Discussion about Babylon

[bengalryan9]

'Leave them out of your games' fails on multiple levels. There is no veto civ button, multiplayer exists, and you are just ignoring the issues.

Also, getting the right Eurekas for Babylon is not hard if you plan even slightly ahead.

Gee, I could have sworn you had the ability to choose your opponents every time you start a game. Guess taking a few seconds to choose your opponents is just too difficult when there's a big shiny "random" option there.

I'm not ignoring the issues at all as I've flat out stated early on in this thread that I think they're somewhat overstated. Everyone gets so hung up on what Babylon *can* and not so much what they always *will* do. My Babylon game (deity, shuffle) had me on a small continent with room for 5-6 cities, no mountains, no strategic resources, no neighbors... I can plan to hit eurekas for things like iron working, astronomy, horse riding, astrology, industrialization, rifling, replaceable parts, steel, plastics, and nanotechnology all I want, it doesn't mean they're happening every single game. And that's not even mentioning eurekas you'd have to go out of your way to do things you wouldn't normally do (build 2 forts? build 2 neighborhoods? build 2 banks? own 3 privateers? and do it all before I hit those points in the tech tree?) or probably won't ever hit (kill a fighter.. that the AI never builds?). But hey - I sure did get crossbowmen and bombards early so yeah, totally OP, broke my game wide open. Is my game an extreme case? Maybe, but no more extreme than having the map generator give you everything you need to hit every single one of those. Nobody is denying that Babylon has the potential to be great, and I'm sure for the best of the best players who know the game inside and out it's the easiest game they'll ever play. An average player on an average map is very likely to hit at least one wall at some point if not more.

But whatever, let's go ahead and nerf Babylon so we can advance to the next phase of this debate about how they never should've been nerfed in the first place and why would anybody play them now.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

A civ ban option would add some nice utility by letting you exclude leaders that you've just had a game with or you just generally feel like you keep getting in a lot of games. Civs with musical themes you've heard a lot of especially for people like myself who play smaller maps as that reduces the variety of songs you will hear over the game leading to more looping. It would also let you theme games for instance ensuring the AI can only choose civs that play well on water maps or at least arnt hugely handicapped and likewise ensuring Norway or the Dutch don't show up on Highlands.

It could do all that while still maintaining a strong element of surprise as opposed to choosing the AI leaders yourself. Taking a handful of leaders out of the top hat still leaves a massive range of possible options you could encounter. A civ ban option is a great middle ground between choosing civs manually with the only randomness being where you meet them and the total randomness now which leaves open the possibility of seeing the same leaders multiple times.

 

[Pietato]

Gee, I could have sworn you had the ability to choose your opponents every time you start a game. Guess taking a few seconds to choose your opponents is just too difficult when there's a big shiny "random" option there.

I'm not ignoring the issues at all as I've flat out stated early on in this thread that I think they're somewhat overstated. Everyone gets so hung up on what Babylon *can* and not so much what they always *will* do. My Babylon game (deity, shuffle) had me on a small continent with room for 5-6 cities, no mountains, no strategic resources, no neighbors... I can plan to hit eurekas for things like iron working, astronomy, horse riding, astrology, industrialization, rifling, replaceable parts, steel, plastics, and nanotechnology all I want, it doesn't mean they're happening every single game. And that's not even mentioning eurekas you'd have to go out of your way to do things you wouldn't normally do (build 2 forts? build 2 neighborhoods? build 2 banks? own 3 privateers? and do it all before I hit those points in the tech tree?) or probably won't ever hit (kill a fighter.. that the AI never builds?). But hey - I sure did get crossbowmen and bombards early so yeah, totally OP, broke my game wide open. Is my game an extreme case? Maybe, but no more extreme than having the map generator give you everything you need to hit every single one of those. Nobody is denying that Babylon has the potential to be great, and I'm sure for the best of the best players who know the game inside and out it's the easiest game they'll ever play. An average player on an average map is very likely to hit at least one wall at some point if not more.

But whatever, let's go ahead and nerf Babylon so we can advance to the next phase of this debate about how they never should've been nerfed in the first place and why would anybody play them now.

Picking every single civ you face is incredibly lame, and ruins a large part of the fun.

And if you cannot even get the basic Babylon eureka combos to work every game, the problem lies with you.

I care about game balance. I want the weak brought up, and the strong brought down. That is not to say everyone has to be at the same level, but ranging from A-tier to C-tier is much better than from S+tier to Khmer F-tier.

 

[berlin88]

In my current game, I have unlocked a wide variety of different military units, though I don't yet have a source of oil to build all of them. If I had access to oil, I could build Field Cannons, Musketmen, Modern Infantry, Siege Towers, Chariots and Biplanes all at the same time.

