(CONFIRMED) Marathon/Espionage Bug

[doronron]

I thought a bit about this in order to fix it until the patch: The xml only allows one factor to be entered, i.e. the number of turns and the effect is always the same.

Todd, which XML file are you looking into?

 

[Littlelisa]

I want rid of these broken missions as well.
So removing the info on the 2 missions from CIV4EspionageMissionInfo stops you and the AI doing the mission?

Or should i change it to 1 or 1 for 1 turn so i dont risk breaking anything

 

[MisterBarca]

I got the game, and sure enough had this happen to me. And given that I only play Marathon setting, I am frustrated and frankly pissed.

It's unbelievable that they've screwed up something this elemental for the second expansion in a row.

Disgusted. Patch this . .. .. .. . ASAP!

 

[Todd Hawks]

Todd, which XML file are you looking into?

Check post #23 in this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5716726&postcount=23

 

[LAnkou]

I just thought another thing about poisonning:

Basically, it takes food from the city. Why wouldn't you have a kind of "poisonned granary"? i.e. let's say you have to spend 36 food before additionnal food is add to the normal granary on normal speed? and 36*3=108 food on marathon?

As soon as you have more food produced than consumed, it fills the "poisonned granary" and when you reach the number (36 on normal, 108 on marathon), it fills up the granary again.

Consequences:
no more starvation, but you prevent the city from growing as long as it didn't spend enough food.
If you make several mission, it just add to the poisonned granary
If you have a surplus of 0, nothing happend, apart from preventing you to readjust tiles to grow (start to fills up the poisonned granary), make whipping of that city harder to recover (since it will need to fill the poisonned granary first) but make whipping a viable solution to deal with it.

Basically, the effect it the same: it consumes the same amount of food, it just doesn't have this starving penalty.

I don't come up with an idea for forment unhappiness in the same genre yet. If someone have an idea, just write it...

 

[migo]

It seems that is quite easy to fix until official patch comes and does the trick. We have used simple mod that changes poison and unhappiness mission default lengths from 8 to 3. This means that at marathon game now those missions have effect of 9 turns (3 * 3 = 9 opposed to former 3 * 8 = 24).

Mod file has been attached to this post in case someone wants to use it instead modding stuff himself. Just copy and unzip it to "Mods" folder in Beyond The Sword folder and load if from game menu after starting the game.

-- Migo

 

[doronron]

Check post #23 in this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5716726&postcount=23

Cool. There's a post further down with a link to what I presume to be a version of that file. I'll either do the 12 modifier as you've suggested, or possibly look into vastly increasing the cost of those mission types (if this can be done), and use it as a bandaid until the next patch comes out.

Kind of a nuisance, really. All of my games are either Epic or Marathon speed, and I really wanted this to be a game I'd play as is out of the box -- first a DLL that allows only 18 civs per game, now this little tidbit...

EDIT: Looked into the XML file posted in this thread. I think I'll likely massively increase the cost...

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Actually the basic problem (after the real buggy one of +24 for 24 turns on Marathon speed) is that speed issue of Marathon losing population faster (by scale) than other speeds

This leads to my suggestion, make loss of population affect the Duration.

At any speed:
Set N to 8*speed factor

Set unwhatever to N/Speed Factor

Each turn population Doesn't Drop decrease N by 1
Each turn population Does Drop, decrease N by Speed Factor (0.67, 1, 1.5, 3)

So that a turn of starvation has the same effect on all speed levels.

so once Food is out,
Unhealth/happy will drop by 2 and pop will drop by 1 each turn (so you will lose 1/2 of the remaining NET unhealth/happy penalty in population after food is out) until eqiuilibrium is reached on all game speeds.

Losing 1 pop = gaining 4 to the food balance (1 crowding lost+ 1 poison lost +2 less food needed) - whatever food the pop was getting
OR
Losing 1 pop = gaining 2 (2 less needed) + whatever food 2 pop can contribute to the food balance (2 less unhappy)

So the Effect will be
Phase 1 Food loss (more turns in Marathon, because more food is there)
Phase 2 Starvation (same number of turns+population loss in all speeds)
Phase 3 Stabilization/Recovery event fading (more turns in Marathon since they need more time to refill those boxes anyways)

and agreed that poisoning should probably be cheaper than unrest (or else poisoning should have a bigger effect)... but that is just Happy>Health prejudice, that relates to normal city situations.

