Getting Started

[Thalassicus]

Updated with screenshot.

I agree completely coal/oil should be more valuable too, and even tried removing the coal requirement from the Ironclad several months ago.

Oddly, the game determines what's strategic resources by checking the units table, so without a unit using it, coal doesn't appear on the top bar and cannot be traded between civs. The cumbersome and time-consuming solution is to create an invisible "dummy" unit that uses coal but isn't buildable and doesn't appear in the Civilopedia. The simpler solution is to have C++ access and just add an extra check in the scanning loop. It's frustrating to do so much work for something that is a simple 30-second fix when I know where to look... but can't do... so I've procrastinated hoping the full SDK would be released and save me the trouble.

I guess I should just sit down and do it though, it's been almost half a year and I haven't seen word on the rest of the SDK. We still can't even add mod dependencies.

I've been thinking about experimenting to see if units can require double resources. All late-game units could therefore require oil in addition to existing aluminum/uranium requirements they might have. I doubt it's this simple though. I do feel the problem with oil is it's only useful for a very brief time in the early modern era. Alternatively I could replace all Aluminum requirements with Oil... basically just eliminate Aluminum. Two tiers of units with different resource between tiers, but homogeneous resource on individual tiers, is a somewhat redundant gameplay concept -- especially when the second tier so quickly replaces the first.

 

[Ahriman]

Updated with screenshot.

Looks good to me.

I've been thinking about experimenting to see if units can require double resources.

IIRC Alpaca has Knights requiring both horses *and* iron in PlayWithMe.

But I'm not sure that adding oil to aluminium/uranium requirements is wise.

Oil should lose its military strategic importance near the endgame, when aluminium starts to matter.

Military consumption is a trivial proportion of oil consumption in a modern country, and we don't want a civ without oil to be militarily screwed forever.

I would much rather see a modern era economy building (Superhighways?) that needed oil that make modern armor or gunships need oil.

By the late modern era, oil should be sufficiently plentiful (like iron) that its no longer strategic for military purposes.

So, I think we need a long 20th century period where oil matters, but then have it decline in importance towards the very end of the game.

 

[Thalassicus]

The last line is basically the problem we're dealing with. Iron is useful for 2 eras, while oil is useful for ~1/2 of an era, aluminum ~1/2 an era, then uranium at the very end (though I've never had a game last past modern armor).

Replacing aluminum deposits with oil deposits and changing strategic-requirements might fulfill your goal, only with a different endgame resource (uranium). I could then fiddle with the oil quantity on the map to get it about right for an average warmongering civ in that era (peaceful civs can still build the free mech infantry). This might be easiest to balance, though there's certainly other options.

 

[Txurce]

The tech tree looks good to me.

Ahriman, re "Coal should be limited but really valuable; if its rare enough, then we might even want to buff factories (reduce cost, or maintenance cost)." I don't see why the lucky civ with coal in this scenario should have its lucky advantage buffed.

If anything I think coal should be little more obtainable, perhaps along the line of the iron dev mods. My feeling is that if it's worth going to war over - and it often is - then it should literally be reachable (i.e. not on the opposite end of the continent, or on a different continent altogether).

The proportion of oil a nation uses for military purposes in RL is completely irrelevant to Civ. The same could be said of aluminum and uranium, so to differentiate makes no sense. All strategic resources have one purpose in civ (with a few exceptions): military use. In 2011 oil is used in RL in several Civ units like MI or destroyers that don't require oil. Aircraft requiring aluminum but not oil makes even less sense.

Presently aluminum makes oil pretty much irrelevant, because the already-imbalanced oil units are quickly superseded by aluminum ones. Nerfing MI would help tanks, but making MI require oil would be even better. All in all, having to pursue strategic resources in the late game as much as in the early game - with a break in between with the rise of resourceless units from muskets to infantry - should make for a more multi-faceted game.

So at the beginning of this dialogue, my leaning is primarily to make late SR more available in smaller quantities like the iron dev mods, and secondarily to consider eliminating aluminum, perhaps by also increasing the need for uranium - perhaps by making it necessary for not just nuclear plants but the spaceship, and more of it for the spaceship factories as well.

