December Balance Beta - Patch Preview

[Gazebo]

Hey all,

Here's a preview of upcoming balance changes. I still have some testing and implementation to do, but these are (so far) my complete change notes.

Changelog
    Bugfixes for a few smaller things
    Integrated v89 of Whoward VMC (Modders: automaton stuff)
 
Balance
 
    Civs
        Germany
            Hanse: reduced % production bonus to 3% per CS TR (was 5%)
        Denmark
            Runestone: changed pillaging bonus to 5g/5c (was 5c/5p), cannot receive bonus from pillaging CSs
        Carthage
            Quinquereme: dropped CS to Trireme level, added 'Heavy Assault' promotion (+25% CS on attack, +100% CS on city attack)
    Policies
        Fealty
            Finisher - now +3 in cities with religion (was +2)
            Finisher - now unlocks Red Fort (was Taj Mahal)
 
    Trade Routes
        Reduced culture and science from International Trade Routes by about 25%
    Wonders
        Taj Mahal - removed 'on friendly unit death' mechanic
            Added +3f/c/s per religion in city
        Big Ben - dropped votes to 2per8 (was 3per8)
    Units
        CSD - diplomatic units now have a flat cost (100) that scales by 150 every era.
        Artists - now generate GAP instead of Golden Age turns
          Base value is 1/2 of the base GAP needed for your first Golden Age (so ~ 375)
          Scales off of Tourism and GAP (past 5 turns), and is buffed by 10% for every Themed GW set in your empire

    Golden Ages
        Adjusted delta to 2250 (was 2000)
     
    Buildings
        Pagoda: added +2f base
     
    Beliefs
        Enhancers
            Iconography: replaced 'remove minimum policy requirement' with -1 to all policy requirements
        Followers
            Veneration: now +1f and +1 GAP per 3 followers (Capped at 10), was +1f/2 citizens
            Inspiration: added +2 culture if you have a specialist in the city
         
    Promotions
        Bumped base flanking value back to 10%
        Bumped flanking bonuses from promotions that affect flanking to 5/10/20 (was 3/5/15)
     
    World Congress
        You can no longer propose the same resolution or repeal two sessions in a row
            So, if you try to sanction someone and it fails, no one can propose that specific proposal on that player again until the session after the next one

Hack away!

G

 

[Stalker0]

Hey all,

Here's a preview of upcoming balance changes. I still have some testing and implementation to do, but these are (so far) my complete change notes.

Changelog
    Bugfixes for a few smaller things
    Integrated v89 of Whoward VMC (Modders: automaton stuff)
 
Balance
 
    Civs
        Germany
            Hanse: reduced % production bonus to 3% per CS TR (was 5%)
        Denmark
            Runestone: changed pillaging bonus to 5g/5c (was 5c/5p), cannot receive bonus from pillaging CSs
        Carthage
            Quinquereme: dropped CS to Trireme level, added 'Heavy Assault' promotion (+25% CS on attack, +100% CS on city attack)
    Policies
        Fealty
            Finisher - now +3 in cities with religion (was +2)
            Finisher - now unlocks Red Fort (was Taj Mahal)
 
    Trade Routes
        Reduced culture and science from International Trade Routes by about 25%
    Wonders
        Taj Mahal - removed 'on friendly unit death' mechanic
            Added +3f/c/s per religion in city
        Big Ben - dropped votes to 2per8 (was 3per8)
    Units
        CSD - diplomatic units now have a flat cost (100) that scales by 150 every era.
        Artists - now generate GAP instead of Golden Age turns
          Base value is 1/2 of the base GAP needed for your first Golden Age (so ~ 375)
          Scales off of Tourism and GAP (past 5 turns), and is buffed by 10% for every Themed GW set in your empire

    Golden Ages
        Adjusted delta to 2250 (was 2000)
   
    Buildings
        Pagoda: added +2f base
   
    Beliefs
        Enhancers
            Iconography: replaced 'remove minimum policy requirement' with -1 to all policy requirements
        Followers
            Veneration: now +1f and +1 GAP per 3 followers (Capped at 10), was +1f/2 citizens
            Inspiration: added +2 culture if you have a specialist in the city
       
    Promotions
        Bumped base flanking value back to 10%
        Bumped flanking bonuses from promotions that affect flanking to 5/10/20 (was 3/5/15)
   
    World Congress
        You can no longer propose the same resolution or repeal two sessions in a row
            So, if you try to sanction someone and it fails, no one can propose that specific proposal on that player again until the session after the next one

Hack away!

