Caravans

[mystikx21]

@Tomice, in vanilla caravans are 75, and the cargo ship is 100 I believe.
In the mod there's a much better cost disparity for the value they generate.

@Thal, I'm not so worried about the barbarians raiding them, I'm more referring to the AI warring/raiding them. It's possible I need to move up a difficulty and will be satisfied as I've been usually testing lower to get a feel for features as they are added. But I would still say that some danger to intercontintental routes helps put a premium on secure land routes. Barbarians raiding them is really lame of course, but it does mean I'm less likely to send a route out into the unknown or unclear/unsecured area early on. The effective lack of danger later essentially means the cost of protecting routes is much lower such that it is always much more profitable.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'll raise the non-barbarian AI's tactical priority to plunder trade units. It's easy to do. I did something similar to make AIs more likely to pillage improvements.

 

[Tomice]

Just checked the trade route formula again and I have to partially revoke my previous statement. Contrary to my earlier thought, sea trade simply doubles all gold AFTER buildings/wonders are calculated in.

I was mislead by the values shown when you are asked where to send your caravan/ship. They appeared to not differ much (like 12-15 for land and 15-18 for sea). But in the trading screen the difference is bigger.

So yes, if you have military ships anyway, sea trade is much more profitable.

 

[mystikx21]

That sounds appealing. Gives my navy something to do other than attack at least.

 

[calrah]

I actually really like the v3.12.2 the best. I usually trade land caravans as soon as possible with city-states and AI to get my gold up quick. As soon as sea trade is available i build those unit too. When at war with neighbors i have the land trades bring food and production to my cities and use my fleet to protect sea trades with city states or ally AI. Having sea trade early is critical and i like where it is in v3.12.2..my game depends heavily on trade and the balance for me out of 9 routes is at least 3-4 land based routes for supplying production and food internally and the rest are sea routes. Don't change it, folks have to learn how to use trade route wisely.

The goal is a challenging decision between the options of land and sea. Forcing people to use caravans by removing the other option doesn't solve the underlying problem that the choice is imbalanced. It's better to fix problems instead of hiding them.

Removing sea trade also causes a problem by making ships less important. Trading one problem for another improves the game less than solving a problem directly.

 

[calrah]

Making vanguard units more expensive makes it harder to use them as gifts to help out AI allies and city states. They are also great for fending off traitor neighbors. AI players make WAY too many gatling and machine gunners as if they are riflemen or something, same with subs. Way too many nuclear subs later in game. I kind of liked that machine gunners required resources to produce to limit them. Making them cost more would make it harder for the AI to get so many? I guess v3.13 is not so bad but for me and my style of playing on immortal all standard, i use diplomacy to maintain good relations with all players, liberate captured city states, liberate captured player AI and use my civ to maintain peace and balance by supplying supplies to AI civs under attack or who are weak and vulnerable while maintaining an edge on culture and winning through a space or diplomatic victory. Communitas gives my game a real world feel while still making it really fun to play. Is there any way to trade/sell military hardware to AI player and city states? Could be fun. Thanks Thal..

 

[mystikx21]

I kind of liked that machine gunners required resources to produce to limit them.

- You might be the only one who did.

They could have no discount, possibly the same for subs, and that should be fine, especially with the bonuses available to MG units.

The mainline infantry units aren't vanguards anymore, or not supposed to be and the discount prior was way too high for those that were. I wouldn't regard using combat units as diplomatic effects to be an example that the mod was previously balanced, if anything that sounds like a broken effect that it was too easy to crank out cheap and expendable units for diplomatic bonuses.

 

[calrah]

- They could have no discount, possibly the same for subs,

Actually i think nuclear subs should require the uranium resource to build. They should be much more lethal too. One thing i notice with this recent update is that destroyers now have an upgrade to carrier which should be fixed. Can't upgrade to Mdestroyer with that inplace.

[/QUOTE]The mainline infantry units aren't vanguards anymore, or not supposed to be and the discount prior was way too high for those that were. I wouldn't regard using combat units as diplomatic effects to be an example that the mod was previously balanced, if anything that sounds like a broken effect that it was too easy to crank out cheap and expendable units for diplomatic bonuses.[/QUOTE]

No you can't crank them out very fast but you can buy them. It takes 3 turns for a gift to arrive at a city state so it's not unbalanced or easy to do.

 

[mystikx21]

One thing i notice with this recent update is that destroyers now have an upgrade to carrier which should be fixed

- I pointed this out elsewhere as well. I've got no idea what it is doing there either. I deleted it immediately and reverted to the destroyer-missile destroyer that it should be by default.

Nuclear submarines aren't that much more capable in combat in a tactical sense than a diesel. The main differences are speed and especially endurance/range. Torpedoes and missiles are basically the same. The hulls are basically the same. Detection is supposedly harder for a diesel running at low speed than for most nuclear subs to balance the speed advantage (nuclear has a high IR signature, steam turbine reactors are noisier than the engines, and diesels can park on the bottom to hide in sonar scatter). I'm not sure I'd give them a major combat boost as a result. Do they seem too weak? I haven't found this to be the case.

"Cranking out" units by buying or building them is the same premise to me, I should have been clearer there. If the cost of the unit is lowered, it will be cheaper in both gold and production, regardless of policies and production bonuses. If it is too low, as was the case for "vanguards" before, then it would be trivial to create an effect like you described, and I would regard that as a broken or imbalanced effect, to be building large numbers of units for the purpose of gifting them away. This is similar to a vanilla effect of building units in order to disband them for gold (because wealth was so weak and the disband-gold amount was too high), which was also a broken effect in my view. What you'd be doing here is the same process, substituting production for gold, except the gold would be "automatically" spent on CS influence boosts in this case rather than put into the pile as with disbanding the unit.

 

[Zaldron]

Actually i think nuclear subs should require the uranium resource to build. They should be much more lethal too. One thing i notice with this recent update is that destroyers now have an upgrade to carrier which should be fixed. Can't upgrade to Mdestroyer with that inplace.

The significant gameplay problem with nuclear subs requiring uranium is that they're competing with nuke plamts, missiles, and GDRs for that resource. How do you balance a ship competing with those resource consumers?

 

[jwerano]

self delete

 

[Ahriman]

The significant gameplay problem with nuclear subs requiring uranium is that they're competing with nuke plamts, missiles, and GDRs for that resource. How do you balance a ship competing with those resource consumers?

Right. Purely naval superiority just isn't that valuable. Uranium is better for gameplay if it's for superweapons.