City Development

[Zeppelin4]

I'm not even sure why we did it in the first place but do we still need to delete the Harbor.xml?

 

[Thalassicus]

The one from the unofficial patch, yes.

Unofficial Patch version - corrects tooltip to clarify trade routes
City Development version - corrects tooltip to clarify trade routes AND tells about the +1 on water tiles

If you have both files, one overrides the other (whichever was installed most recently gets precedence), so remove the UP version.

 

[SerriaFox]

Hey Thalassicus, your balance mods are working great! I think a big change you could make here that would make the game a lot more fun would be to national wonders. Some of them are pretty cool with good effects (see oxford), some aren't... ugh Ironworks!

But the biggest problem is that if you're not going for a small empire, cultural win, you're just never going to build even one of these as you need one of the prereq building in EVERY CITY! This totally sucks. The reason they did this was obviously to balance out smaller empires (in Civ 4 you HAD to have 6 cities at least) but there's a simple fix. Do you think you should change it so that say, to build oxford, you'd need a uni in every city if you had fewer than six cities (i.e small empires can get it built) OR if you had more than 6 cities you'd only need 6 uni's before you can build it (so big civs can build them too!)?

This will retain the ability of smaller (e.g three city) civs to get the national wonders easier, whilst at least making it POSSIBLE to build them if you have many cities. Building maintenance also balances this out, still favouring small empires.

Really hope this can be done. I miss my national wonders!

In the xml for national wonders there is a requirement building is by default set to -1 which guess the computer interrupts to be every city, if you change it to say 3 it might me build three and you can build the national wonder. In civ 4 this scales with map size, not sure if it would scale here.

 

[jenks]

many thanks for this - this is now on my MUST DOWNLOAD list when i get back home!

I agree with everything in your rationale for these v4 changes, I have been frustrated at the lack of tactical options with some of the frankly useless buildings/wonders you have treid to fix

Again, thanks for the work

 

[gingerbill]

played a game on epic/prince with your building and terrain improvements mod , used my own simple mod that increases epic modern research times as well . Enjoyed it . Seemed to work well , dunno if it was a coincidence or because i had 3 AI's on me at once but it was the first really challenging prince game i've played.

One thing i noticed was that because the tiles are better you tend to use specialists alot less so you get alot less GP's. Without the mod you seem to be in Golden ages half your time due to GP's , golden ages didnt come often with the mod. Thats not a complaint as i could have had specialists , just something i noticed.

great mods

 

[Drawmeus]

On the National Wonders, the solution imo is to jack up the value of them. The advantages that a huge empire has over a small one are not solved by 20% here and there, especially not when it requires buildings that you otherwise might not build. Jack up the power level and people will build them.

My favorite one from a game design standpoint (not necessarily a balance standpoint) - Heroic Epic. I like the idea of counterbalancing the smaller military that a small empire is going to have access to with higher quality per unit.

I'm glad to see our harbor discussion went somewhere

 

[Thalassicus]

Interesting idea... rather than nerf the requirements, increase the potency as both a buff to the building and small empires. I like it, and will explore that further.

Anyone else find it confusing how Natural Wonders and National Wonders are only a few letters different? I seem to often read it wrong. Yeah I know, silly offtopic...

 

[Bibor]

Thalassicus, I'd like to discuss a few wonder changes that you made.

Pyramids- 50% is powerful. With the 25% from liberty it's 75%. Your change means a 100% increase when you add up 75% and 25%, which leads to roads being built in 1 turn. This might not be a big deal during peacetime but during wars it completely breaks the difficult terrain issue. With two workers one can basically pave his way to the enemy. I'd rather keep the 50% and add something like 5% lower unit upkeep or something (to ease the upkeep of workers).

The Great Wall - it was fixed in the last patch and now works as intended and it really, really hurts. I'm not sure if its one of your mods doing it, but city defenses that have twice as much time to hurt your invasion force can do real damage now. It should be back to its previous hamer cost, because any peacemonger human player will want it.

 

[Thalassicus]

Pyramids and GW can be powerful true, the thought is not their isolated power but cost-effectiveness and relative value compared to other wonders of the era.

Great Library slingshot to CS

• +400
• Increases city strength
• Increases effect of city-states
• Unlocks 3 policy trees
• Boosts farm yield
• Unlocks +50% wonder
• Unlocks resourceless pikemen

For 120% cost you can get:

• +50% worker build speed

For 230% you get:

• Enemies move at half speed in your borders.

The question is, are lists 2 and 3 that much more valuable than the first one? I'm not really sure either way, anyone have more opinions on the subject?