 

[Roland Johansen]

While this would work, it has 2 elements that will probably ensure that Firaxis will not implement it:

1) The duration is not a fixed amount of turns but dependent on whether the population shrinks. That is a difficult concept to grasp for players who want to dive into the new expansion with lots of new features. It's not too difficult for experienced players, but game developers want their game to be accessible.

2) Firaxis hates fractions and fractional turns (at epic and quick speed) would of course be rounded again. It would make the thing again less clear for players who face the effects of the mission and don't know why the duration shortens in the way it does.


The idea is basically good as it would really compensate perfectly for the differences between the various game speeds. But it requires an experienced player like yourself to understand what is going on.

 

[Zoolooman]

While this would work, it has 2 elements that will probably ensure that Firaxis will not implement it:

1) The duration is not a fixed amount of turns but dependent on whether the population shrinks. That is a difficult concept to grasp for players who want to dive into the new expansion with lots of new features. It's not too difficult for experienced players, but game developers want their game to be accessible.

2) Firaxis hates fractions and fractional turns (at epic and quick speed) would of course be rounded again. It would make the thing again less clear for players who face the effects of the mission and don't know why the duration shortens in the way it does.

The idea is basically good as it would really compensate perfectly for the differences between the various game speeds. But it requires an experienced player like yourself to understand what is going on.

I like his system, and I think it'd be more balanced and interesting than a flat population kill. It's not like poisoning is any clearer in its current incarnation either. However, I'm curious how the partial duration would be rounded off in Quick and Epic. Furthermore, the game needs to warn the player that his poison mission is completed so he can begin another one--if he chooses.

Here are some calculated possibilities:

Quick:
Duration: 6
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: 1

This means that Poison is slightly less effective on Quick, but it avoids the nonsense of half-turns remaining on the duration.

Normal:
Duration: 8
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: 1

This works the same as it does now.

Epic:
Duration: 12
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: .6... See explanation.

In effect, this is a staggered penalty system. For every three turns of starvation, the third turn does not reduce the health penalty. For every turn of death, you lose a full point of penalty.

Marathon:
Duration: 24
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: .3... See explanation.

On every third turn of starvation, the penalty is reduced by 1. For every death, you lose a full point of penalty.

Let's take a size seven city with health equal to unhealth, stagnant growth, and a half full granary. With this model, this occurs at each speed:

Quick: 2 turns of food loss followed by 2 turns of death and 1 turn of suppressed growth (if the city were a smidge larger or had literally one less food in its granary, it'd be 3 deaths.)
Normal: 2 turns of food loss followed by 3 turns of death and 2 turns of suppressed growth.
Epic: 4 turns of food loss followed by 3 turns of death and 3 turns of suppressed growth.
Marathon: 8 turns of food loss followed by 3 turns of death and 6 turns of suppressed growth.

Krikkitone's model works almost perfectly. However, it is a . .. .. .. .. . to think about. So here is the broken-down data.

Quick and Normal work like they do right now. On Epic, the count goes over twelve turns like this:

Turn 1: -8 <- Poisoned this turn. When turn ends, subtract 8 food and remove one unhealthiness.
Turn 2: -7
Turn 3: -7 <- Every third turn? No decrease.
Turn 4: -6
Turn 5: -5
Turn 6: -5 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 7: -4
Turn 8: -3
Turn 9: -3 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 10: -2
Turn 11: -1
Turn 12: -1 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 13: Counts down to zero; the mission is over.

This produces an equitable loss of food for an Epic city. However, if any of these turns ends with a death, then the Epic pattern is ignored and the full point is subtracted. Observe the size 7 city.

Turn 1: -8
Turn 2: -7
Turn 3: -7 <- Every third turn? No decrease.
Turn 4: -6
Turn 5: -5 <- One pop point starved. 1 point decrease from last turn.
Turn 6: -4 <- One pop point starved. 1 point decrease from last turn.
Turn 7: -3 <- One pop point starved. 1 point decrease from last turn.
Turn 8: -2 <- Resuming Epic pattern. Decrease one from last turn before resuming.
Turn 9: -1
Turn 10: -1 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 11: Counts down to zero; the mission is over.

Marathon:

Since the regular pattern is easy to imagine (-8 for 3 turns; -7 for 3 turns, etc. over 24 turns) I will simply post the results of Krikkitone's model on a size 7 city with a half granary.

