Draft Improvement Patch mod

[Xaviarlol]

Hi all

Looking for some feedback and/or want to raise general awareness of the type of gameplay mod changes people would like to see. I'm not sure if I will do an Improvements Patch mod for Humankind (I'd have to wait and see what the modding tools are, and there are much better modders out there than me), but I thought it would be a good idea to build a foundation of changes for this type of mod.

This is not a definitive list, in fact its going to start pretty small, but hopefully build more as we play the game more and get a better idea of what changes would be desirable. Note that the vast majority of changes here are meant to be just simple mod tweaks, rather than overhauled systems, which I think can come later.

Gaz / Gedemon / Infixo / other modders - would love to see your thoughts.

Cities
General direction of changes - Make city growth feel more organic and city pop sizes feel more important. Make it feel more long-term. Slow down science and maxing out on population too quickly and snowballing.
Changes
- Pop growth rate reduced by at least 3x. Slighty reduce food consumption of pop so cities don't starve so easily.
- Assignable citizens (eg scientlsts, farmers etc) increased in yield relative to district yields.
- Possible nerfs to naval districts, which currently can give 40+ food and production.
- Stability cost of districts reduced.

Tiles/Terrain
General direction of changes - Terrain needs to feel much more varied (in terms of yields), and city placement locations should feel far more important. More 'lush super areas' and more 'crappy stagnant' areas. Some areas should suck for cities, and some should be awesome. Basically add a slight bit of RNG.
Changes
- Forests now have have +2 Food and +1 production base yields, up from just +2F.
- Flood irrigation (infrastructure) reduced from +2F per river to +1F
- Coastal Reefs now have +2F and +2P, up from +1F
- Following changed terrain names:
Prairie ->Grasslands
Rocky field -> Plains
Stone field -> Desolate Plains
Sterile Terrain -> Desert
Woodland -> Desolate Woodland
- Terrain features (eg waterfalls, hot springs etc) now have a special symbol on the yield graphic.
- Increased the spawn rate of terrain features.
- Created new Resource type called "Bonus" resources. Act like Luxury resources (uses the same code) however these resources increase the yield of the tile they sit on by about 2x more than standard Luxury resources, and have a (B) in front of their names. These can be traded as Luxury resources but do not provide stability bonuses and only provide small fixed bonuses.
- Algae tile feature now adds +4F

Buildings/Infra/Wonders
- Increased production cost of Districts and infrastructure
- Overhauled Wonder bonuses to be far more interesting
- Market quarter now reduces gold purchasing cost for units and buildings by 1% per market quarter.
- Artisan Workshop +2P to industry workers
- House of scribes +2 science to scientists


Natural Wonders
- Natural wonders now provide large benefits to nearby tiles.

Culture/ideologies
- Overhauled the majority of Civics to be more impactful (roughly 2-3x impact)
- Overhauled ideologies to be more impactful (roughly 2-3x impact)
- Sphere of influence should be more meaningful, but haven't yet decided how, or if changes can be made without a DLC or expansion.


Religion
- Religion is in a terribly unfinished state at the moment. Requires expansion pack or DLC for overhaul (which it sorely needs)

Science
- Greatly increased research tech times, especially towards the latter eras

Trade
- Each market quarter now increases pass-through trade gold income by 0.5 gold per turn.

Units
- Unit production cost roughly doubled.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Good beginning for discussion, but just a few notes:

Stability cost of districts reduced. - Absolutely not: Stability, which was supposed to be a limiting Factor to Runaway Growth, isn't working that way because Luxury Resources and other available 'fixes' boost Stability to the skies. People are finding Stability to be completely irrelevant for most of the game, and for it to work the way it was supposed to its effects and costs probably need to be increased if anything.

Sterile Terrain -> Desert - I thought about this, too, until I realized that Sterile Terrain in the game also represents Tundra/Arctic Terrain

new Resource type called "Bonus" resources - don't actually see the point of a new Resource Type. Luxury Resources and Strategic Resources both already provide a bonus to their Tile: if you think that bonus is too low it can be increased without requiring a whole new type of Resource to get the effect.

The Civics/Ideologies/Religious systems were all modified during testing, effects and numbers tweaked, but still are Underwhelming in too many cases. Which simply means that any 'improvement' is going to take a lot of work, because they are all relatively complex systems.

Greatly increased research tech times - I laughed at this, because in fact the Research Costs were reduced in testing by about 50% or more, especially in the late game. The problem now is that there is too much variation in amount of Research: take one or more Scientist Factions and build their Emblematics, focus at all on Science, and you can finish the Tech Tree before the game ends, and whip out a Tech per turn in the last Era/Age of the game. Pay no major attention to, invest few resources in Science, and you end the game with Aquebusiers and Steam Frigates! The solution, I think, lies not in the research costs but in the massive number of ways you can increase your research capabilities in the last third of the game: Scientific Emblematics and Infrastructure cost/benefits need to be given a hard relook.

