Deity snowballers discussion

[Stalker0]

Would reducing policy requirements for wonders break the game for lower difficulties?

i think for the majority of wonders, reducing the requirement by 1 is the same as removing the requirement all together

 

[CppMaster]

i think for the majority of wonders, reducing the requirement by 1 is the same as removing the requirement all together

It doesn't have to be 1 policy less for every wonder, though.

 

[Cokolwiek]

For someone who complains that people don't give them the benefit of the doubt, the suggestion that we're just not picking things that give culture is pretty astonishingly silly and hypocritical.

No, I just showed by that post something that I wasn't doing before, but was confronted with by several posters. In my view, if you don't see how ranged units are unfair to the AI, or how strong authority is, maybe you are too reliant on and used to those overpowered bonuses authority and/or warmongering provides without any checks ad balances. This also applies to @kawyua. Why are you entitled to question my skill at playing peace, which objectively is harder than warring, while I am not entitled to question your skill, when it is pretty obvious to me that authority and warmonering is too easy? From those of you who did that @CrazyG at least seems to be able to see and acknowledge the issue. And you consider making warring harder, "unfun". Well maybe it should be harder, and some of those overpowered "funny" bonuses removed cause they are making deity too easy? The only thing I consider "unfun" now is how tradition/peace is crippled compared with warmongering authority/progress/wide. And I mean just tradition, not absolutely peaceful tradition. And I underline that.

 

[Cokolwiek]

I don't think there ever was suggested here that its too hard to keep up with AIs on deity, I think we all agree its more than doable most of the times, whether its science or culture.

I agree with you. But some posters don't and there are quite a few of them. I wrote against that because I feel halving the culture bonuses to AI, coupled with things like bonuses reduction to shrines or settling capitals will again make deity too easy most of the time.

I'm not sure as a human you should be able to get ahead on science and culture and like everything. Otherwise you have just won anyway. When the AI goes crazy on wonders and culture in general maybe it should just be able to win at something. Culture seems like the least worrying thing the AI can be ahead in anyway.

Of course, I agree. AI should retain their full culture bonus and their ability to be strong/win on their own/derail human win.

The other side of that issue is that I feel like if I ever reach equal policies with the top AI the game is 100% victory.

That's somewhat understandable but I don't think like that. Many times the power of AI late game bonuses (which is good) is still formidable even if you reach a parity in policies, and they can grab enough wonders/spaceship parts/city-states to win themselves or ruin your plans. Reaching a parity on culture is possible and not as hard, but it shouldn't be a goal in itself. You need enough culture to get you to what policies you need the most to secure you victory condition, not to outculture AI.

Would reducing policy requirements for wonders break the game for lower difficulties?

It would break the game for higher difficulties also. Wonders should be stuff to best-performing AIs to make them a threat for the player.

Not to side track, but I think Way of the Pilgrim is a sleeper really strong founder.

Yeah, it was mostly this (I think it is, I meant that with the reliquary wonder) I was referencing. Recently I am finding apostolic is not so great even for tradition, as high culturge gains > another citizen or two which would mostly work merchant slots, as every culture ones would be locked anyway, and because you need high food start and hanging gardens and mandirs/angkor wat already for tradition to have a reasonable shot at winning.

What do you think makes keeping up in culture and science easy? Would a nerf to imperium's yields address this concern (at least partially?)
What about a change to the yields on kills?