 

[Bibor]

The question is, are lists 2 and 3 that much more valuable than the first one? I'm not really sure either way, anyone have more opinions on the subject?

That's one way to look at it.

- TGL costs 10 less than two regular libraries Or 30 short of a colloseum
- TGL can get you (as you say - Civil Service slingshot) from Ancient to Medieval age in less than 15 turns. This is true for both and only Civil Service and Theology, except the latter is almost a filler tech.
- If not used on these two techs, the actual hammer cost is fine; it just enables you to catch up in military or economy, or to help mitigate the effects of going for writing first (literacy pays off).

Conclusions:
The Great Library is broken ONLY by the fact that Civil Service and Theology require just one ancient and one classical tech as prerequisite. As long as it is used on any other tech it stays balanced.

Manual research cost of Civil Service or Theology with infrastructure available at Philosophy is prohibiting.

Ergo, "bulbing mechanics" combined with lack of tech requirements for CS and Theo is what's broken, not The Great Library cost.

Since the tech tree cannot be easily fixed at this point (no way to artificially add requirements to either Civil Service or Theolgy, the only remaining way to fix The Great library is to change its effects.

Changes I suggest:
- make it similar to Stonehenge by making it give, say, 5 per turn.
- make it a copy of a library, so its effects increase with population increase (making that city, with a library, give 2 for every 2 citizens); this way it gives core beakers that scale up in time, as well as being more powerful than a 50% multiplier like National College.
- switch the places of Oracle and Great Library, making it available when most other civs already have iron working (swordsmen and archers kill pikemen, and are more readily available now that mining reveals iron and with your changes to archer power). A leap from Philosophy to Civil Service is shorter and less artificial since you can have a Great Scientist do the same at this point.

 

[gingerbill]

Think i agree with bibor that the TGL cannot be balanced while it acts as a CS slingshot . I've never been a fan of how slingshots work in any CIV game , they dictate very rigid gameplay because they are so powerful . The devs should have removed these slingshots a long long time ago. I think most players like them though as they are a powergamers style of play.

Personally i rate the pyramids very highly even at 50% , though from reading the forums most players dont . Its such a boost i dont understand why people dont rate it . You get your luxury happineess quicker , food boost quicker and need half as many workers which saves money . After building the pyramids in a game i hate not to have it.

I thinking changing TGL to be a better version of a library is a good idea for balance . But i dont think most players would agree.

 

[Stalker0]

Personally i rate the pyramids very highly even at 50% , though from reading the forums most players dont . Its such a boost i dont understand why people dont rate it .

Unless your going for a ICS strat (which granted is becoming more popular as its being understood) workers run out of stuff to do very quickly in Civ V. Faster improvements are nice, but not critical.

 

[MilkmanDan]

Unless your going for a ICS strat (which granted is becoming more popular as its being understood) workers run out of stuff to do very quickly in Civ V. Faster improvements are nice, but not critical.

Plus, if you are spreading as fast as possible you're usually getting into wars and then grabbing 2-5 workers is pretty easy.

It's one of the odder effects for a wonder when you think about it though. Historically, the egyptians weren't building all over the place, known for roads or irrigation (the early worker functions in other words). I would (for flavor sake) give the pyramids the oracle effect of a free social policy and maybe make the oracle a happiness/gold boost that expires with theology.

 

[Perkus]

@Thalassicus:
A couple of new change suggestions for buildings I've been pondering:

1) Reduce the # of science specialist slots in the Library from 2 to 1. Why is this cheap, early building so over-powered? The more I think about this, it should be a no-brainer. This reduces the raw power of ICS, early slingshots, overpowered GSs, etc. A whole slew of significantly OP early strategies are nerfed. It won't be popular, no, but I think it's much better balanced. A better question is whether to add this slot back somewhere else. You could argue to just leave it removed, making GSs much harder to achieve. You could move it to the University, leaving the same potential GS power, but requiring higher tech & much more building commitment and maintenance to achieve. I also thought about putting it later on in the tree, the most logical place seemed to be the Medical Lab. This last one seems weird, but I was working on a more comprehensive proposal to eliminate all buildings with 2 specialists, and spread them around more. The Temple is also a really cheap early building with 2 specialists, but nobody thinks GAs are particularly worth building (although with your range 2 bomb, they are now remarkably powerful). So my idea was to move 1 from Temple to maybe Broadcast Tower (has none). And then also take one off Banks, and move to probably Mint (not great, since Mint isn't available in most cities). And take one off of Museum and give it to the Opera House, which has none despite equal culture/maintenance. This would make the two equal, necessitating a change to their building cost. But I can't really justify any of these other changes other that the library, since it's hard to argue the others are broken.