Unit production cost roughly doubled - Why? The limits on Units are not their production cost, but the fact that they suck Population out of your cities, cost greatly increasing Money Maintenance as the game progresses, and, most importantly, require Strategic Resources that become increasingly scarce by type in the late game (people are already complaining about Large/Huge maps with only 1 - 2 Oil or Uranium resources anywhere on them). If you think there are too many Units being built, add a Food cost to maintain them, and their numbers will drop precipitously no matter what they cost to build.

 

[Krajzen]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-non-bug-improvements-and-suggestions.672626/

A goddamn long list of my personal improvement suggestions. Most important are:
- UI upgrades: more clear faction identity and their past progression, diplomatic relations browser, map modes, district highlighting, indicators of range/line if sight/high ground/may still shoot for units in combat, notification options, ability to check what exactly stars did other factions get, ingame statistics
- Fast/instant army movement of the main map
- City name changes so most cities aren't named after ancient/classical era for the entire game
- Religions named after IRL major religions
- Calendar being less out of sync
- More varied curiosities rewards
- Huge balance issue: hyperinflation of yields in the entire later half of the game, when you instantly buy everything; there have to be some brutal limits of how high yields can skyrocket, especially from attached territories
- Stability is non - factor, should be much harsher
- Influence is worthless in the latter half of the game, nothing to spend an enormous income (gold is barely better), yields should be much lower and much more strategic and valuable
- Water tiles are useless and can barely be exploited, should be better
- Khmer Barays, Mughal ability nd Turkish school are extremely OP, should be nerfed
- Late game estethe and expansionist cultures are useless, nothing to do, should be useful
- Civics are too random and you can finish the game while unlocking 20% of them, should be a recurring unavoidable choice
- Tech tree has way not enough interdeoendencies, leeding to extreme beelining, lack of balance and general absurdity such as advaced tech without basic science etc
- Luxury trade deals are infinitesimely cheap, basically free, for how enormous benefits they offer. They should be both harder to get and less influential.
- Some infrastrucutres are absurdly OP for their cost (mainly those giving huge boost to all tiles if X type in. the entire city territory), no idea how to nerf them
- Event rewards are meaninglessly small across later eras
- Lack of many diplomatic options, though that's not moddable I guess
- I still think war negotiations system is way too rigid

 

[fortydayweekend]

- Pop growth rate reduced by at least 3x. Slighty reduce food consumption of pop so cities don't starve so easily.

Food consumption by pops being *higher* than farmer production is a pretty good mechanic that limits early city growth - there's actually a population growth cost to running workers. I wouldn't mess with that

Overall I feel like it's a bit early for knowing what major changes need to be made... a lot of the issues that people have that I noticed too are only really an issue on lower difficulties (e.g. stability being too easy, crazy snowballing growth). Bringing some of the harder settings into the lower levels might be all that's needed.

Some issues seem to be a holdover from Civ - e.g. we're used to things taking 2+ turns to build, but in HK you can queue them up and build multiple items each turn. That's not in itself a bad thing but it feels ridiculously fast. There's a lot less micro as well so if you're in prolonged peace the game is 95% queueing up new buildings and placing districts.

I'd like to see some of the more egregious stuff nerfed and then re-assess.
- resource stacking multipliers (make resources go obsolete during the eras so there's limited timeframe for trade payoff and limited stacking at any one time)
- some cost to maintain outposts so you can't just claim every territory
- higher cost than actually building all the improvements, to build the settler that can build the "every-improvement-built" new city - and take 4 pop from the host city. And don't let outposts just upgrade to that super-city without a settler
- +2F/I on river early game buildings reduced to +1 or cost increased (these often have a 10-turn payback when every other building is 35-turns)
- less predictable AI behaviour when invading (don't just use the same direct path that allows an ambush)

 

[Elhoim]

Overall I feel like it's a bit early for knowing what major changes need to be made... a lot of the issues that people have that I noticed too are only really an issue on lower difficulties (e.g. stability being too easy, crazy snowballing growth). Bringing some of the harder settings into the lower levels might be all that's needed.

Yes, it's a bit jumping the gun here, especially some concepts as Boris pointed out are way off the mark, and based more on preconceptions than what the actual gameplay effects these changes would create. Plus I foresee the devs doing a lot of balance tweaks in the upcoming months.

 

[Xaviarlol]

Yes, it's a bit jumping the gun here, especially some concepts as Boris pointed out are way off the mark, and based more on preconceptions than what the actual gameplay effects these changes would create. Plus I foresee the devs doing a lot of balance tweaks in the upcoming months.