Religion and policies and terracotta. Because of A/B/C bonuses AI tend to have high population cities, even those secondary, not capitals. So imperium indeed generates too high amounts. But stacking bonuses is the key, its the nature of Civilization. Imperium is not enough, you need to be constantly at war not only to take high population cities, but to kill units with terracotta, to synergise policies, authority (or progress, generally wide) plus statecraft is amazing for this. Authority has loads of gold and production from borders and flat bonus and taking cities. You can multiply it by taking tradition price reduction or angkor wat (you once convinced me that this is good wonder when I felt it was underwhelming and now I consider it one of the strongest one in the whole game, for both tradition due to mandirs, and progress to get tiles to work quickly, and authority for border growth and tribute) So it can use it to buy lots of cities-states, which with statecraft and wide empire is very strong culture and science engine. Otherwise, I don't think you need rationalism most of the time to keep up with the AI. When going wide I much prefer industry in most of situation. For wide, peace or war, industry is absolutely amazing. I consider authority to be easy to keep up with the AI (or kill their advantage), progress to be manageable in this aspect of you get strong religion, only tradition to be lacking somewhat (it is still not a problem to be in range of one policy from snowballing AI most of the time). However without religion and strong religion to that, tradition is screwed. Tradition plus statecraft is now suicide in my eyes for example, while artistry is the safest bet. Culture runaways are not so dangerous, unless they are also science runaways and are isolated/hard to conquer due to terrain (also to other AIs). Then they tend to become really scary. And not every culture runaway will choose rationalism, or order, or best tenets first.

 

[CppMaster]

It would break the game for higher difficulties also. Wonders should be stuff to best-performing AIs to make them a threat for the player.

It still would be the case, but to a lesser degree. IMHO it would make game less broken, because of that.

 

[ElliotS]

So what are we counting as keeping up on culture exactly? In my current game I am earning an absurd amount of culture as The Netherlands so I'm at least a policy ahead of all the AIs except the most powerful. I'm not sure as a human you should be able to get ahead on science and culture and like everything. Otherwise you have just won anyway. When the AI goes crazy on wonders and culture in general maybe it should just be able to win at something. Culture seems like the least worrying thing the AI can be ahead in anyway.

The other side of that issue is that I feel like if I ever reach equal policies with the top AI the game is 100% victory.

Ideally what you focus on, you could do as well or better than AIs that focus on said thing. If you focus on culture, AIs focusing on science should have 1 or 2 less policies than you, but should be ahead in tech.

Currently I feel like most games you need to put all your effort into culture to keep up even with AI who don't have any cultural bonuses. Meanwhile whenever you catch up or lead on culture, you feel like the game is easy, because they get more culture than everything else. (in the sense that culture is more valuable and they can an equal amount of everything.) That means you're probably ahead on everything else whenever you're caught up on culture.

So that makes me feel like culture is out of whack currently, and giving less culture and more science, combined with potential increasing overall yields, would balance things out a bit.

No, I just showed by that post something that I wasn't doing before, but was confronted with by several posters. In my view, if you don't see how ranged units are unfair to the AI, or how strong authority is, maybe you are too reliant on and used to those overpowered bonuses authority and/or warmongering provides without any checks ad balances. This also applies to @kawyua. Why are you entitled to question my skill at playing peace, which objectively is harder than warring, while I am not entitled to question your skill, when it is pretty obvious to me that authority and warmonering is too easy? From those of you who did that @CrazyG at least seems to be able to see and acknowledge the issue. And you consider making warring harder, "unfun". Well maybe it should be harder, and some of those overpowered "funny" bonuses removed cause they are making deity too easy? The only thing I consider "unfun" now is how tradition/peace is crippled compared with warmongering authority/progress/wide. And I mean just tradition, not absolutely peaceful tradition. And I underline that.

I don't consider making warring harder unfun, I consider your method unfun. An archer that gets 1 XP per shot needs 60 attacks to hit level 4. That's an absurd number in my mind. Assuming you're hyper-aggressive and it never gets damaged and forced to go heal, you're looking at turn 100-120 for your first level 4 promotion on an archer.

Furthermore I think there's a difference between people questioning your skill and you stating "That's a gameplay misconception. Sometimes you can: it isn't that hard but people are constantly neglecting culture with regards to working guilds, trying to get leaning tower and sistine, and designing religion as culture-giving mechanism, which most of the time it should be, and making cultural suicides with late settling with pioneers."

Those are such basic concepts that if you think everyone here doesn't get it I think you're out of your mind. When people question your ability to play peaceful, they don't assume you forget to work specialists or starve your cities or forget to build workers.

Everyone in every thread I've seen in the last 3+ years here has known that culture is the strongest yield in VP. (With only production contesting it.) The idea that these people would look at a wonder that gives a scaling % of culture in all cities and go "Nah fam let me work food process" or something is just honestly insulting.