2) Add +15 XP to Naval Units to the Seaport. Assuming that is actually moddable (haven't looked, but it exists for air). Justification: I think the seaport is still rather weak for its two maintenance, unless you have more than 1 water resource available, the +2 production isn't that much to justify building it. Giving it a second, military purpose makes it more valuable. And I think the game needs building(s) to create more experienced naval and air units. Why are there 3 ways to boost land units' XP, but none for air/water units? I'm using the Military Airbase mod to solve the air unit problem, and this would help solve the water unit side without requiring a new dedicated building. That said, you could easily justify a new "naval base" building also.

 

[Thalassicus]

I like the idea of converting the Great Library to science per turn, it has precedent from Civ IV too.

I've discovered the effect of the Pyramids changed significantly several times during Civ V's development. I've seen legacy code in the XML files indicating it used to give a Granary in every city like earlier games, also seen code where it gave an immediate golden age, and other code where it increased the duration of golden ages. I think any of these would have probably worked better than the current effect. The big problem with increasing worker build times is the quantized nature of building improvements... if something takes 2 turns to build and you increase speed 50%, the Pyramids have no effect at all.

Decreasing the GS slots on Libraries is an interesting idea. Is it the building itself that's overpowered though, or the scientists themselves? I originally had a -1 reduction to science specialist strength in this mod. I think the root problem is the instant-tech ability of GSs, which got a HUGE buff from earlier versions of civ and really does feel overpowered.

I've been thinking about naval experience for a while, still considering options. The disadvantage of putting it on the Seaport is the places you can build that building are rather limited, and it would give the building 2 different roles, which might be sorta odd. The Harbor doesn't really fit as an xp-boosting building either, especially with the +1 to water tiles I add in this mod. I think the best solution is a dedicated ship-building structure, like in Civ IV.

 

[Perkus]

Decreasing the GS slots on Libraries is an interesting idea. Is it the building itself that's overpowered though, or the scientists themselves? I originally had a -1 reduction to science specialist strength in this mod. I think the root problem is the instant-tech ability of GSs, which got a HUGE buff from earlier versions of civ and really does feel overpowered.

It is the great scientists that are the most broken, but we can't currently mod the insta-tech-by-choice, can we? If a patch nerfs them, this can be reversed again. One of the many, many reasons why ICS is so powerful (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395792) is cheap & strong early buildings like the library. If we -1 the scientist, you can't ever get that back. If we move them to a more expensive building, we're forcing you to tech up more and pay more maintenance, but you can abuse them equally if you wish.

I've been thinking about naval experience for a while, still considering options. The disadvantage of putting it on the Seaport is the places you can build that building are rather limited, and it would give the building 2 different roles, which might be sorta odd. The Harbor doesn't really fit as an xp-boosting building either, especially with the +1 to water tiles I add in this mod. I think the best solution is a dedicated ship-building structure, like in Civ IV.

I don't like it on Harbors, because I think they already do plenty (connect trade routes & railroads in addition to adding gold). I don't mind it being limited on the Seaport, it makes areas with a strong maritime tradition (i.e. fishing / whaling resources) be natural locations for veteran naval production, which is realistic. Not every port city needs to be able to have this ability. Just like you can't have stables everywhere, you need horses. The dual purpose, while unusual, makes a weak (IMHO) building more desirable. The harbor is also multi-purpose, it's not without precedent.

 

[Joneill]

Decreasing the GS slots on Libraries is an interesting idea. Is it the building itself that's overpowered though, or the scientists themselves? I originally had a -1 reduction to science specialist strength in this mod. I think the root problem is the instant-tech ability of GSs, which got a HUGE buff from earlier versions of civ and really does feel overpowered.

Could always reduce the amount of GPP scientists generate from 3 to 2, but that has implications for academies and GS-generated golden ages, too.

I've been thinking about naval experience for a while, still considering options. The disadvantage of putting it on the Seaport is the places you can build that building are rather limited, and it would give the building 2 different roles, which might be sorta odd. The Harbor doesn't really fit as an xp-boosting building either, especially with the +1 to water tiles I add in this mod. I think the best solution is a dedicated ship-building structure, like in Civ IV.

Actually, I think the harbor would work just fine, it already increases naval production, why not xp, too? The current gold bonus in this mod feels awkward on a building with such a high maintenance cost and could probably be moved to another building or directly to coastal tiles (the latter would actually turn them into useable tiles for cities with a lighthouse and might make the original colossus effect worthwile on its own).