G

Generally I'm pretty good with this list. My only contentions

1) Veneration: We keep dancing over this issue and we are repeating ourselves. 1 f/2 is bad, 1 f/3 is even worse. Even if it adds a little GAP, that is not the point of veneration. Giving it a high cap is pointless, faith is for early in the game. It should be 1 to 1 with a low cap.

And if that kind of early faith is simply too strong, than the belief should be completely rewritten or removed.

2) Flanking: While the poll isn't over the numbers so far look pretty clear on to the community's will, so I humbly withdraw my push on this one, and agree we should test out the new values.

3) GA: Since the Great Artist change is a pretty big deal for GAs, I feel like that was enough of a change. Increasing the delta seems unnecessary to me. The Artist change is huge, not only does it provide less GA turns overall, but it makes the scaler apply more often, instead of providing "free GAs".

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I like the changes unless I didn't notice something, but Veneration is still unpickable. I must agree with Stalker0 on 1) and 3). I was only ever picking it at 1 Faith for 1 and judging from whenever it is mentioned in the threads, I am far from being the only one or in any way unique when it comes to this particular issue. At 1 for 2 it was a thing I took once before deciding not to bother again, and at 1 for 3 I'm not even considering it. I'll repeat that if AI cannot be balanced around Faith per pop beliefs and they must be rendered awful for the player so the AI's with it don't gain too much, let the belief become a more unique one, like Cooperation. Something like Faith discount, or yields whenever you build an unit/buildings, or have another building like the Stave Church which is already in the files. It can also be a mixed belief like new Inspiration, like -10% Faith costs of everything and +3 Faith to Temple and Great Temple.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

Like the World Congress change. We should see the same Proposals less often.

Hanse still seems good at 3% per CS TR.

 

[pineappledan]

I'll reiterate my point for PoW here: I think you should add a free Great Merchant on completion of PoW.

PoW doesn’t have an instant bonus right now
Every other GP in the game has a wonder that gives a free one, but there's no wonder that gives a free G merchant right now.
It would soften the nerf a bit and add symmetry.

 

[documental]

I'm sad to see Denmark's production bonus go away. It's a rather unique bonus being on a per city basis unlike America and Egypt. Would it be possible to retain the way it currently works now but grant science instead of production in the capital? I don't know if Denmark being able to build wonders was the particular concern here? Probably not, a building granting a different bonus in the capital vs non-capitals sounds like new code to me. What about dummy buildings?

That's quite a nerf to great artist. Should Japan/France be compensated in some way?

I'm glad trade routes were nerfed. I thought they were ridiculously strong for the longest time now.

 

[Kalesh-kun]

That nerf to the great artist is absolutely brutal; as a wonderbuilder, I get several theming bonuses and then go for long and at a certain point endless goldens ages to solidify the lead in late game. As I usually play in epic speed, i've always felt like that was a fair reward for the all the week long work i've put on building the culture/turism pool to the max of my cities capabilities while the other civs focus on their armies and "stupid" wars. So it's kinda like the best spoil that I could get from winning a centuries old war against myself, and makes playing that particular style of game feel rewarding and more engaging, min/maxing resources is by far my favorite thing to do in the game. Of course, this change would not prevent me from going to that route at all, but it would put an extra roadblock on the way that I honestly feel doesn't need to be there, especially because of all the work and focus that it took to get to the point where you can apply that strategy in the first place. That said, if the great artist right now its causing some balancing issues, I have a suggestion: instead of the change proposed, that in my opinion would make this particular unit be less attractive to pursue, you could change the theming bonuses from 20% to 15% or even 10% each, therefore nerfing this whole process a little while maintaining the unit's usual abilities and flavor.Other than that,the other changes seem fine to me. Thanks for the hard work!

P.S.: english is not my main language.

 

[Moi Magnus]

That nerf to the great artist is absolutely brutal; as a wonderbuilder, I get several theming bonuses and then go for long and at a certain point endless goldens ages to solidify the lead in late game. As I usually play in epic speed, i've always felt like that was a fair reward for the all the week long work i've put on building the culture/turism pool to the max of my cities capabilities while the other civs focus on their armies and "stupid" wars. So it's kinda like the best spoil that I could get from winning a centuries old war against myself, and makes playing that particular style of game feel rewarding and more engaging, min/maxing resources is by far my favorite thing to do in the game. Of course, this change would not prevent me from going to that route at all, but it would put an extra roadblock on the way that I honestly feel doesn't need to be there, especially because of all the work and focus that it took to get to the point where you can apply that strategy in the first place. That said, if the great artist right now its causing some balancing issues, I have a suggestion: instead of the change proposed, that in my opinion would make this particular unit be less attractive to pursue, you could change the theming bonuses from 20% to 15% or even 10% each, therefore nerfing this whole process a little while maintaining the unit's usual abilities and flavor.Other than that,the other changes seem fine to me. Thanks for the hard work!