I'm for hurting the yields of winning wars. If we want to nerf yields of annexed cities and/or puppets I think it would be a good way to make the gap between peace and war easier to close. I'm also for suggestions that reward good relationships and peace better. (Like giving good yields on trade route completion instead of just tourism.)

I'm also open to making war less player-advantaged, but I don't think taking forever to promote is the best way.

I also think the diplomacy changes Recursive is making will have a large impact on war vs peace. If we can make AIs more ready to circle the wagons against anyone getting too far ahead, it will provide a game more like a PVP game.

As an additional thought: Warmongering should care more if you keep cities vs burning them down, especially in old eras. As a player if AI 1 beats up AI 2 and burns a few cities, that's really just beneficial for me. If AI 1 takes his cities then he's becoming more of a threat and I care. I think a lot of players mix up the lore implications of razing with the balance of it. (Losing out on free stuff.) Because wars to prevent forward settling shouldn't stop you from having a peaceful game later, AIs that didn't get their cities burnt down should probably ignore razing in the ancient and classic era, and only start hating it in modern when people really start to hate war and images can spread further. (AIs can already judge you as threatening if you settle a bunch of cities and get strong, so whether or not the land was previously owned shouldn't matter if you didn't get free resources out of it.)

Making wars that shouldn't piss the AI off much not piss the AI off much actually buffs peace, because you're not forced to go all-or-nothing on war.

 

[Cokolwiek]

An archer that gets 1 XP per shot needs 60 attacks to hit level 4. That's an absurd number in my mind. Assuming you're hyper-aggressive and it never gets damaged and forced to go heal, you're looking at turn 100-120 for your first level 4 promotion on an archer.

The archer unit that has two range or two attacks should be something exceptional and valued, not common at the front line, as it is now. Anyway, they are other ways we could implement that. Not halving gained experience, but increasing one needed for every next level by 33%. Or delaying best promotions to later levels.

Furthermore I think there's a difference between people questioning your skill and you stating

Alright, I get it now. When you question my skill its alright. When I question yours (I did that only to demonstrate your argumentation by the way and only because it was used againt me first) its "hypocrisy".

Everyone in every thread I've seen in the last 3+ years here has known that culture is the strongest yield in VP. (With only production contesting it.) The idea that these people would look at a wonder that gives a scaling % of culture in all cities and go "Nah fam let me work food process" or something is just honestly insulting.

That is complete nonsense. Everyone in every thread? You gotta be kidding yourself. There are tons of even the most recent threads in which both deity/immortal players and casual ones were suggesting plays absolutely suicidal to their cultural output, be it too much of a settling spree, be it using pioneers more than their should (so they cities taken two or three eras to develop themselves and produce more culture than lost from settling another city), disregarding fealty which is absolutely amazing policy tree that can synergize with many mechanics for both wide and tall settings, and favoring strange beliefs for their religions, which frequently were resulting in awkward situations like getting the tech way more than they had policy requirement, because many here tends to recognize science (and stack bonuses to it, rather than choosing some to culture), not culture as the king, hence being beaten to them. It seems that I assume more intelligence on behalf of the players, because those are your words "let me work the food processes", not mine. They usually do that stuff because they have good reasons to, they are just not weighing the bigger picture which happens to the best. They hurt their culture but only because they respond thoughtfully to other challenges like AI grabbing the land very fast, or prioritizing something else on tech tree/trying to get as much science as possible.

 

[stii]

The issue is going to be fixing culture without messing up other difficulties. Science is really accelerated on deity from many things but culture isn't. Which leads to wonder polices being off, but probably fine at other difficulties. The only solution I can think of would be to slow things down. Give the human science penalties rather than the AI buffs, or at least some of each. This would make the games longer in turns but I guess people playing on prince are already playing longer games anyway?


I do like the idea of razing being less of a penalty, currently you can't force the AI to back up when they build four hexes away from your capital. War seems to be all or nothing, you don't want to do a bit you want one long war where you crush them and make them your vassal.

