Cautious Balance Tweaks

[jwallstone]

A set of cautious tweaks designed to address some of balance issues without significantly altering core gameplay. I'm not trying to change too much, just obvious disparities and weaknesses.

Version 9.0
Works with patch 1.0.0.62

Improvements:

• Mine now gets +1 at Dynamite.
• Iron now gives the same +1 bonus with a mine as Aluminum, Coal, Uranium
• Pastures get +1 with Fertilizer to make the Pasture resources more attractive.

Great People Improvements:

• Manufactory gets +1 with Electricity
• Manufactory now provides Iron, Coal, Alumnum, Uranium, just like a Mine, and gets the same bonus with these resources as a Mine. Now there is no disincentive to build it on top of a Mine.
• Customs House +1 with Banking
• Customs House now provides Gems, Gold, Silver and gains the same bonus with these resources. Customs Houses can be built on these resources to replace a Mine, providing a strategic choice between hammers and gold.
• Academy gets +1 at Education, Scientific Theory and Computers, to scale better with Eras.
• Academy no longer removes jungle.
• Landmark gets +1.

Wonders

• Colossus yield increased, from +1 to +2 on water tiles. No longer becomes obsolete.
• The Great Wall also no longer becomes obsolete.

Buildings

• Stable build cost reduced 50% to 50. Also gives mounted units +15xp. Significantly more useful now, as it is actually worthwhile if you plan on building many horse units.
• Barracks, Armory, Military Academy build costs reduced about 30%. Makes these buildings more attractive. When Lua coding becomes more usable, I have some more ideas about these.
• Arsenal build cost reduced 25%.
• Courthouse cost reduced to 160, maintenance reduced to 4. Makes annexing slightly more attractive vs. Puppeting.
• Watermill maintenance reduced to 1. Cost reduced to 100This simply made no sense before, when compared to a Granary.
• Granary, Watermill both get +1 with Engineering.

Units

• The Chariot Archer class upgrades to Crossbowmen rather than knights.
• Submarines can upgrade to nuclear subs.

Combat

• -33% penalty on flat land reduced to -15%. The high disadvantage for defenders on open terrain was too strong, making ranged sniping too easy and was also possibly one of the major reasons for the high power (some say overpower) of mounted units, since on open terrain they could hit and run heavily penalized defenders with impunity. The base penalty also overshadowed fortification, the basic Shock promotion, and even attacking across rivers. However, removing the penalty is possibly too big of a change. Furthermore, defenders can often Fortify on open terrain immediately upon moving there, something that can't be done on rough terrain. I believe this provides a careful medium, giving a +10% to units that take the time to fortify, but a -15% otherwise. Fast advance on open terrain is penalized, but a slow advance with fortification keeps just a slight advantage on defense.
• Floodplains, Oasis also have -15% penalty as well. Marsh and Fallout retain a -33% penalty.

 

[Ravellion]

I like the cautious approach here. I'll DL before my next game.

 

[wasabijoe]

Is there a way to DL this without using steam? Having issues with steam mods ATM.

 

[jwallstone]

I've attached the file in the original post. Just place in your MODS folder.

 

[wasabijoe]

I've attached the file in the original post. Just place in your MODS folder.

Thank you for such a quick response.

 

[Tyrael]

I'll definitely try this mod out during my next game. I like how the tweaks are small, I think small pushes toward balance are better than big ones which risk throwing the game out of balance in the other direction- this way we know with a fair amount of certainty that the game will turn out better.

 

[haleu]

I approve of these changes.

Don't be afraid of stable/forge buffs getting out of hand though. They were vastly
underpowered as they were and even if they were strong, they would be balanced by lack of availability.

In my opinion, resource-dependent buildings are meant to be powerful. Makes city specialization more apparent which adds flavor and strategy to the game.

 

[quarterpound]

Promising start here. I like the idea of small, cumulative balance (and eventually AI) tweaks, because I actually enjoy 1upt and most of the rest of the game framework. Niggles I'd like to improve (off the top of my head):

- Spearmen should NOT get a mounted bonus vs. Chariot Archer missile fire. However, Chariot Archers are a little overpowered and should be slightly less damaging than regular Archers.
- aren't courthouses a little too expensive? I think happiness is pretty well balanced at the moment but I hate having to spend sooo long to get one up after conquering a city. Maybe I just haven't thought this one through well enough.