P.S.: english is not my main language.

Discussion about golden age here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/golden-age-balance.638928/
But in short, the problem was that near-permanent golden age was too easy to have without focussing on it.

 

[Gazebo]

I like the changes unless I didn't notice something, but Veneration is still unpickable. I must agree with Stalker0 on 1) and 3). I was only ever picking it at 1 Faith for 1 and judging from whenever it is mentioned in the threads, I am far from being the only one or in any way unique when it comes to this particular issue. At 1 for 2 it was a thing I took once before deciding not to bother again, and at 1 for 3 I'm not even considering it. I'll repeat that if AI cannot be balanced around Faith per pop beliefs and they must be rendered awful for the player so the AI's with it don't gain too much, let the belief become a more unique one, like Cooperation. Something like Faith discount, or yields whenever you build an unit/buildings, or have another building like the Stave Church which is already in the files. It can also be a mixed belief like new Inspiration, like -10% Faith costs of everything and +3 Faith to Temple and Great Temple.

What about...

+1 Faith, Science, Gold, Food, and Production in the City. 10% of Faith Purchases in this City are converted into Culture.

Blends a touch of all the other 'per follower' follower beliefs, with a Culture incentive for purchases. Offers no scaling yields, but a culture output that scales as faith costs scale.

Meanwhile, Inspiration becomes:

+1 Culture for every 3 followers in the City (max +10 Culture), and +2 Faith if you have at least one Specialist in the City

G

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

What about...



Blends a touch of all the other 'per follower' follower beliefs, with a Culture incentive for purchases. Offers no scaling yields, but a culture output that scales as faith costs scale.

Meanwhile, Inspiration becomes:



G

They definitely seem better than what they are now. The first feels a bit on the strong side with the second on the weak, but in case that's a problem one of the yields can just be cut out or increased. They appear solid besides that.

 

[hokath]

Oh I liked the Taj Mahal effect
By the way, does the +yield/religion in city effect scale with Era?

 

[Gazebo]

They definitely seem better than what they are now. The first feels a bit on the strong side with the second on the weak, but in case that's a problem one of the yields can just be cut out or increased. They appear solid besides that.

Well none of the 'first' yields scale, so it has a stronger start in that way that drops off later.

 

[documental]

Faith -> Culture will also drop off pretty hard. Culture scales to much higher levels then faith does. It's also sort of a bonus that counteracts itself. As you make more cities to produce more faith (and ultimately, have more buildings to purchase) your culture cost go up in conjunction.

 

[chicorbeef]

The issue I see with Fealty is that there are a handful of strong policies (Opener, Nobility, Burghers, Organized Religion), and a couple of bad ones (Divine Right, Serfdom to a lesser extent).

I think we should buff the weaker parts of Fealty-bring the Pasture buff up to 2/1 and the Culture per non-specialists up to 1 per 4, and Divine Right's Culture up to 1 per 1. Finisher buff is fine, that can stay.

 

[pineappledan]

+1 Faith, Science, Gold, Food, and Production in the City. 10% of Faith Purchases in this City are converted into Culture.

I think it's a bit too much off the hop. I'd axe either 1 or 1.
You could also make the on purchase a static value, like 20 scaling with era. That would encourage folks to focus their religion on small purchases, rather than save up for GPs.

 

[Gazebo]

I think it's a bit too much off the hop. I'd axe either 1 or 1.
You could also make the on purchase a static value, like 20 scaling with era. That would encourage folks to focus their religion on small purchases, rather than save up for GPs.

I prefer the faith->culture mechanic as is, as it allows for variability in faith purchase prices to have a strategic element (instead of encouraging low-cost spam).

G

 

[chicorbeef]

How do Faith purchase cost reductions affect that? Will it lower the amount of Culture gained?

 

[Enginseer]

How do Faith purchase cost reductions affect that? Will it lower the amount of Culture gained?

Yes, but you should be getting them at an equal rate anyway, just less options to get them at an equal rate.

 

[Gazebo]

How do Faith purchase cost reductions affect that? Will it lower the amount of Culture gained?

Whatever you pay, you get a % of. But % is % so culture is worth the same amount regardless of discounts.

 

[4CV]

...
World Congress
You can no longer propose the same resolution or repeal two sessions in a row
So, if you try to sanction someone and it fails, no one can propose that specific proposal on that player again until the session after the next one

Could there be an exception for trying to get out of sanction?