 

[MilkmanDan]

It is the great scientists that are the most broken, but we can't currently mod the insta-tech-by-choice, can we? If a patch nerfs them, this can be reversed again. One of the many, many reasons why ICS is so powerful (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395792) is cheap & strong early buildings like the library. If we -1 the scientist, you can't ever get that back. If we move them to a more expensive building, we're forcing you to tech up more and pay more maintenance, but you can abuse them equally if you wish.

Honestly, it's the choice part that I think is most broken about it. If it could be a random tech that makes it much more of a gamble as to being worthwhile. Or, if it could always be a mid-low cost tech.

ICS is a problem because the penalties do not outweigh the benefits. Doubly so if instead of settling, you're puppeting. Yeah, it's technically exponential, but the growth rate is low enough that the difference between 5 and 10 cities is not close to the benefits of extra production, resources, culture, happiness (buildings), science etc.

Fixing ICS isn't a job for these balance mods though, but if I were to do it I'd probably start with the pitifully low happiness penalty for number of cities and then maybe a bump up in the culture/GP rate penalty per additional city. Then some sort of negative effect/consequence to having way more puppet cities than normal.

A revolution mod might just be the best fix, spread yourself too thin? A chunk of your empire rebels. Could make the whole game more interesting as you'd have new civs coming into existence mid-game while others die off.

 

[Thalassicus]

That's a very interesting post you linked Perkus. I'll start thinking about all the problems in that list.

Something I've learned when it comes to balance is that if there's a bunch of factors all contributing to 1 problem, attacking those small things can solve even totally unrelated issues. For example, the overpowered state of Horsemen in vanilla is due to a combination of horsemen strength, weak ai, open/rough terrain ratio, late reveal of Iron, weakness of alternate units, resource abundance, etc... many factors.

Any superiority of ICS over "normal" sparse development could be considered a core game problem like the ignore-happiness exploit, so it's something I'd rather leave to the developers to solve on the whole, but I can fiddle with all the little factors that contribute to it. Something that would be in the realm of this specific mod is the underwhelming nature of National Wonders. Improving them will also help expansion vs small empire balance issues.


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Here's some things I'm working on.

Been considering a buff to these for a while now. Improving National Wonders would be helpful for general expansion vs small empire balance in general, not just ICS. One idea I've had is adding more specialist slots to these buildings, giving small empires extra specialist and GP potential.

Something like...

National Epic: 2 Artists and +50% (double)
Hermitage: 2 Artists
Heroic Epic: 2 Engineers
Ironworks: 2 Engineers and +40% (double)
National College: 2 Scientists
Oxford University: 2 Scientists
<something famous>: 4 Merchants, requires <some weak building>

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Aqueduct
+25% city growth rate
Construction tech

(Hospital effect and cost halved)

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Baths of Trajan
Requires Aqueducts in every city.
+10

Massive bathing and leisure complex built in Rome from 104-109 CE. Purpose of this National Wonder will be dealing with one aspect of ICS. Colosseums will have -1, yet a small empire with this National Wonder will have equal or greater happiness than vanilla.

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Agra Fort
Requires Castles in every city.
+50% city hitpoints.
2 Merchant slots.

This is a famous walled city in India, capital of the Mughal empire in the 16th century CE, and housed a gigantic treasury and mint.

Increasing hitpoints with a building is not possible yet, so as a temporary measure I'll give the same strength bonus as a Castle or something.

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Medici Bank
Requires Banks in every city.
+50%
2 Merchant slots.

A financial institution created by the Medici family in Italy during the 15th century. It was the largest and most respected bank in Europe during its prime. This is again to work in with ICS migitation.

The Medici Bank would probably be joined by a slight reduction to normal bank and/or market yields. Overall there would be more gold for small empires but less gold for large ones, similar to the concept for Baths of Trajan, to make small empires and national wonders a more worthwhile strategy.

For example, if Markets produce +20% gold (down from 25) then with this +50% wonder your empire would have more gold than vanilla when smaller than about 10 cities, and less gold when over 10. (50 / 5)

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I haven't done art yet for CiV... so I'll have to learn how to go from Photoshop images to CiV icons. Probably will have placeholder icons to start.

 

[Stalker0]

I think you could add an XP bump to the seaport but its not necessary. The seaport building fine to me.

I agree that you generally need 2 sea resources or more to make it worthwhile...but that's actually a fairly common occurrence, especially if you choose your cities to make that happen.

I like the new national wonder ideas except for the bank. I don't think we need a big money bump building, money generation is fine to me (though I think unit maintenance is a bit out of wack).