On the plus side the newest patch does seem to have really ramped up the warmonger penalties I went from 10% to 75% from taking two cities. Which seems pretty fair as I got a powerful vassal, 5 wonders and a religion out of it.

 

[CrazyG]

I think there are a few things with (not unanimous), but overall some agreement

• Terracotta Army is OP, it needs to give less culture per kill
  
• Authority is good, and generally the best early game tree. We don't seem to agree on exactly how much better it is, but we do seem to agree that it is better (Edit: I'm wrong, people disagree, apologies)
  
• Tradition is the weakest, the early game is tough. (Edit: I was wrong, people disagree, apologies)
  
• The AI gets pantheons really quickly, which affects balance a lot
  
• Religion is very powerful, you want to have one

The first point I want to make is if your success depends on Terracotta Army, you haven't solved the game. That wonder is just stupidly OP with how much culture it gives, we can't balance social policies or war-vs-peace around games where you built such an OP wonder.

@Cokolwiek
I have a hard time understanding your overall ideas and how they translate into suggestions. In particular, this comment:

I consider authority to be easy to keep up with the AI (or kill their advantage), progress to be manageable in this aspect of you get strong religion, only tradition to be lacking somewhat (it is still not a problem to be in range of one policy from snowballing AI most of the time). However without religion and strong religion to that, tradition is screwed.

The weakest, tradition, is only "lacking somewhat". If I understand your meaning, it seems that the trees aren't that far apart in power, provided that you get a religion. To me, that means our proposals should be pretty modest in size, we don't need to change that much. I look at these suggestions below:

Free settler from authority to progress and rework, the simplest and one of the most impactful change we can make. I would like imperium policy to grant science and culture only on city's capture. It would also lead to an indirectly increased difficulty. Because I fear that free settler much more in the hands of Russia and Carthage than Napoleon. Authority AIs should be buffed by increase in their early aggressiveness. Alternative would be eliminating this free settler altogether and giving progress a bonus to production of them.
Free culture and science only on city's capture, it goes hand in hand with authority spirit, weakens authority but not where it's supposed to shine, e.g. at war.
Plus one production dropped from authority's opener, i completes the stripping authority of early development bonuses which deserve to be in progress. You still will have plus five production total but later so it will be not as OP as now.
All of that don't make authority worse at war, or war more of a grind, which I would also like to avoid, but they take away development advantages which make authority so good when they are on top of war bonuses. Gold and production from borders stays and still will be abundant.

Making authority and war more AI friendly, we may implement:
Eliminating heal on kill, but in order to not make war more a grind replacing it with static attack bonus which both player and AI will be able to utilize.
Reducing units experience or making them much more expensive to upgrade, proposed by @Rhys DeAnno and @Recursive in this thread. Especially ranged units could take a hit in halving experience, as they are notorious to being more player friendly.

In a move to make authority more manageable and even more war oriented I suggest this:
One happiness and two culture from barracks instead from a garrison, authority should shine at war. Now it can't make use of that policy, I know I can't when I am conquering because of the lack of units due to cap. They can't be in the city, all my units must be at the field conquering. This is a simple solution to make war a less of a grind.

I think we agree that authority should be weakened relative to the other trees, but your proposal here is a really big nerf hammer to authority. I think you are just underestimating how much these changes would hurt (the 1 production in the opener alone is a massive loss of resources). The ranged unit XP change is massive and affects defensive players too, this is just changing too much.

I also don't agree with what the results of these changes would be. For example, we used to have much more expensive unit upgrades and it was devastating to defensive tradition. I still had enough gold to upgrade as a warmonger though, big empires are just good at generating gold, and they can get a lot of gold from their social policies too.

On the note of war and peace, I can do pretty well in a peaceful game if I get a religion, and I think the big difference isn't war or peace, it's religion. Here I think the issue isn't war or early aggression, it's that as a human, I by default get the last pantheon.