Turn 1: -8
Turn 2: -8
Turn 3: -8
Turn 4: -7
Turn 5: -7
Turn 6: -7
Turn 7: -6
Turn 8: -6
Turn 9: -5 <- One pop point starved. It's been decreased.
Turn 10: -4 <- One pop point starved. It's been decreased.
Turn 11: -3 <- One pop point starved. It's been decreased.
Turn 12: -2 <- Resuming Marathon pattern. Decrease one from last turn before resuming.
Turn 13: -2
Turn 14: -2
Turn 15: -1
Turn 16: -1
Turn 17: -1
Turn 18: Counts down to zero; mission is over.

Look at that! The same number of dead, and the turns of food loss and turns of suppressed growth scale PERFECTLY. Krikkitone solved the problem.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

It seems that is quite easy to fix until official patch comes and does the trick. We have used simple mod that changes poison and unhappiness mission default lengths from 8 to 3. This means that at marathon game now those missions have effect of 9 turns (3 * 3 = 9 opposed to former 3 * 8 = 24).

Mod file has been attached to this post in case someone wants to use it instead modding stuff himself. Just copy and unzip it to "Mods" folder in Beyond The Sword folder and load if from game menu after starting the game.

-- Migo

The only thing broke about this mission are the values on speeds other than Normal and perhaps the cost.

The effect itself at Normal is not OP.

The only thing needing to change is the / value, which needs to be the same for all speeds.

(see this post)

The problem with reducing the Normal turns is that it would make the Marathon mission hurt and a Normal mission a joke.

I mean seriously? 8 for 3 turns ... that's like 8 for turn 1, 5 for turn 2 & 3 for turn 3 ... for a total of 16 . HA! Any city of any size with a Granary or half-decent food production can survive that with barely a scratch.

The problem with the scaling is NOT the number of turns -- it's the value itself. If you change the foment value to be 8 for all speeds, then you get proportionally scaled :

Total caused in current system:

• Normal: 36
• Epic: 78 (2.16 times Normal)
• Marathon: 300 (8.33 times Normal) !!!

Total caused by reducing foment value to 8 for all speeds:

• Normal: 36
• Epic: 56 (1.55 times Normal)
• Marathon: 108 (3 times Normal)

Turn scaling is also 1.0, 1.5, 3.0. So this means scaling back the value without changing the duration is nigh to perfect (Firaxis is going to have to do some incremental math to get it spot on).

I also pointed out in that post that foment really isn't as OP [at Normal] as people think. (Yes, it's borke at Epic/Marathon.)

There are three factors that go into how effective the mission is:

• Food stored in city. The more food the city has stored, the more food you have to go through before seeing starvation.
• Population. The greater the population, the more potential food can be stored in the city.
• Food resources. The + available to the city pads the (i.e., 8 turns into 3 in the presence of +5 )
• Health. Positive also pads the mission's . (i.e., 8 turns into 6 in the presence of a net +2 already present in the city.)

Solution (all things we should already be doing): Build a Granary, found cities with good food and grow bigger cities.

 

[LAnkou]

well your proposition is almost the same of mine, except that in yours, the spending to what i called "poissoned granary" is forced and may be influenced by positive health and that in mine, someone can stay in zero food overflow for a long time...

the only thing that bother me in your proposition is the dependency on food storage in the city...A city without granary is much more a big target then a city without granary

 

[Todd Hawks]

The only thing broke about this mission are the values on speeds other than Normal and perhaps the cost.

The effect itself at Normal is not OP.

The only thing needing to change is the / value, which needs to be the same for all speeds.

The problem with reducing the Normal turns is that it would make the Marathon mission hurt and a Normal mission a joke.

I mean seriously? 8 for 3 turns ... that's like 8 for turn 1, 5 for turn 2 & 3 for turn 3 ... for a total of 16 . HA! Any city of any size with a Granary or half-decent food production can survive that with barely a scratch.

I don't think you understand how it works. You can only change it for all difficulty levels, with Marathon simply getting 3 times as much as normal. And the number of turns always equals the effect value(!).
His idea was to change it so that it has 9 for 9 turns on marathon. Of course you shouldn't use that change with the normal game speed since then it would only be 3 for 3 turns.

 

[Zoolooman]

Krikkitone's model is great. If you don't want to read through this mass of data, it basically proves that Krik's model balances the Poison Water Mission across the speeds. But please, read it.