I have yet to unlock iron working, so I was never able to build knights, so skipped over them to Cuirassier.

Babylon is a very fun civ to play, but as I have said before, its largely dependent on the map and what resources you start next to.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Picking every single civ you face is incredibly lame, and ruins a large part of the fun.

The closest thing you can do is rolling a D60 for each opponent (I do that when I want to ban a certain civ). This ensures randomness, though can't simulate not knowing who is in the game from the start. To achieve that you could ask a friendly person to set up the game for you that way.

 

[AsH2]

Picking every single civ you face is incredibly lame, and ruins a large part of the fun.
..
I care about game balance. I want the weak brought up, and the strong brought down. That is not to say everyone has to be at the same level, but ranging from A-tier to C-tier is much better than from S+tier to Khmer F-tier.

Then simply disable the Babylon pack.

 

[Golkian]

I care about game balance. I want the weak brought up, and the strong brought down.

I do not want weaker civs brought up. I want a civ to be interesting.

"Interesting" is a complicated concept, which might not be the same for everybody. And in my opinion it should also be allowed to value a civ as interesting, which only is good in a very rare situation (map settings, game modes, etc.).

I especially do not want to bring stronger civs down, since what is strong is most of the times really hard to measure and situational. If one plays only Archipelago maps he/she might not rank Mongolia very high. Does Mongolia need a buff? I do not think so.

I think to achieve the goal to have a variety of civs and each be "interesting", enforces the sacrifice, that not all of them are good in all situations. Some civs might fail in some situations, others might even only excel in some situations while failing in many others. All of this is OK in my opinion!

If weaker civs are brought up and stronger down, the risk is very high, that selecting a civ does not matter and all are the same. I'm for variety, where it is OK to have both specialists and generalists at the same time. Specialists might be hard to take advantage of, with a significant risk of failing. Babylon might not fall in that category currently, since some eurekas are too easy to get early currently (see my suggestion on changing the eurekas for metal casting and castles).

Looking only at single player, I do not think that having a civ as an AI, which is a militarily very strong warmonger, is a problem in itself. When I want to achieve a culture victory, I just need to have means enough, to avoid a war. Currently this works well enough.

Civ is not rock, paper and scissors, where you are constantly attacked by a set of units and you need to select right counter units. Instead Civ is multiple, distinct games played at the same time by multiple players. Surely you can spoil anybodies culture or religious game by just conquering all of them, but when playing against the AI, there are strategies to avoid war. And then it doesn't matter how good the Korea AI is in science, when your culture game is just better. It is tough, but that is what makes the game interesting.

Also, I have no problem to loose a game on deity when I find out that I spawn in a pocket between Shaka, Cesar and Hungary. And if even manage to survive that is even a better feeling

I do not know about MP and things are very much likely totatlly different there: Is a peaceful MP game even a thing above a certain level?

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

It depends on whether you're playing modded versus unmodded multiplayer, and what rulesets you play with. Civ players league, which is the most popular modded multiplayer community, definitely has tourism victory as a viable path but even in a culture victory, there will often be profitable early or mid game war. There are nerfs to some of the crazy early warmongers like Sumeria, Nubia to make them less unbalanced early, Korea science is also nerfed so that a Korea turtle isn't just a guaranteed victory and other balance patches make the variance between the different civs less large. This talk of nerfs/buffs taking the uniqueness out of each civ isn't borne out by evidence from civ 5 mods or the current better balanced game mod. Each civ still keeps its flavor but the overtuned things are toned down a little. Babylon is the big exception at the moment, they haven't been modded yet and are just permabanned.

If you're playing a 12 man free for all against opponents of similar skill, your probability of winning a domination victory is close to 0%. War against competent defense is very costly, it's not like you get to easily roll over an AI, and expensive war leads to an irrelevancy, as the players building infrastructure peacefully will win. And you can't war every other player in the game. You make a timing push with some strategic advantage you have like Janissaries, and you can pull off a relatively cheap neighbor conquest that can earn you better long term infrastructure, but you're going to need to pull off a science victory or culture victory in the end, or establish enough of a lead/bomb any close competitor out of existence and get opponents to concede (this is the most common win). So every game is a mix of peaceful play and conquest.

Unmodded civ 6 multiplayer is just terrible, and playing without a group that has rules against certain exploits (like Mahavira glitch) is just pointless. But fortunately, you can just mod in balance as needed. I agree that lack of civ balance doesn't matter too much for single player.

 

[Victoria]

I have felt excited meeting AI babylon 4 times now only to be let down.
I understand them banning it in MP and so it’s only OP when playing with yourself.
I am against balanced civs, I like playing crappy ones or ones with late benefits.
Babylon suffers from district cost creep, it cannot control its eurekas, but everyone seems to only look at what is down the trousers. Best played for a CV IMO.