You pointed out how players are using a lot of the same civs, I think the big factor is religion, not war. America's early production can let you wonder spam, which makes for an easy religion while also getting those key wonders. The hanging gardens are easy to build, you have like a 95% chance on almost any start; the hard part is doing it while getting a religion and achieving other early game goals too.

As an example, if I play Morocco and I get a religion I think I'll be okay peacefully, but religion is tough to get, and it's especially tough to get while also going for other early game goals such as wonders. By default as a human I get the last pantheon, which just really easily screws your start. Right now I think every civ who has some advantage to pantheon selection is uniquely powerful on high difficulties.

 

[crdvis16]

I think there are a few things with a pretty good amount of agreement

• Terracotta Army is OP, it needs to give less culture per kill
• Authority is good, and generally the best early game tree. We don't seem to agree on exactly how much better it is, but we do seem to agree that it is better
• Tradition is the weakest, the early game is tough.
  
• The AI gets pantheons really quickly, which affects balance a lot
  
• Religion is very powerful, you want to have one

The first point I want to make is if your success depends on Terracotta Army, you haven't solved the game. That wonder is just stupidly OP with how much culture it gives, we can't balance social policies or war-vs-peace around games where you built such an OP wonder.

@Cokolwiek
I have a hard time understanding your overall ideas and how they translate into suggestions. In particular, this comment:

The weakest, tradition, is only "lacking somewhat". If I understand your meaning, it seems that the trees aren't that far apart in power, provided that you get a religion. To me, that means our proposals should be pretty modest in size, we don't need to change that much. I look at these suggestions below:


I think we agree that authority should be weakened relative to the other trees, but your proposal here is a really big nerf hammer to authority. I think you are just underestimating how much these changes would hurt (the 1 production in the opener alone is a massive loss of resources). The ranged unit XP change is massive and affects defensive players too, this is just changing too much.

I also don't agree with what the results of these changes would be. For example, we used to have much more expensive unit upgrades and it was devastating to defensive tradition. I still had enough gold to upgrade as a warmonger though, big empires are just good at generating gold, and they can get a lot of gold from their social policies too.

On the note of war and peace, I can do pretty well in a peaceful game if I get a religion, and I think the big difference isn't war or peace, it's religion. Here I think the issue isn't war or early aggression, it's that as a human, I by default get the last pantheon.

You pointed out how players are using a lot of the same civs, I think the big factor is religion, not war. America's early production can let you wonder spam, which makes for an easy religion while also getting those key wonders. The hanging gardens are easy to build, you have like a 95% chance on almost any start; the hard part is doing it while getting a religion and achieving other early game goals too.

As an example, if I play Morocco and I get a religion I think I'll be okay peacefully, but religion is tough to get, and it's especially tough to get while also going for other early game goals such as wonders. By default as a human I get the last pantheon, which just really easily screws your start. Right now I think every civ who has some advantage to pantheon selection is uniquely powerful on high difficulties.

I would only add that there is a difference between AI and player experience with the trees right now. While Authority feels good in player hands, my anecdotal experience is that the AI really struggles with that opening. The AI seems to be strongest with Tradition openings (again, my anecdotal experience).

 

[Cokolwiek]

@CrazyG thanks for analyzing my points and forgoing another bickering. I agree with your initial points. I would like to ask you and others if we should add peace (not total peace!) and war imbalance (nerfing annexed cities/puppets yields) to this list.

The first point I want to make is if your success depends on Terracotta Army, you haven't solved the game.

That goes without saying. That's why I provided many sources of culture, especially pointing to religion and policies. And I don't count on its culture for kills alone or sometimes at all. The two of us discussed many times this topic and I am sure you know already I judge authority to be immensely strong also at early wide peace, because of its early development potential. So I frequently build terracotta not as much for the culture, which I may not benefit from for the most part (cause of pace and aiming for diplomatic or science wide rather than domination) but for worker's tile improvement bonus, which complements authority settle and production edge very nicely.