Quick:
Duration: 6
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: 1

This means that Poison is slightly less effective on Quick, but it avoids the nonsense of half-turns remaining on the duration.

Normal:
Duration: 8
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: 1

This works the same as it does now.

Epic:
Duration: 12
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: .6... See explanation.

In effect, this is a staggered penalty system. For every three turns of starvation, the third turn does not reduce the health penalty. For every turn of death, you lose a full point of penalty.

Marathon:
Duration: 24
Duration and penalty decrease per death: 1
Penalty decrease per turn of starvation: .3... See explanation.

On every third turn of starvation, the penalty is reduced by 1. For every death, you lose a full point of penalty.

Let's take a size seven city with health equal to unhealth, stagnant growth, and a half full granary. With this model, this occurs at each speed:

Quick: 2 turns of food loss followed by 2 turns of death and 1 turn of suppressed growth (if the city were a smidge larger or had literally one less food in its granary, it'd be 3 deaths.)
Normal: 2 turns of food loss followed by 3 turns of death and 2 turns of suppressed growth.
Epic: 4 turns of food loss followed by 3 turns of death and 3 turns of suppressed growth.
Marathon: 8 turns of food loss followed by 3 turns of death and 6 turns of suppressed growth.

Krikkitone's model works almost perfectly. However, it is a . .. .. .. .. . to think about. So here is the broken-down data.

Quick and Normal work like they do right now. On Epic, the count goes over twelve turns like this:

Turn 1: -8 <- Poisoned this turn. When turn ends, subtract 8 food and remove one unhealthiness.
Turn 2: -7
Turn 3: -7 <- Every third turn? No decrease.
Turn 4: -6
Turn 5: -5
Turn 6: -5 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 7: -4
Turn 8: -3
Turn 9: -3 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 10: -2
Turn 11: -1
Turn 12: -1 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 13: Counts down to zero; the mission is over.

This produces an equitable loss of food for an Epic city. However, if any of these turns ends with a death, then the Epic pattern is ignored and the full point is subtracted. Observe the size 7 city.

Turn 1: -8
Turn 2: -7
Turn 3: -7 <- Every third turn? No decrease.
Turn 4: -6
Turn 5: -5 <- One pop point starved. 1 point decrease from last turn.
Turn 6: -4 <- One pop point starved. 1 point decrease from last turn.
Turn 7: -3 <- One pop point starved. 1 point decrease from last turn.
Turn 8: -2 <- Resuming Epic pattern. Decrease one from last turn before resuming.
Turn 9: -1
Turn 10: -1 <- Pattern continues.
Turn 11: Counts down to zero; the mission continues so that the spy cannot poison the city more often than he could in Normal.
Turn 12: The mission continues.
Turn 13: The mission is over. The city can be poisoned again.

Marathon:

Since the regular pattern is easy to imagine (-8 for 3 turns; -7 for 3 turns, etc. over 24 turns) I will simply post the results of Krikkitone's model on a size 7 city with a half granary.

Turn 1: -8
Turn 2: -8
Turn 3: -8
Turn 4: -7
Turn 5: -7
Turn 6: -7
Turn 7: -6
Turn 8: -6
Turn 9: -5 <- One pop point starved. It's been decreased.
Turn 10: -4 <- One pop point starved. It's been decreased.
Turn 11: -3 <- One pop point starved. It's been decreased.
Turn 12: -2 <- Resuming Marathon pattern. Decrease one from last turn before resuming.
Turn 13: -2
Turn 14: -2
Turn 15: -1
Turn 16: -1
Turn 17: -1
Turn 18: Counts down to zero; the mission is not over.
Turns 19 through 24: The mission is not over.
Turn 25: The mission is over. The city can be poisoned again.

Look at that! The same number of dead, and the turns of food loss and turns of suppressed growth scale PERFECTLY. Krikkitone solved the problem.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

@Roland: Agree it could lead to potentially confusing UI .. 2 problems
15 turns left on marathon could next turn be 12 turns left
or 3 turns left on Quick could still be 3 turns left

Fractional turns Displayed is probably a bad way of putting it, but the idea of Zoolooman is good, perhaps
Penalty=8.00 (round up.. or down..or off for actual unhealth/Happiness)
Penalty Decrease per pop lost=1.00
Penalty decrease per turn with no pop lost= dependent on map speed (1.50 for Quick, 1.00 for Normal, 0.67 for Epic, 0.33 for Marathon)

"Duration" displayed = Remaining Penalty/ normal Per turn drop... which means that one still has those problems, but only in the Pop elimination phase, and that should last at most 4 turns
(one might turn it to ?? Duration if population was lost)
Or one could say Remaining Penalty/Drop this turn... that would still lead to slightly confusing UI as the estimate would change twice (once from Ph. 1 to Ph. 2 and once from Ph. 2 to Ph. 3) and there would be the problem of fractional displays (but they have that with production as well).