 

[Ahriman]

Replacing aluminum deposits with oil deposits and changing strategic-requirements might fulfill your goal, only with a different endgame resource (uranium). I could then fiddle with the oil quantity on the map to get it about right for an average warmongering civ in that era (peaceful civs can still build the free mech infantry). This might be easiest to balance

Hmm. That's not a bad idea.
So remove aluminium, make modern armor/jet fighters/stealth bombers use oil, remove resource requirement for hydro plant (I don't see a need for it), and have uranium for GDR, along with maybe a superior naval unit (nuclear sub or missile cruiser?) and maybe the spaceship factory (which could then be made cheaper).
And make it so everyone can get at least *some* oil.

So, oil for military dominance, nuclear for extreme late-game military power and space-race boosting.

I think removing aluminium and staying oil-focused is better than creating units that require 2 resources.

I don't see why the lucky civ with coal in this scenario should have its lucky advantage buffed.

For the same reason that a civ with lots of iron gets an advantage, or a civ with lots of horses, or a civ with lots of oil.
If coal isn't meaningful, then its a waste of space as a resource, and you have no particular incentives to trade for it or conquer for it.
In vanilla, a single coal tile is usually enough to provide for all the factories you need (on a standard map).

The proportion of oil a nation uses for military purposes in RL is completely irrelevant to Civ. The same could be said of aluminum and uranium, so to differentiate makes no sense. All strategic resources have one purpose in civ (with a few exceptions): military use. In 2011 oil is used in RL in several Civ units like MI or destroyers that don't require oil. Aircraft requiring aluminum but not oil makes even less sense.

Though I tend to agree with Thal's no-aluminium alternative above, let me clarify what I meant.
Just because a tank is made of a steel alloy, which comes from iron, doesn't mean it needs to require the strategic resource "iron".
The purpose of strategic resources is to represent a resource that is strategic in a particular era.
Iron is no longer strategic in modern times; its so common and cheap that it would be ridiculous to go and make every modern unit need an iron resource.
So, my point is that if there was going to be an aluminium resource, then it would need to supersede oil as the military strategic resource of the day.
Thal's point is that its better to just make oil a 2-era resource and remove aluminium altogether.

I'd also like to see a system where strategic resources were used more for economy purposes, but I think thats for a different mod, not a balance mod.

 

[Thalassicus]

Basically I think what Ahriman's saying is to do coal the same as iron/horses/etc in the dev mod, civs can get a few rather easily but much harder to supply your whole empire. This is how it is right now! I changed all the resources with the same method, we just gotta get to late-game to see what effect it has.

This basically applies to most resources in vanilla:

In vanilla, a single coal tile is usually enough to provide for all the factories you need (on a standard map).

@Ahriman
Yep that's my thought about aluminum -> oil. I feel having two resources here is redundant from a gameplay perspective. They're just one tier apart, and used homogeneously at each tier. It seems more logical to simply have them all use the same resource: oil. Uranium will stay for nuclear bombs, plants, subs and GDRs (probably improve the nuclear sub's power somehow to compensate, maybe start with a full compliment of cruise missiles?).

I think the reason the hydro plant requires aluminum is it's the early-modern version of a factory, and gives builders something to do with strategic resources. I suspect if the resource requirement is eliminated from that and the one on the spaceship factory is made scarcer (such as changing it to oil -- uranium's already in use for nuclear plants) things will balance each other out.

Ideally late-game land armies could be comprised of half oil users (a few tanks and rocket artillery) half non-strategic (mech infantry), with the remainder of oil used for ships and aircraft. Hopefully we can balance it so the amount of oil is just barely enough to do all this and field an airforce of a few fighters and bombers... specific civs with less or more oil availability will simply have a varying degree of air power (once the AI is coded to use air, that is). I think aircraft probably need a boost too. They take damage even from non-AA targets, while rocket artillery never take return fire if placed well.

Random trivia: half the world's production and reserves of aluminum are from just 2 countries: Australia and Guinea (the West African country). It's surprisingly concentrated, yet amazingly abundant in those countries: reserves alone will fulfill planetary demand for at least another century or two and the material's very recyclable. It's sort of an odd choice for a strategic resource. Nations fight over oil and uranium, but I've never heard about aluminum battles (though they undoubtedly exist).