The weakest, tradition, is only "lacking somewhat". If I understand your meaning, it seems that the trees aren't that far apart in power, provided that you get a religion. To me, that means our proposals should be pretty modest in size, we don't need to change that much. I look at these suggestions below:

Yeah, for the most part, in my view they are not that far apart in power by themselves. Tradition is still a solid tree, obvious for tall cultural victory. It becames more complicated when it becomes tradition peaceful and authority warmongering. That's when relatively minor differences gets exacerbated into significantly weaker tradition and consistently strong and versatile authority. And very solid progress, whatever you want to do, as long as you have enough space and go enough wide.
So, I didn't mean that we enact all of those nerfs to authority and war simultaneously. After all, I am a warmonger at heart! They were just proposition for you to comment on which one should be discarded and which one we can try. There are also only what I thought would be good, but you can add others which may be better.
You are right that currently peace/war is less of a difference than religion/no religion. I would like to point out that going wide, which authority does best is inherently better at getting religion due to not scaling prophet costs, more shrines and more tiles/buildings triggers to faith. So again tradition minor weaknesses are exacerbated.
About players using same civs, I just revolt against having too choose the most gamey civs in order to have a decent shot at a peaceful game. I think I remember reading that you play a lot of India, is that true? Some of differences between us may stem from the fact that India or America are excellent even when staying at peace, and have powerful bonuses to religion or wonders. I usually like to play underdogs, which have little to none (depending on luck) early game bonuses to faith or development, like Germany, France, or Indonesia.

 

[tothePAIN]

I think there are a few things with a pretty good amount of agreement

• Terracotta Army is OP, it needs to give less culture per kill
• Authority is good, and generally the best early game tree. We don't seem to agree on exactly how much better it is, but we do seem to agree that it is better
• Tradition is the weakest, the early game is tough.
  
• The AI gets pantheons really quickly, which affects balance a lot
  
• Religion is very powerful, you want to have one

Some of the things you've said have general agreement, others do not.

Terracotta Army is very strong but its power, like authority, varies based on the difficulty, because you can get more on Deity than a lower difficulty. It's likely OP on deity at least.

Authority is good but its not overpowered. Its more that peace is less of an option on deity. On emperor, snowballing peacefully is available to the humans, on deity, it seems like its only available to the AI.

Disagree that tradition is the weakest - I'd say Progress is. Progress is weaker than tradition early and can get caught in a happiness trap on deity if the AI declares war on the Progress player, because Progress doesn't get any happiness until 10 population. Tradition is strong when it can get wonders, right now, that's really hard on deity.

Agree with the last 2 points.

I also strongly disagree that war should be nerfed. Even with all of the great annexed cities and puppets, the AI keeps up with the C bonuses these days.

I would only add that there is a difference between AI and player experience with the trees right now. While Authority feels good in player hands, my anecdotal experience is that the AI really struggles with that opening. The AI seems to be strongest with Tradition openings (again, my anecdotal experience).

100% agree with this. I'm not afraid of the AI with authority. I'm afraid of the Germany AI with Tradition who is far away who is goining to get all the wonders and be 10 techs ahead. Lvl 5 units are good but not against next-era units.

 

[Recursive]

As an additional thought: Warmongering should care more if you keep cities vs burning them down, especially in old eras. As a player if AI 1 beats up AI 2 and burns a few cities, that's really just beneficial for me. If AI 1 takes his cities then he's becoming more of a threat and I care. I think a lot of players mix up the lore implications of razing with the balance of it. (Losing out on free stuff.) Because wars to prevent forward settling shouldn't stop you from having a peaceful game later, AIs that didn't get their cities burnt down should probably ignore razing in the ancient and classic era, and only start hating it in modern when people really start to hate war and images can spread further. (AIs can already judge you as threatening if you settle a bunch of cities and get strong, so whether or not the land was previously owned shouldn't matter if you didn't get free resources out of it.)

Makes sense, but doesn't integrate well with the current system. Maybe in the future.

 

[ElliotS]

Makes sense, but doesn't integrate well with the current system. Maybe in the future.

I don't really understand. Couldn't you have Razing a city "refund" some warmonger penalty much like liberating a city? Or is it something else?

 

[Recursive]

I don't really understand. Couldn't you have Razing a city "refund" some warmonger penalty much like liberating a city? Or is it something else?