 

[bengalryan9]

And if you cannot even get the basic Babylon eureka combos to work every game, the problem lies with you.

Right, it's totally my fault I couldn't get the Eurekas that are map dependent when the map generator didn't give me any of the features I needed to actually achieve them on my island all by myself surrounded by ocean. You've really got me there, clearly it's my fault.

Get over yourself, dude.

Babylon suffers from district cost creep, it cannot control its eurekas, but everyone seems to only look at what is down the trousers. Best played for a CV IMO.

^THIS.

 

[walkerjks]

Here's another Babylonian bit of weirdness, when combined with heroes - Flight by turn 100 for cultural wins.

This requires Rapa Nui and/or La Venta to work.

You need an industrial wonder. Ruhr is the most straight-forward one to get. You need a factory and 3 workshops (and therefore 3 industrial districts) for that. You need 3 mines for that. Other than a government center and ancestral hall for settler spam, no other district is needed, or probably wanted.

To speed things up, it would be nice to not have to hard build the districts. Hercules is perfect for this.

To speed things up, it would be nice to be able to buy the factory. Sinbad helps here.

Himiko is nice to get suzerainty of Rapa Nui and/or La Venta, but isn't essential as these are the only 2 city states you will be targeting.

So build monuments in cities (or old god obelisks if playing with secret societies - that extra faith will help with buying some settlers). You want these both for border expansion and to provide cities to recruit some heroes. Then build the districts and workshops in 3 cities. Otherwise build workers. If you have Rapa Nui, for example, you simply chop everything and replace with Moai. By the time you get flight, you should already have a bunch of colossal heads or moai up. Keep adding them as quickly as you can.

Edit - so did it on Prince level. I didn't realize they nerfed Moai and Colossal Heads a bit Nonetheless - flight on turn 86, victory on turn 120. Built 3 industrial zones and a government center and no other districts. Just a trickle of science and a bit more culture (mostly from working Moai) per turn.

 

[Golkian]

Here's another Babylonian bit of weirdness, when combined with heroes - Flight by turn 100 for cultural wins.

Well, we left the Heroes mode out of the balancing discussion and it very surely does not make sense to include them into the discussion. I do not think you actually do that, but I just want to make my point.

While I certainly think that civs do not need to be perfectly balanced for single player and I like special abilities that correctly used provide a significant, sometimes huge advantage, the heroes are really intended to be OP and multiply any superiority if you manage to get the correct hero for your needs. Even more as the heroes are totally RNG dependent: You cannot make sure to get a specific hero you need for something by applying a certain strategy. You really need to be very lucky and to get to know the hero (the hero research project is not the important issue in this regard).

They are here for our entertainment and amusement only to do extraordinary things that would not be possible in the normal ruleset. So hero strategies exist in their own universe, only. Fun, but separate.

Edit: Slightly rephrased

 

[UWHabs]

Well, we left the Heroes mode out of the balancing discussion and it very surely does not make sense to include them into the discussion. I do not think you actually do that, but I just want to make my point.

While I certainly think that civs do not need to be perfectly balanced for single player and I like special abilities that correctly used provide a significant, sometimes huge advantage, the heroes are really intended to be OP and multiply any superiority if you manage to get the correct hero for your needs. Even more as the heroes are totally RNG dependent: You cannot make sure to get a specific hero you need for something by applying a certain strategy. You really need to be very lucky and to get to know the hero (the hero research project is not the important issue in this regard).

They are here for our entertainment and amusement only to do extraordinary things that would not be possible in the normal ruleset. So hero strategies exist in their own universe, only. Fun, but separate.

Edit: Slightly rephrased

You can probably do a lot of that without the heroes, although obviously they make it easier if you can get them. If you can get your 3 early industrial zones, you're going to be getting a bunch of engineers which should help you with the wonder. Although if you're still in medieval era engineers, they don't give a ton towards wonders, so you may need to get lucky with your terrain to not have to waste a lot on troops and have just the right wonder placement.

 

[walkerjks]

Without heroes, I think you're looking at turn 110ish flight. Hard-building or chopping 3 industrial zones isn't a huge deal. You can probably manage money in such a way to make buying a factory possible, even if you can't do it immediately (but still before the turn it would take to build it). A 25-turn delay in flight isn't going to translate into a 25-turn delay in winning. Probably 10-15 turns.

Removing my self-imposed restriction on districts, Babylon is pretty great for cultural wins, even if you don't specifically beeline for flight. Theaters first, then 3 industrial zones (or skip the IZs and go for some other industrial age wonder) should be very fast at every difficulty level and will get you flight +radio + computers before I can do it with most other civs.