 

[Txurce]

For the same reason that a civ with lots of iron gets an advantage, or a civ with lots of horses, or a civ with lots of oil.
If coal isn't meaningful, then its a waste of space as a resource, and you have no particular incentives to trade for it or conquer for it.
In vanilla, a single coal tile is usually enough to provide for all the factories you need (on a standard map).

I think we are all on basically the same page now regarding coal, oil, aluminum and uranium. The sum of the proposed changes should be fantastic.

In the quotation I addressed, you seem to have said that coal should be rare AND its building be buffed. This is obviously OP, so I noted it.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the reason the hydro plant requires aluminum is it's the modern version of a factory, and gives builders something to do with strategic resources.

Well, its a boring use; hydro plant is already limited since it only affects rivers.

Would much rather see Oil-consuming Superhighways.

I suspect if the resource requirement is eliminated from that and the one on the spaceship factory is made scarcer (such as changing it to oil -- uranium's already in use for nuclear plants) things will balance each other out.

If we're going to eliminate aluminium, which I would be fine with, then make uranium for the nuke, nuclear sub, GDR, nuke plant, and SS factory, so its mostly an economy resource, like coal.
I don't see why uranium being used for the nuclear plant means it can't be used for the SS factory.

* * *

In the quotation I addressed, you seem to have said that coal should be rare AND its building be buffed. This is obviously OP, so I noted it.

I disagree.
Let me put it this way; factories are worth building in vanilla, but not by a huge factor, when the opportunity cost of building a factory (consuming a unit of coal) is low. If you increase the opportunity cost of building a factory in city X by reducing the availability of coal (so the resource constraint binds harder) then it is perfectly reasonable to buff the building.

I also think that if a factory is only marginally better than a windmill, its a bit weak and coal is unimportant.

Making coal rarer also means that you *can* make factories more powerful without being unbalanced, because each player can have fewer factories.

 

[Thalassicus]

The thing about uranium being for both the power plant and SS factory is I tended to run out of it for power plants even in vanilla, and the mod reduces uranium availability. Choosing between the power plants and nukes/GDRs seems like a decent enough tradeoff... it'd be nice to have a vanilla building use oil for economic purposes since it's now being made a more 'global' resource.

I think Ahriman's point about coal is if we reduce the quantity of coal available, the value of individual coal resources could increase while keeping empire production about equivalent. This is a reasonable point.

If we tie it in with something else... nuclear and solar plants did get a tremendous buff, to try and give the player some reward before the game ends for investing in them (a +25% boost from a 600 cost building this late in the game was truly horrible). As such, it seems reasonable to balance this production increase a bit by keeping factory production the same while reducing overall coal availability 25%. This was theoretically done concurrently with the modifications to other strategic resources (I modified deposits and qty/deposit of all of them), though I was primarily looking at iron/horse distribution when testing so I can't say for sure if it's at a good value.

 

[Txurce]

If you increase the opportunity cost of building a factory in city X by reducing the availability of coal (so the resource constraint binds harder) then it is perfectly reasonable to buff the building.

I also think that if a factory is only marginally better than a windmill, its a bit weak and coal is unimportant.

Making coal rarer also means that you *can* make factories more powerful without being unbalanced, because each player can have fewer factories.

I agree that a factory would not be unbalanced even if it were buffed and the resources reduced - so long as they are distributed a la iron, and not as they are in vanilla. But iron isn't being reduced so much as redistributed more equitably. That implies that everyone gets to build a certain number of factories... probably about as many as they could use. I don't see why the factory would then be buffed, unless everyone agrees with you that factories are underpowered. I happen to prefer them over windmills.

 

[basta]

I've been thinking a bit more about these, and here is the concept behind the changes I've been exploring in the latest dev versions.

...

Thoughts on this subject would be helpful from anyone who has a comment. Does this sound like a form of gameplay you would enjoy, or do you prefer the method in vanilla, or some third option?

I can work on details of implementation, the code is flexible... the important part is to identify goals.