In the civilopedia it could say
8 ...
(Speed*8) Turns (Faster/Slower with pop loss)

and say [in the explanation] each pop loss removes one point of Penalty, otherwise it decays with game speed.

 

[Zoolooman]

Two things Krik:

1. Let the missions last their entire duration, even if their penalty remains 0 for many turns. This makes the duration easy to understand and prevents a Marathon player from effectively poisoning a city more often than a Normal player could. This is also easy to understand. The city will have some people die, and then in 6/8/12/24 turns, I can do it again. I don't need to know the specific mechanics.

2. Tell the player that when a population point starves to death, the penalty is always decreased by exactly one.

Though this explanation is simpler than the truth, it carries all the vital information--the poison will kill population over so many turns, and if stuff is killed, the poison decreases.

 

[Roland Johansen]

@Krikkitone

I've slightly disagreed with some of your ideas in a few threads the last few weeks. That doesn't mean that I don't respect your ideas. In general you have good ideas which are quite well thought through. Sometimes, I'm just nitpicking a bit. At other times, I just disagree. It doesn't mean that I don't respect your ideas.
I just had to say that because I've been disagreeing with you a lot lately.

This idea of yours is probably the best way to scale this mission while staying as close as possible to the original mission implemented by Firaxis. I personally like it, as I'm not afraid of fractions. I would infact like it if hammers could have fractions so that a city producing 5 hammers with a forge would produce 6.25 hammers. I just think that Firaxis is afraid of fractions and thus I don't think they will implement it in this way. There are some players who think that fractions look difficult and make the game more spreadsheet like. And of course, Firaxis will try to make the game as accessible and fun looking as possible. The number of games that actually use fractions (visible to the players, not in internal calculations) is pretty small.
I was pretty surprised when Firaxis started to use fractions in gold and science (and had secretly hoped that they would use it for hammers in BTS).

To be a bit more constructive.
In the description below, every time I use the variable speedsetting, the game would actually calculate the result and show that to the player. Speedsetting is 0.67 at quick, 1 at normal, 1.5 at epic, 3 at marathon.

I would change the mission description as follows:

Poison water supply:

This mission poisons the water supply which makes a part of the population sick. It increases the sickness level of the city to 8*speedsetting. This will result in an equal level of unhealthiness which will usually result in population loss in the city. The sickness will slowly die out while the water supply is renewed and sick people die. Every time a sick citizen in the city dies and the population decreases, the sickness level is reduced by 1. Every turn the disease is endured without population loss, the sickness level is reduced by 1/speedsetting.

Talking about sickness level will remove the weird notion of duration which isn't actual duration.

There is a small problem that I have with this mission. It is a bit strange that at quick speed, the death of a citizen decreases the speed at which the sickness level decreases while at marathon and epic speed, the death of a citizen increases the speed at which the sickness level decreases. You're bound to get discussion about why this would be implemented in such a strange way. This could be avoided by changing the basic mission so that if a citizen dies, then the sickness level decreases by 2 (or 3) and scale this with gamespeed. It would of course weaken the strength of the spy mission a bit.

Another problem with the basic normal speed mission as introduced by Firaxis is that the destructiveness of the mission is dependent on the amount of food which happens to be in the food storage when the mission is executed. This relation was observed quite early in this thread and I personally don't like that relation. Some other missions have been suggested that have effects that are independent of the food in storage (see post 14 by Zoolooman and 18 by me and some further discussion with DrewBledsoe).

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I don't think you understand how it works. You can only change it for all difficulty levels, with Marathon simply getting 3 times as much as normal. And the number of turns always equals the effect value(!).
His idea was to change it so that it has 9 for 9 turns on marathon. Of course you shouldn't use that change with the normal game speed since then it would only be 3 for 3 turns.

I completely understand how it works.

