Getting Started

[Polycrates]

Given gold's disproportionate effect on the game, I hope that drastically reducing RA's will make for a better game, especially on Immortal +.

Agreed. In my last game with the slower research mod (on Emperor), I still managed to get mech inf by 1600AD and get 1.5-2 ages ahead of my nearest competitors - primarily by spamming great scientists and research agreements. With the slower pace of regular tech, the effect of these two was noticeably higher, and they were already both very strong. Keen to try Seek's mod, and I do think RAs need to be more expensive, especially later in the game where that sort of money is far easier to come by.

I'd also like to see a better result for the less-advanced party in an asymmetrical RA - the lower-tech guy is spending more gold per beaker, which seems the opposite of what it should be. I'd be tempted to try giving the lower-tech partner an extra free tech out of it for each era they are behind the more advanced guy. This would really help with catch-up, help you help your slower allies more, and particularly decrease the benefit of RA spamming your way to a two-era lead ahead of everyone.
I'd still have tech diffusion as well (I also didn't seem to get that mod working)

 

[Seek]

Thal, I noticed you put DiploWillard in with the latest bunch. Omni has recently released CivWillard, which includes DiploWillard and CityWillard, and it's more stable to boot. Recommend it.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Polycrates
Yeah, that's why I quoted Marekb's suggestion. To summarize:

• Add X% of combined /turn from both civs to a pot.
• X% drops with each agreement signed (like the scaling of golden ages).
• When agreement expires, split the pot 50/50.
• Makes tech diffusion unnecessary.
• Eliminates capability to exploit RAs through micro.
• Equally affects isolated (mostly late-game RAs) or crowded (early-game RAs) start locations.

@Seek
Ah it includes both now? I used to have both but never ended up needing the city one, so I uninstalled that one a while back. I find the standard UI sufficient for managing cities.

 

[Seek]

@Seek
Ah it includes both now? I used to have both but never ended up needing the city one, so I uninstalled that one a while back. I find the standard UI sufficient for managing cities.

I never found the City- one to be that useful either, but now you can adjust city-focus from there, which is pretty neat. However CivWillard (yes, there are three now!) is incredible for keeping track of and checking for new trades. Much more user-friendly than the standard screen.

 

[Kirschi]

Just looked into this, there appears to be a bug - I'll upload a corrected version ASAP. Oops!

EDIT: Corrected version attached below.

Thank you very much
I like that idea. I always got my technologies much too fast and the AI is always some eras behind after some time.

@Kirschi
Wow I didn't realize the influence change would drop it to 0 eventually! Ooops well that's what testing versions are for...

It gets even worse. At Industrial stage the 1k gift provided minus 50 ^^

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean about strategic resources in the ocean, I haven't seen that.

Well... Apperently you get a Combat Penalty when your unit is standing on a strategic resource. (At least with ships, I didn't notice that before with land units). So when I attacked several cities and ships with my ships, I always got that "strategic resource penalty" -50%. Tried several tiles around cities and elsewhere. Later when I got the technologies to see all the resources up to Uranium there where no such resource-tiles where I have been fighting. The strange thing is, that "effect" vanished after some time.
Maybe it's just a tiny random game bug.
(Or it is a feature i wasn't aware of ^^)

 

[Seek]

Thank you very much
I like that idea. I always got my technologies much too fast and the AI is always some eras behind after some time.

Yeah, sorry about that!

Well... Apperently you get a Combat Penalty when your unit is standing on a strategic resource. (At least with ships, I didn't notice that before with land units). So when I attacked several cities and ships with my ships, I always got that "strategic resource penalty" -50%. Tried several tiles around cities and elsewhere. Later when I got the technologies to see all the resources up to Uranium there where no such resource-tiles where I have been fighting. The strange thing is, that "effect" vanished after some time.
Maybe it's just a tiny random game bug.
(Or it is a feature i wasn't aware of ^^)

The resource penalty applies when you don't have any of the necessary strategic resource the unit requires. Were you using an Ironclad without the required resource? Having a unit on a resource tile does not have any affect on it's strength.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Kirschi
Perhaps you upgraded Caravels to Frigates? Caravels require no resource, while Frigates require Iron. If you later got more iron (or upgraded iron-using units to gunpowder) the penalty would disappear.

The influence bug should be fixed in the current dev version. I'm using the same numbers for influence now as Slowpoke's mega mod (the one who did the research).

 

[Soduka]

Is it just me or in the latest dev build from a few moments ago have a bugged UI where the actions menu for units doesn't appear? Unless it's turned off by default? I can't tell workers to build or settlers to build without knowing the exact hotkey.

 

[Thalassicus]

Seek and I added some files that alter the action bar for great scientists, so it is possible we introduced an issue affecting other units. Does it occur with only the mods in the dev package active, and have you tried clearing your CiV cache?

Actions bars are working properly for me, so if there's a bug, it's only appearing under certain conditions.