Warmonger value of a city scales with its population and economic value, along with several other factors...

A razed city is close to worthless - although I suppose it could be done by caching an additional memory value for each city, now that I think of it. But each player's warmonger valuation of a city is different...

 

[ElliotS]

So we've talked about a LOT of potential changes, all affecting a moving target of a difficulty that we're discussing increasing or decreasing. Maybe we should try to agree on some stuff to start with and present that to Gazebo, so that he doesn't need to read through 14+ pages of discussion.

If we're talking real changes that I think would be good right now

• Remove the production from the A/B/C bonuses
• Make them give 75% culture
• Increase A/B/C bonuses by 25%-50% (Number may need to be fiddled with to achieve similar non-religion/wonder metrics)
• Shrines do not get a production discount (like wonders)
• Annexed cities give 25%(?) less yields, and lower non-Venice puppet yields by 5%.
• Lower Imperium's culture by 25%
• Progress's happiness policy also gets +1 happiness from libraries. (Or just lower it to 8 and increase the % reduction.)
• Tradition gets "settlers don't cost population" somewhere.
• +1 Range promotion moved another tier back. (I think that's how logistics is now?)
• Trade routes to independent (non-vassal) major civs give some good yield when completed. (Boost to peaceful play.)

Does that cover most of our bases?

 

[tothePAIN]

So we've talked about a LOT of potential changes, all affecting a moving target of a difficulty that we're discussing increasing or decreasing. Maybe we should try to agree on some stuff to start with and present that to Gazebo, so that he doesn't need to read through 14+ pages of discussion.

If we're talking real changes that I think would be good right now

• Remove the production from the A/B/C bonuses
• Make them give 75% culture
• Increase A/B/C bonuses by 25%-50% (Number may need to be fiddled with to achieve similar non-religion/wonder metrics)
• Shrines do not get a production discount (like wonders)
• Annexed cities give 25%(?) less yields, and lower non-Venice puppet yields by 5%.
• Lower Imperium's culture by 25%
• Progress's happiness policy also gets +1 happiness from libraries. (Or just lower it to 8 and increase the % reduction.)
• Tradition gets "settlers don't cost population" somewhere.
• +1 Range promotion moved another tier back. (I think that's how logistics is now?)
• Trade routes to independent (non-vassal) major civs give some good yield when completed. (Boost to peaceful play.)

Does that cover most of our bases?

These proposals shouldn't be done in a "deity thread."

Proposals related to A/B/C bonuses, sure.

The rest? Pure balance changes that affect non-deity players. And there isn't a consensus on a number of your proposals.

 

[amateurgamer88]

I have to agree with @tothePAIN . A/B/C bonuses can be applied to Deity only but some of the others have bigger impacts on lower difficulty.

For example, lower difficulties see fewer units produced by the AI so a player get less yields in a war from kills. Lowering the Culture from Imperium might make Authority starving for Culture as a whole for anyone picking Authority.The TR change does infringe on the Ottoman UA and it can work in interesting ways since AI can theoretically catch up in yields if they trade with the leader. As for the change to Range, that will also make lower difficulty wars too one dimensional for longer periods of time since less enemy units equates to less experience overall.

I'm also surprised that annexed cities are changed when nothing is done with vassalage.

 

[stii]

Yeah I don't think a big list of changes is the way to go. Just AI can't rush build shrines would make it sooo much easier to get a religion, which seems to be very important to peaceful play. Plus it has minimal effects on lower difficulties.

Something simlple is much more likely to be accepted and we don;'t see to agree much on anything at deity. Only real agreement is war is too good, or maybe just peace is too weak. Different people are valuing different civ/religion/everything vastly differently.

 

[amateurgamer88]

If we want changes made specific to Deity, the bonuses to humans and AIs might be a good spot in addition to the A/B/C bonuses.

Maybe human players get less base supply and supply from population? A higher cap to the AI's warmonger fervor? Larger discount to AI unit and/or building production? More free experience given the AI units?

These are all possible options to explore without needing to impact lower level players.