I also understand that 92% of the 'fixes' being discussed in this thread can only be made by Firaxis programmers, so I figured mine would be just as welcomed.

The difference is that the other fixes being discussed are huge programming changes that require rethinking the entire dynamic of the foment / missions.

We've had this game what ... a week now? And we have the audacity to tell Firaxis their years of programming and testing were absolutely wrong and that we know how to better design the system after having only played a handful of games?

All I did was take the Normal mission and figure out how to make the same overall effect happen at Epic and Marathon, which I can do mathematically by simply changing the foment value (unfortunately, we can't edit the XML to make the appropriate change).

If we want this fixed any time soon, then we need to give Firaxis a simple solution -- not an entire reworking of a system I presume they put a lot of thought into (if only they would test at more speeds than just Normal now).


-- my 2

 

[Roland Johansen]

We've had this game what ... a week now? And we have the audacity to tell Firaxis their years of programming and testing were absolutely wrong and that we know how to better design the system after having only played a handful of games?

24 unhealthiness for 24 turns at marathon speed. Yes, I have the audacity to say that their programming and testing were absolutely wrong in this instance. Wooo, I'm feeling very audacious now.

(That of course doesn't mean that the expansion pack sucks or something like that. Still a big error.)

By the way, there were a few other problems with the basic normal speed mission discussed in this thread. I don't know in how much detail you've read the thread.

1) The destructiveness of these 2 missions is very dependent on the amount of food which happens to be in storage. I personally don't think such a relation should exist.
2) Scaling it across difficulty levels is harder than you think because population point decrease is at the same rate at all gamespeeds. Therefore just increasing the duration with the normal factors isn't a correct way to balance the mission across various gamespeeds.

This has all been discusses in the first 2 pages of this thread in far more detail than the few sentences that I'm using now so I hope you don't mind if I refer you to those post for a more elaborate explanation of these problems.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

24 unhealthiness for 24 turns at marathon speed. Yes, I have the audacity to say that their programming and testing were absolutely wrong in this instance. Wooo, I'm feeling very audacious now.

(That of course doesn't mean that the expansion pack sucks or something like that. Still a big error.)

By the way, there were a few other problems with the basic normal speed mission discussed in this thread. I don't know in how much detail you've read the thread.

1) The destructiveness of these 2 missions is very dependent on the amount of food which happens to be in storage. I personally don't think such a relation should exist.


This has all been discusses in the first 2 pages of this thread in far more detail than the few sentences that I'm using now so I hope you don't mind if I refer you to those post for a more elaborate explanation of these problems.

Saying 24 for 24 is borke is not audacious, because it is obviously borken -- as even I pointed out in my wall of text. I have no opposition to this claim.

However, introducing completely new and unique proposals (such as poison granary, etc.) is audacious, imho, because it presumes that in our one week of playing we know considerably more than the programmers who designed and worked on this for only the gods knows how long (if only they would test more at Epic/Marathon ... I presume they all alpha/beta tested exclusively at Normal).

And don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with all the new ideas ... I actually like where they are going.

The argument that the Normal mission is OP seems based primarily on our personal feelings that cities shouldn't lose population because of these missions.

And why shouldn't these missions' effectiveness be based on the amount of in the food bar? The amount of turns it takes for a Catapult to Barrage a city's defenses down is relative to their Culture and infrastructure ... by this logic should we also change that.!?

If anything, this adds a new element of city management, where Granaries and the seldom used "Avoid Growth On" button become more important aspects.

2) Scaling it across difficulty levels is harder than you think because population point decrease is at the same rate at all gamespeeds. Therefore just increasing the duration with the normal factors isn't a correct way to balance the mission across various gamespeeds.

I disagree completely. I built a simulator for the effects of Foment in Excel (and attached it to a previous post). I tested this simulator against WB data and found very similar results (mine were actually a bit harsher, since in game, is shuffled more effectively.)

I punched in a value of 8 for 8, 12, & 24 turns respectively and discovered the results at the end of the foment period were nearly identical across the 6 test cities I subjected it to.

If not anything else, I proved the overall, net foment values are nearly perfectly proportional (+3.33% off at Epic) when the value is reduced to 8 while keeping the length the same.

What I am proposing is the assumption Firaxis meant to make these missions as powerful (which really isn't that powerful for any city with a Granary or decent tiles) and as -dependent as they did but that they simply failed to test more thoroughly on non-Normal speeds.