My main problem with strategic resources (read: iron; after the patch horses are too nerfed to really count) and why I like your mod is that iron can be a game breaker, and at high-level play in vanilla it is being ridiculously manipulated in its placement--always revealed in inaccessible places or the other end of the map. It's not at all "random" but obviously stacked against the human player and it feels like a cheap penalty/exploit.

Frankly, I'd be happy with the vanilla distribution, IF it was random for all, but it's not.

I like your implementation of wider, smaller, more scattered distribution, but I do not think that 1-iron deposits make sense, given early and very valuable worker build-costs to bring them online. In the end, you are adding a build-time penalty of 8-9 turns to the early iron-dependent units. That's a huge nerf.

I would not be wed to the 50/20 reductions that are the basis of this mod. As I just said, the build cost for a small deposit is in my eyes already a very big nerf. But you are reducing the total amount of the resource on the map, forgetting about the build time/delay, which is a big penalty with more, smaller mines to build with scarce early game workers.

My ideal solution: keep early siege units iron-dependent, no iron resources with only 1 deposit, only one with 4 on the entire map (wildcard!), thus all with 2 or 3. Percentage of iron 10-15% less than vanilla, but deposits appear without a bias.

I don't understand the interest in "spam" building weak, non-iron units as compensation, because they are frankly worthless and are no compensation to take the fiercely buffed early game cities, especially one that builds walls. Building archers or spearmen or other "cannon fodder" is just a waste of valuable build queues in early cities and is another penalty/nerf. And all together it just leads to more tedious stalemates.

I think the golden mean here is wider, fairer, more even distribution of iron on the map, and let the player do with it what he or she may. You don't have to search around too may corners and entrain too many units in the calculus, in the end.

It seems to me there are too many small tweaks going on that in the end do not lead to better balance re"this whole question.

 

[V. Soma]

where can I find the dev-package version?
EDIT: ah, I see now how it is...

 

[Ahriman]

Basically the point is if we reduce the quantity of coal available, the value of individual coal resources could increase, and empire production would remain about the same. This does seem a reasonable point.

Right, this is what I'm going for.

uclear and solar plants did get a tremendous buff, to try and give the player some reward before the game ends for investing in them (a +25% boost from a 600 cost building this late in the game was truly horrible). As such, it seems reasonable to balance this production increase a bit by keeping factory production the same while reducing overall coal availability 25%

I don't think this is the right solution. You don't fix the value of resources at turn 250 by tweaking what happens on turn 450.
Nuclear plants and solar plants are incredibly late; they shouldn't be used when considering how to balance something that happens 2 eras earlier. Similarly, if a market was underpowered, you wouldn't fix that by buffing a stock exchange.

so long as they are distributed a la iron, and not as they are in vanilla

I don't really mind having ever civ roughly guaranteed a single 2x coal deposit, but the rest should be scattered about fairly randomly.

But iron isn't being reduced so much as redistributed more equitably

I think iron is being reduced relative to vanilla, and that is part of the goal.
I definitely hope iron is reduced; removing siege requirement for iron means that otherwise it will be far too common.

I don't see why the factory would then be buffed, unless everyone agrees with you that factories are underpowered. I happen to prefer them over windmills.

The factory requires a strategic resource. The windmill doesn't.
If factories are only barely more powerful than windmills, then coal is unimportant (you *should* be weaker in a particular period if you can't get/borrow/steal the appropriate resource), and the industrial revolution feels like a non-event.
Think of it this way: if you don't have iron, that should really hurt, and you should try to trade for some. If you don't have coal, that should hurt too.
The difference between the factory and the windmill should be like the difference between modern armor and the mechinf, or swordsmen and spearmen.

It's not at all "random" but obviously stacked against the human player

I don't think this is the case. I think this is largely a false perception caused by the fact that it spawns in tundra and desert, where players don't try to settle.
I think the problem is that being really random isn't necessarily fun.
I don't think there is any conspiracy against you though.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree entirely on having wider, fairer distribution of resources across the map, that's what I'm going for. How exactly to get there is the matter of discussion.

after the patch horses are too nerfed to really count
...
keep early siege units iron-dependent
...
I don't understand the interest in "spam" building weak, non-iron units as compensation, because they are frankly worthless and are no compensation to take the fiercely buffed early game cities, especially one that builds walls