Soduka's talking about this:

 

[Mulle]

I have no unit UI either . Have tried clearing the cache (deleting the My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/cache folder), verifying the integrity of game cache via steam and restarting. Hasn't helped. This is the first time I'm installing the mod, so there shouldn't be any conflicts.

And yes, I'm only running the mods from the Zip-file

EDIT: I've tried only enabling five different mods at a time all the way through the mod list and it seemed to work fine. But when I enable all of them I have no UI. Seems like a conflict. Will try to disable one at a time to try and isolate one of the conflicting mods.

EDIT EDIT: Yeah, disabling Alpaca's GS Mod seems to fix it. However, I can play with the GS mod and (for example) all the "Balance" mods and the unit UI will show. Will try to isolate the second conflicting mod.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: The second conflicting mod is Liberation Boost. I can play with all mods except Alpalca's GS mod or all the mods except Liberation Boost. Running both of them at the same time disables the unit UI.

 

[Seek]

From my testing the conflict is between my GS mod and Liberation Boost. Anyone verify this?

EDIT: Confirmed by Mulle. There's a lot of extraneous stuff in the UnitPanel.lua left from PWM - hopefully I'll be able to determine what's interfering and be able to remove it without breaking the mod.
_____________

Also, I've uploaded an updated version in the Free-Research Balance Mod's thread that seems to be working better and has the correct name.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=407257

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you for the fantastic bug-finding Mulle! That's a ton of help.

It makes sense they'd conflict. I doubt it's something leftover Seek, they probably simply edit one of the same files.

I've been playing without the liberation boost lately, since even with it active I never really felt an incentive to liberate AIs (no vassel states in Civ V). I'm not sure if it's still being maintained (if someone could find out?) but until it's got something like... AI gives you all their resources for free... I don't think it'll be useful. I suspect that'll require c++ access to do.


======

Also, I have a request!

This discussion is fantastic, though might be getting overwhelming for people gone a day and coming back to 5 new pages of new material on all sorts of topics!

Let's try and filter things again into the applicable threads, unless it's just a really over-arching subject. There seem to be four main conversations:

• Combat thread - Strategic vs non-strategic unit balance
• Leaders thread - The new leader uniques (and existing ones)
• Research thread - Seek's Great Scientist mod
• This combined thread (can stay here) - Conqueror vs builder balance. Economy comparisons between the two, research, puppeting, tile yields, buildings, population, effect of new upgrade/buy costs etc. Anything else that really overlaps and can't be easily categorized.

If anyone has thoughts about something you've read earlier in this thread, just drop by the new thread (if appropriate), quote what you're responding to and carry on the conversation.


I've continued discussion about strategic resources, siege units, and the spearman/hoplite balancing in the Combat thread here.

 

[V. Soma]

Puppeting is more of a city-thing, I suggest discussing it there...

 

[Thalassicus]

That's true, I put it there at first. If we think about it though the conversation is really about the economy of conquerors vs builders.

The builder vs conqueror subject covering a range of topics that would fit in at least three threads: puppeting (CD), upgrades (Combat), terrain yields (TI), but since it's basically one broad subject it makes sense to keep it in one place.

 

[V. Soma]

OK, as of gold income and puppets making less money:
can you give puppets a dummy (invisible, "magically" inserted) building that consumes gold?

 

[Thalassicus]

Hmmm... my first thought is that would be possible. New building in an xml file... create a lua script that intercepts the puppet / unpuppet actions, and adds or removes the building. It's a good idea!

Some things can't be negative, so it'd require testing. For example, I know people have tried making buildings that give negative - and it didn't work. Easy way to find out though, can set the palace to give -100% and see what happens.


I had an idea pop into my head, and could use help figuring out pros and cons.

• Summary
  • Create economic uses for Horses & Iron.
  • Buildings consume the resource (like Factories).
  • Buildings using them rebalanced.
  • Number of deposits increased.
• Pros
  • Opens up new possibilities for economic vs military choices.
  • Increase in quantity of horse/iron deposits reduces chance of unlucky shut-out games with 0 of a resource.
  • Provides a use for excess resources.
  • (Anything else you can think of?)
• Cons
  • Militaristic track catches up in the late game (once the resources obsolete for military).
  • (What other drawbacks?)

Some obvious choices for buildings could be the stable, circus and forge. There's other possibilities too... workshop could require Iron, especially since I buffed it (something that's been bothering Ahriman ). Some high-end military buildings could also have high Iron requirements, like the Arsenal, and buff it too.

 

[V. Soma]

Circus Maximus and horses? maybe 3 horses...
EDIT: not in city radius, but from the national pool

and obviously:
Stable - that could be buffed to be useful...


Peaceful and Economic use of horses.

- they could improve gold - as a means to carry goods -
maybe increase of trade routes with them? if a city has them in radius?

