defender power (like faster construction of key defender units, free city defense promo...) and penalties for aggressive units.


For big empires, I want to introduce a set of buildings that have HIGH bonus but also VERY high costs- scaling with your total population. They have to balanced that too big nations simply can't afford them (all) while smaller empires shouldn't have a big problem. They have to wait till you set up the tags thou.


More maintenance for the amount of cities would be reasonable. Especially under civics like democracy. Monarchy and such are ok to run, but then Democracy and Republic need a buff - so that you can have either a big empire with the weaker monarchy or a smaller empire with the better democrary civics.


Revolutions could scale much more with number of cities. But this will annoy players a lot I'm afraid.


Civ 3 had corruption. The further away from your palace (or equivalent), the bigger was your loss in and . This would also be an option to keep bigger empires in check.


Buildings that obolete when you have more then X cities. I think in smaller empires is less efficient prior the Internet for example. This is a step-based system, and because of this I don't think it is ideal. It would be better if it was smoother, like a global modifier in an equation like 100 * exp (10-X), but not as strong of course. Or simpler, that you have an if requirement: If cities <10, set 100%, else use equation.....

 

[Rwn]

How do you give the building bonus to the AI? What tags? (Just curious)

I've lowered iAIConstructPercent in Civ4HandicapInfo. Well, I certainly hope this indeed change the building cost

I don't know whether it's a consequence, but I'm often never even close to the leader in production (in the graph panel) while I'm usually around the top in or in tech race. This is a bit surprising to me as I usually focus on in my building/improvement choices. Maybe the leader civs have more hills in their vicinity, I don't know.

In my experience, combat dominates this mod completely.

That's odd, I've had a very different experience until then. In my first game (default settings in Large map - yeah, I didn't know about all the options in custom game at the time ): very few wars (unless declared by me to wipe out small civs nearby). The civs that declared war on me (ahead of me or close in score) were not very active and sent at best a few military units that crashed on my not-so-well defended cities. Overall that was mostly a building game that I gave up around Renaissance out of boredom.

In my current game I selected minor civs and raging barbarians for a bit more action (with large world and 15 civs). Minor civs is quite interesting and I see sometimes my neighbours sending a small invading force, though not enough to take a city defended by 2 units. Raging barbarians is a bit disappointing as Neanderthal and animals are only a threat for the very early chasers; Neanderthals never have a chance against any city with a garrisoned unit (especially the tribal guardian you have in your only city during the first half of Prehistorical era) and animals don't enter the borders.
Overall I also don't really feel any urge to build units save a few for defense and exploration, and that's enough to reach the top ranks. Maybe that will change later on when there will be no more space available to build cities (I'm still in Ancient era).

Now I think about it, I don't think I selected Ruthless AI, maybe that's the reason for this difference? Which settings/difficulty level are you using?

(By the way, I guess raging barbarians also impacts animal spawning rate? I've discovered a (rather large - several tens of tiles at least, I haven't fully charted all the borders yets) which was apparently left untouched by other civs for hundreds of turns, now it's litterally covered in animal (several in every tile). I'm sending an experienced Hunter there, that sounds like an interesting experience )

More maintenance for the amount of cities would be reasonable. Especially under civics like democracy. Monarchy and such are ok to run, but then Democracy and Republic need a buff - so that you can have either a big empire with the weaker monarchy or a smaller empire with the better democrary civics.

I actually like that a lot. Powerful civics coming with high maintenance (and/or happiness) costs for cities would allow small civs to stay competitive. Plus, it's quite realistic historically.

Civ 3 had corruption. The further away from your palace (or equivalent), the bigger was your loss in and . This would also be an option to keep bigger empires in check.

Buildings that obolete when you have more then X cities. I think in smaller empires is less efficient prior the Internet for example. This is a step-based system, and because of this I don't think it is ideal. It would be better if it was smoother, like a global modifier in an equation like 100 * exp (10-X), but not as strong of course. Or simpler, that you have an if requirement: If cities <10, set 100%, else use equation.....

I'm not fond of corruption OTOH. With this system, the more recently build your cities, the less efficient they are (as they are usually further from your capital), meaning that not only they start at a disadvantage compared to your first cities, but they never have a chance to narrow the gap. Ultimately, the only cities that are able to make anything useful are the first you build.
This could work well for (or ) however: last cities are able to build as efficiently as others, but their contribution to the overall and/or becomes more and more limited - i.e. diminished returns. And/or a flat penalty (in gold or happiness, which are too easy to manage currently) for all cities depending on the number of cities.

 

[Faustmouse]

I never use agressive or ruthless Ai because I think this cripples their economy even more. I play on deity, maybe that's the reason?
And yeah, agressive barbs make the game in fact easier, since you get way more animals

Glad you like the civic idea, I will pm it to civplayer8.

and you, loss in distant (=new) cities is not good.... and could be handled just by increased maintenaince.

 

[Yudishtira]

While some effort has been put into providing a balance of cultures over the different continents, what has been overlooked is that the majority of early cultures are North American. In other words, a serious imbalance remains, because cultures are bound to eras, and early cultures are more of an advantage than later ones.

If only one civ on your continent (or in your entire game) has North American culture, they accumulate cultures in prehistoric and ancient. The 10-strength heroes and 2-move 7-strength melee units etc. are somewhat OP in and of themselves, but moreso when monopolized in this way.

 

[Noriad2]

While some effort has been put into providing a balance of cultures over the different continents, what has been overlooked is that the majority of early cultures are North American. In other words, a serious imbalance remains, because cultures are bound to eras, and early cultures are more of an advantage than later ones.

If only one civ on your continent (or in your entire game) has North American culture, they accumulate cultures in prehistoric and ancient. The 10-strength heroes and 2-move 7-strength melee units etc. are somewhat OP in and of themselves, but moreso when monopolized in this way.

-The early advantages are to balance the fact that European and Asian countries have many more cultures later on.
-many str 7 North American culture units need Obsidian which is rare. Obsidian also gives access to str 5 swordsmen, and although those are slightly weaker, are not entirely powerless against str 7 units (and are also cheaper), if they have a defensive bonus or are in greater numbers.
-Elephant riders are also str 7 and potentially available to everybody. There are also some str 7 units in megafauna domestication. Str 6 horsemen are also not useless.
-hero units are just single units. They can be countered with numbers. One unlucky die roll and they are gone forever.

But yes, for a short while, between Obsidian tech and better units, e.g. that come with copper working, if one civ is North American and has Obsidian Resource, and another civ only has str 3 units to work with, then that last civ is at a serious disadvantage for a short while. Makes for exciting games. Hint: try to pillage his Obsidian resource.