Is this with or without the Combat mod? Your points are all very true in vanilla, but in the mod these tie together to have somewhat different effects:

• Cats deal much higher damage vs cities in the mod. Their default promotion is +100% vs cities, and the Siege promotion is a further +50%.
• Base city heal rate is reduced to 1hp/turn base in the mod, down from 2.
• If a cat requires no resources it becomes a non-weak, non-iron unit that is worthwhile and designed to take early game cities, especially those with walls.
• Removing the iron requirement from cats makes cats+horses more feasible, skipping iron, thereby improving the value of a horse track.
• I also un-nerfed horses somewhat in the mod (10 vanilla -> 11 mod). If they're still too weak I could remove or reduce the vs-city penalty (after all, I already buffed the Siege promotion which only non-mounted units can get).
• Archers and spears are both buffed in the mod. Archers deal more damage and cost less, and spears are now more cost-effective than warriors.

If you feel cats come too late I can reduce the cost of the Mathematics tech. Likewise, if archers and spears are still too weak I can buff them further. These are all specific points of unit balance that can be addressed in addition to resource balance.

 

[Palance]

where can I find the dev-package version?
EDIT: ah, I see now how it is...

Sorry, but where is the dev version download?

 

[Thalassicus]

I was missing the latest uploads, oops! They're now correctly up on the first post.

 

[Palance]

I was missing the latest uploads, oops! They're now correctly up on the first post.

Thanks Thal

 

[Tomice]

Interesting discussion! I agree aluminium is not absolutely necessesary, and it definitively should not replace oil as main strategic ressource. There'd also be the possibility of using alu as "secondary" strategic ressource, maybe only used for plains? In the early game, we also have 2 SRs being used parallely for different unit types. Alu could only be used for plains, for example. If oil is rare, you can still rely on massive air power.


Another idea about oil: Could we make a very big difference between small and big nodes (like 1:5), then distribute small deposits everywhere, while big deposits are exclusively in bad terrain (desert, snow, ocean,...)? The big deposits would help civs stuck in bad terrain and would also be very valuable to fight over. Each civ would have a few units of oil from small nodes, though.

 

[Sneaks]

My main problem with strategic resources (read: iron; after the patch horses are too nerfed to really count) and why I like your mod is that iron can be a game breaker, and at high-level play in vanilla it is being ridiculously manipulated in its placement--always revealed in inaccessible places or the other end of the map. It's not at all "random" but obviously stacked against the human player and it feels like a cheap penalty/exploit.

Frankly, I'd be happy with the vanilla distribution, IF it was random for all, but it's not.

I like your implementation of wider, smaller, more scattered distribution, but I do not think that 1-iron deposits make sense, given early and very valuable worker build-costs to bring them online. In the end, you are adding a build-time penalty of 8-9 turns to the early iron-dependent units. That's a huge nerf.

I would not be wed to the 50/20 reductions that are the basis of this mod. As I just said, the build cost for a small deposit is in my eyes already a very big nerf. But you are reducing the total amount of the resource on the map, forgetting about the build time/delay, which is a big penalty with more, smaller mines to build with scarce early game workers.

My ideal solution: keep early siege units iron-dependent, no iron resources with only 1 deposit, only one with 4 on the entire map (wildcard!), thus all with 2 or 3. Percentage of iron 10-15% less than vanilla, but deposits appear without a bias.

I don't understand the interest in "spam" building weak, non-iron units as compensation, because they are frankly worthless and are no compensation to take the fiercely buffed early game cities, especially one that builds walls. Building archers or spearmen or other "cannon fodder" is just a waste of valuable build queues in early cities and is another penalty/nerf. And all together it just leads to more tedious stalemates.

I think the golden mean here is wider, fairer, more even distribution of iron on the map, and let the player do with it what he or she may. You don't have to search around too may corners and entrain too many units in the calculus, in the end.

It seems to me there are too many small tweaks going on that in the end do not lead to better balance re"this whole question.

I pretty much agree with the majority of this. Simply removing the iron requirement from Siege pretty much eliminates all iron related issues in tote. Once you alter iron resources, then tweak several buildings based on the new nature of deposits, I believe you start heading down a path of relatively unnecessary changes.