- they could improve farms if the city has them in radius (working power), maybe with a tech reqirement
EDIT: this could be a temporary buff to farms that are withdrawn or replaced with something in the Industrial Era,
or maybe in modern era when horse is replaced with tractors...


Some wild ideas:

What if a city that uses horse for peaceful use, couldn't train horse for war?

I mean a Building like "Farmhouse" (or other name) could mean
that you use horse for improving farms,
but if the city has that you cannot train mobile (horse) units...
...or - if that is not possible or wished - you cannot have XP giving Stable in that city

Hmmm... my first thought is that would be possible. New building in an xml file... create a lua script that intercepts the puppet / unpuppet actions, and adds or removes the building. It's a good idea!

On the other thread I see Ahriman came up with the same idea

I think this consuming building could have a name
that expresses the presence of a governing body that resides in the puppeted city.
I don't know, but sg. like "Central Governor's House", or "Central Authorities"

 

[Thalassicus]

Try and edit instead of reposting, when possible... less space.

There's many buildings which could possibly be included, we can work out details later... question is, do people like the general idea? What might be drawbacks?

 

[Ahriman]

Since Firaxis added rioting or something at -20, I feel it's unnecessary now

Emigration is sufficiently different that I don't think it belongs in a core balance set of mods, though it would be cool if that were still a separate, compatible mod that some people could also activate.
Of course, I'm biased, since its not a mechanism I enjoy, I think population should only come from food, not happiness.

I think it might be better to start off RAs at 200 (in classical... you can leave off describing the ancient era cost for obvious reasons ) and double it per era

I'd support this.
Of course, we'd have to do an AI check, to make sure that the AI doesn't still blow through all its gold on RAs. Not sure if the diplomacy AI has a good cost: benefit calculator.
But maybe it wouldn't matter, since once RAs get up to 800+ gold the AIs might not have enough gold stored to use them. Though maybe that's also not a problem.

Yeah, that's why I quoted Marekb's suggestion. To summarize:
Add X% of combined /turn from both civs to a pot.
X% drops with each agreement signed (like the scaling of golden ages).
When agreement expires, split the pot 50/50.
Makes tech diffusion unnecessary.
Eliminates capability to exploit RAs through micro.
Equally affects isolated (mostly late-game RAs) or crowded (early-game RAs) start locations.

Sounds a bit too confusing. The free tech is much easier for the player to figure out and deal with, and the cost is up-front rather than ex-post, so I'd tend to go the cost-adjustment route instead.
However, can you make the cost differ for the different players depending on the era of each player? So if I am advanced and you are backward, I pay a lot and you only pay a little when we enter an RA?

Cons
Militaristic track catches up in the late game (once the resources obsolete for military).
(What other drawbacks?)

Potentially much harder to balance; how do you balance allowing an elite, superior unit vs allowing a superior building?
If there are enough strategic resources on the map to allow a player to get some of each, it might be stronger for them to just build their entire army out of elite units instead.

Potentially: AI constructs the buildings in sup-optimal cities, weakening it relative to the human.
AI can't intelligently sell the building to free up resource access.
AI could be tricked into constructing the buildings with a resource gifted for X turns, then have its military go into resourceless shock (negative iron, -50% penalty) when the trade period expires.
AI unable to intelligently prioritize between units and buildings; spams lots of buildings and locks itself out of units, or vice versa.

I think it might be better to just have the resources for units in most cases (exceptions: uranium offer military vs space-race vs economy advantages in the very late-game, where these downsides don't matter much, and coal for factories), and then if you have more resources than you want, you can trade the rest away for gold, and then use that extra gold to buy other stuff you want to boost your economy.

 

[Txurce]

I had an idea pop into my head, and could use help figuring out pros and cons.

• Summary
  • Create economic uses for Horses & Iron.
  • Buildings consume the resource (like Factories).
  • Buildings using them rebalanced.
  • Number of deposits increased.
• Pros
  • Opens up new possibilities for economic vs military choices.
  • Increase in quantity of horse/iron deposits reduces chance of unlucky shut-out games with 0 of a resource.
  • Provides a use for excess resources.
  • (Anything else you can think of?)
• Cons
  • Militaristic track catches up in the late game (once the resources obsolete for military).
  • (What other drawbacks?)

• 
  
  This proposal adds more resources - something we agreed earlier would take away choice, making the resource themselves almost irrelevant - and tries to balance it by adding the building vs units choice. I can't imagine how this will ever balance, since it's clearly a matter of personal preference. Given that we all agree the game is tilted toward warmongering, the main effect will be allowing fully stocked elite armies for anyone who wants them. It would take an awful lot of buffed buildings to balance an unstoppable army... and I don't even know how much fun it would be to be able to build all the buildings of this sort that I want. The problem may be that this takes away choice for both warmonger and builder - the choice seems to be whether to be a warmonger or a builder. That's not much of a choice for most people, and once it's made, there's even less choices to be made.