- Strategic resources seem too plentiful. This is a major overhaul issue, but maybe it could be improved with a couple tweaks. It just doesn't ever feel like I'm really juggling strat resources, which I presume was the intention behind the design. I love the idea that everyone could have horses, but be limited in the number of horse units they can field. But I was only ever limited by this for like one turn, and not at all for iron. Maybe citystates just give too many resources.

- I like ponies. Can I have a pony?

I've tried to limit my impulse to change everything So whatever, just throwing out my best ideas so far.

 

[a barbarian]

Sounds great! I also like the cautious approach

>>but I hate having to spend sooo long to get one up after conquering a city.
I like to annex puppets primarily during Golden Ages since during those turns, the happiness doesn't count towards the next GA and you get a big production boost. Just don't forget to prioritize hammers right after annexing a city.

 

[Lightzy]

like the cautios approach, however mines and farms are still totally inferior to trade posts.
Tis better to give standard mines a +2 to prod from the start and another +1 (for a total of +3) with dynamite.
Also to remove any economic buffs that you've added.
The game is already heavily skewed towards gold generation.

 

[mzprox]

few of my suggestions:
-I think pastures should give +1 food much earlier, around civil service, but not with that because sling-shoting to that tech is powerfull enough already.
-I'd consider making granaries +1 food, stroing 25% of food.
-academies could start as +5, but they should get serious upgrades in time, at least up to 8 science, otherwise using the great scientist to pop a tech would always be favorable.

 

[Folket]

I think it is time to remove the -33% defence on open ground.

 

[jwallstone]

@Folket
Agree with the -33% defence. Was actually just getting around to changing that.

@mzprox
Good suggestions, some changes are coming.

 

[jdog5000]

This looks like a very nice set of small, considered tweaks. Thank you!

I hope you'll keep this philosophy going, your mod will surely find it's way into a lot of player's games and hopefully influence future tweaks by Firaxis.

And welcome to the wide world of modding

 

[jwallstone]

@jdog5000
Thanks for your encouragement!

I've come out with another set of changes. The big one is addressing the -33%, let me know if those changes look reasonable.

Also, Academy gets more boosts to help scale with eras. Granaries and Windmill get a boost with Engineering tech. Submarines can upgrade to nuke subs now. And I changed Pastures to get +1 with Fertilizer instead of Refrigeration, to come earlier.

Also please let me know if you think there are legitimate reasons for the -33%. If this is making too big of a change, please let me know.

 

[a barbarian]

If the -33% also helps against that stupid 1 shotting of full health units with archers/artillery then it's another reason to have it.

I guess it's not possible with just changing the xml but units should almost always survive (even if heavily damaged) artillery/archer attacks since those are really inefficient to wipe out a unit completely. For this, you should need to use close combat troops. The AI can't use arty anyway, so it would also raise the combat difficulty a little bit.

 

[quarterpound]

The -33% issue is touchy. I think it makes a certain amount of sense, that without fortification, the attacking unit has an advatange in open ground. You should feel your troops are naked in open ground. However, a.barbarian is right; the balance is thrown off by the -33%. Firstly, the ranged oneshotting is pretty ridiculous. Secondly, even with 5 turns of fortification, open ground is still a negative, which I don't really buy. I think open ground should be a -10%, deserts and marshes -25%, and perhaps all ranged units should be lower in power by 1.

 

[jwallstone]

Good points. I'm partial to a small penalty to instead of completely getting rid of it. It certainly is too powerful now, where units on open terrain can be easily killed both by archers, foot soldiers, and hit-and-run mounted units.

 

[Perkus]

You need to document the flat land change in your mod description, that's a big change that some people disagree with (I like it). There is a big ongoing debate regarding this here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=391032

 

[jwallstone]

Hey, thanks for the tip on documentation, I thought I had added it, but maybe I didn't save.

After reading through the thread, I've decided that removing it entirely was too big of a change. I believe -15% provides some interesting strategic value while not making open terrain too dangerous. I've explained my reasoning more in the first post.