 

[Pietato]

Right, it's totally my fault I couldn't get the Eurekas that are map dependent when the map generator didn't give me any of the features I needed to actually achieve them on my island all by myself surrounded by ocean. You've really got me there, clearly it's my fault.

Get over yourself, dude.



^THIS.

What exactly stopped you from building 2 harbours? Or 3 archers and a lumbermill? Or 3 mines and industrial zones? Babylon can succeed from virtually anywhere.

A lot of people seem to believe that balance and interesting/fun are mutually exclusive concepts. This is false. Take for example the Maori and the Aztecs; they have wildly differently playstyles but are considered at similar strength levels. This is what FX need to strive for, so that civ strength ranges from A to C, and not Babylon to Khmer.

Changes strengthening playstyles would be best, e.g:

- Eleanor's ability reaches 10 tiles instead of 9, and she receives no diplomatic favour penalties for holding enemy capitals.
- Trade route abilities scale with era.
- Floodplains for Egypt are now 1(+1 to neighbouring tiles) appeal (like Brazil).

Stuff like this would also help combat the power creep which has left the older civs behind.

 

[AntSou]

A lot of people seem to believe that balance and interesting/fun are mutually exclusive concepts. This is false. Take for example the Maori and the Aztecs; they have wildly differently playstyles but are considered at similar strength levels. This is what FX need to strive for, so that civ strength ranges from A to C, nd not Babylon to Khmer.

I agree they aren't mutually exclusive, and if they manage to do it without ruining the Civ, that's a good thing. But in regards to Babylon, the attention is on its identity, which can't really be nerfed directly.

E.g. You could, if you so wished, increase China's eureka ability to 55% instead of 50%. The civ will still play the same way. But if you reduce Babylon's ability from 100% to 95%, or even just 99%, it fundamentally changes how the Civ works. So that's not a genie that can go back in the bottle imo.

In your post you also put focus on the Civs that may be lagging behind, which I think is a much more reasonable approach. Many of these Civs need only small tweaks to be much more reliable. I think that should be the primary focus.

And if something is TRULY broken, then sure, nerf or buff it as necessary. But all these threads (mostly reddit) one or two weeks after release calling for nerfs should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[bengalryan9]

What exactly stopped you from building 2 harbours? Or 3 archers and a lumbermill? Or 3 mines and industrial zones? Babylon can succeed from virtually anywhere.

Oh good, now I've got early crossbowmen and caravels that take forever to produce and cost more gold than I have to complement my 5 subpar cities that I saddled with early harbors or crappy IZs (that I need 3 of, and 2 of which I'll need to use production to build workshops in). Watch out rest of the world, the seas are mine now...

And by rushing towards these eurekas I've hamstringed my ability to get plenty of others I would've gotten easily, too, so I'm still hard researching a bunch of stuff I could've gotten otherwise and a bunch of wasted district slots.

Bring out the nerf bats!

 

[Pietato]

Oh good, now I've got early crossbowmen and caravels that take forever to produce and cost more gold than I have to complement my 5 subpar cities that I saddled with early harbors or crappy IZs (that I need 3 of, and 2 of which I'll need to use production to build workshops in). Watch out rest of the world, the seas are mine now...

And by rushing towards these eurekas I've hamstringed my ability to get plenty of others I would've gotten easily, too, so I'm still hard researching a bunch of stuff I could've gotten otherwise and a bunch of wasted district slots.

Bring out the nerf bats!

You say that like you were going to spam archers and galleys...why? And how exactly were you going to avoid unlocking Crossbowmen if you were planning to build archers?

Also, if you are stuck on an island which can only hold 5 cities, and you did not settle at least one city on the coast, and build Harbours, then I think maps with water might be too much for you. Because this is the optimal playstyle anyway...

The IZ is an option you can take if you want powerful production, and/or early flight and eventual culture, you do not have to do it in your initial 5 cities. You should have unlocked the ability to explore very early, and can find additional space.

Anyway, you cannot really nerf Babylon's eureka ability without ruining them, so buff up others. They can remain a hilarious random OP outlier.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I really would like to see a pre-classical patch to add up at stone, bronze, and iron age. Each with 20 or so techs.
Libraries only av. in classical era. Make it hard to get science in the first place. Very hard.
Writing tech at turn 10?
Too much balance.
Babylon should be a very strong civ in ancient era. NOT space faring. in 300 AD.

20.000 BC, maybe they programmed it backwards...

 

[AntSou]

I really would like to see a pre-classical patch to add up at stone, bronze, and iron age. Each with 20 or so techs.

That's not a patch, that's a new game.