Frankly, I think a player with iron should have an advantage over a player without. If there are some players that end up with zero iron, so be it, with this caveat: A player should not be heavily penalized for not having iron, but instead buffed for having it. Therein lies the current "iron issue". Early warfare basically requires iron thanks to it being a key component in ALL early siege, and standard military line units. Iron is a resource that historically everybody had, because it is everywhere. Since spamming iron everywhere is not really desirable, the other solution is to just remove the requirement.

 

[basta]

I agree entirely on having wider, fairer distribution of resources across the map, that's what I'm going for. How exactly to get there is the matter of discussion.

Is this with or without the Combat mod? Your points are all very true in vanilla, but in the mod these tie together to have somewhat different effects:

• Cats deal much higher damage vs cities than vanilla. Their default promotion is +100% vs cities, and the Siege promotion is a further +50%.
• Base city heal rate is reduced to 1hp/turn base in the mod, down from 2.
• If a cat requires no resources it becomes a non-weak, non-iron unit that is worthwhile and designed to take early game cities, especially those with walls.
• Removing the iron requirement from cats makes cats+horses more feasible, skipping iron, thereby improving the value of a horse track.
• I also un-nerfed horses somewhat in the mod (10 vanilla -> 11 mod). If they're still too weak I could remove or reduce the vs-city penalty (after all, I already buffed the Siege promotion which only non-mounted units can get).
• Archers and spears are both buffed in the mod. Archers deal more damage and cost less, and spears are now more cost-effective than warriors.

If you feel cats come too late I can reduce the cost of the Mathematics tech. Likewise, if archers and spears are still too weak I can buff them further.

I've only played 1/2 of an immortal game (well, enough to wage 2 extensive early wars on my continent) with your full dev. modpack from the 4th January. IIRC it's *.196.

True, you're right that most of my observations are based on post-patch vanilla; I've played that far more and doubtless it's colored my sense of the game I played.

But what I take away from it was above all the delight that iron was seeded without apparent bias, but that the mine build delay cum nerf in re: 1 resource deposits was too much a penalty/empty gift box.

I've become so wary of horses post-patch that they've become purely defensive, mop-up units and I don't even ponder using them for offense any more. That is wildly over-nerfed IMHO, so I'll have to try them again in a new game.

In their "tech era"--if one can call it that--cats are already pretty expensive to build and you're not going to be able to produce a lot of them. 3, 4 tops, and it's also the time when you're going to be falling inevitably into your first "serious" war, where cities will hopefully fall. They're slow-moving & cumbersome, their range is mediocre and the 1-turn set-up makes them even more vulnerable. They are indeed effective in combo with units like Babylon's buffed archers but vanilla archers don't help that much.

Most cities will be flanked by neighbors that will bombard a decent arc of siege units, and there's precious little space on most maps to actually set up siege units, bring in cats close enough so that they will actually be able to bombard before they need to heal, and still have tiles free for the swords/longswords that will do the actual work and that won't be bombarded to a point of over-weakness before they're even in position to attack.

In such a situation, archers, spears, etc*, are indeed cannon fodder and you're just diverting build-time resources by induced iron-scarcity into something, however poor offensively, that will hopefully draw and absorb city/ranged bombardment, leaving your iron units free to attack. Hopefully.

Well, in practice it's messy and often you'll get nowhere--as it should be. Longswords are the key unit and cut through all the nerfing and heal-points, etc. and get the job done. Cats and trebs are necessary evils--such clumsy pains in the butts. I don't see the point in nerfing Math in any way because of cats, because they simply will not sway any offensive campaign (and that tech era is already such an important one to decide build order for, math doesn't need more penalties--it'll always be a late-comer to the ball, buff or no.) You're gonna build longswords in 3 to 1 ratios to cats/trebs at least, and hope that each unit hangs around long enough to do their part to take down a city or 2.

*Archers and spears are tide-over units and fall into a kind of between-era limbo of offensive mediocrity. Early game, the two crucial periods are ancient/exploration, dominated by warriors and scouts, and First Real War, which happens when you get iron. In the mean time, you're better off building monuments and libraries than archers and spears, waiting for iron to come online.