Yeah I thought about this. It's also true that lower difficulties drastically change the types of issues encountered, such as insane snowballing and 1 turn builds on everything. For the time being I am focusing only on the top 2 difficulty levels.

Good beginning for discussion, but just a few notes:

Stability cost of districts reduced. - Absolutely not: Stability, which was supposed to be a limiting Factor to Runaway Growth, isn't working that way because Luxury Resources and other available 'fixes' boost Stability to the skies. People are finding Stability to be completely irrelevant for most of the game, and for it to work the way it was supposed to its effects and costs probably need to be increased if anything.

new Resource type called "Bonus" resources - don't actually see the point of a new Resource Type. Luxury Resources and Strategic Resources both already provide a bonus to their Tile: if you think that bonus is too low it can be increased without requiring a whole new type of Resource to get the effect.

The Civics/Ideologies/Religious systems were all modified during testing, effects and numbers tweaked, but still are Underwhelming in too many cases. Which simply means that any 'improvement' is going to take a lot of work, because they are all relatively complex systems.

Unit production cost roughly doubled - Why? The limits on Units are not their production cost, but the fact that they suck Population out of your cities, cost greatly increasing Money Maintenance as the game progresses, and, most importantly, require Strategic Resources that become increasingly scarce by type in the late game (people are already complaining about Large/Huge maps with only 1 - 2 Oil or Uranium resources anywhere on them). If you think there are too many Units being built, add a Food cost to maintain them, and their numbers will drop precipitously no matter what they cost to build.

I would like to see less 'short-term pivots' and more long-term planning in Humankind. That is the general theme of my proposed mod chanes. Changes in population vs army composition should not be achievable in 5-10 turns. This is why I want to double the unit production costs (as well as making Industry specialties feel more impactful for high-producing cities) and slow the pop growth (which also makes farming cities much cooler to grow in the long-term). At the moment it feels like there is really only one linear way to play, and hardly any choices such as specializing in certain things.

In regards to Bonus resources, the point is to make the terrain more varied and have those rare but fun perfect city locations.

Agreed about the ideologies, this might be in DLC and expansion territory. Needs more depth/strategic impact, but overall I like the foundations of the system.

 

[Guynemer]

Greatly increased research tech times - I laughed at this, because in fact the Research Costs were reduced in testing by about 50% or more, especially in the late game. The problem now is that there is too much variation in amount of Research: take one or more Scientist Factions and build their Emblematics, focus at all on Science, and you can finish the Tech Tree before the game ends, and whip out a Tech per turn in the last Era/Age of the game. Pay no major attention to, invest few resources in Science, and you end the game with Aquebusiers and Steam Frigates! The solution, I think, lies not in the research costs but in the massive number of ways you can increase your research capabilities in the last third of the game: Scientific Emblematics and Infrastructure cost/benefits need to be given a hard relook.

I just finished the tech tree in turn 180 and I took a grand total of one (1) scientific faction.

 

[Taefin]

I would be in favor of modding sooner rather than later, but I’ve only ever had much appetite for very basic mods. I think there are going to be a lot of differing opinions about what people think would make the game more fun for them, and I’d like to see some mods that let you tune the levers that the devs were playing with for the last 4 months.

Specifically science costs, era star thresholds and AI bonuses. I think science feels pretty well paced up through industrial era, and I’m glad they dialed back some of the science cultures. But I think that snowballing is just going to be a part of the end l-game in HK, much like it was in history, and I think changing a few values could really keep the game interesting and help keep the AI on pace. For instance I’d make every tech tier in the contemporary era at least double the cost of the one before it. These represent huge real-world scientific advances and not every empire needs to get very far here for the game to be realistic. They also represent relatively modest buffs, as units strength begins to plateau at early modern.

With the exception of overhauling some of the EQ and culture bonuses that are dramatically inferior, since those being useful is so core to gameplay. I think they should all be multiplicative in some way like the best third of them are. Or make the linear ones upfront better with less chance to grow.

And I might throw in a wildcard that the city defense tech in each era have no prerequisites aside from being in that era (or maybe even make it free). To me this represents the ubiquity of the previous era’s weaponry that nations can acquire with negligible investment. And would ensure that sieges aren’t too easy. Would also open up some interesting militarist strategies (the AI doesn’t use that ability do they).

Edit: Oh and I’d love to try setting the max battle turns from 1/2/3/6 down to 1/1/2/3 or even 1/1/1/2. I think that defending against the AI leads to way too many casualties on their part, and if they aren’t going to break through in 3-6 rounds it’s probably because they are being slowly executed by your impenetrable line. I’d rather just take the victory and leave their army to fight another turn.