Getting Started

Now that the weekend has come and I’ve familiarized myself with how the patch 1.0.1.135 changes affect the game, I’m working on updating the mods to reflect these changes. I should have everything ready by sometime Saturday.

I've noticed some interesting undocumented changes. For example, they altered a few of the prerequisites of Tradition policies, similar to things done in the Policies mod but forgotten in the patch notes.
 
I’m working on updating the mods to reflect these changes. I should have everything ready by sometime Saturday.
Can't wait for the new updated mods :D
 
WOHOO!!!! :woohoo::band::beer::bounce::dance:

He's back!


The Lord of Balance - Return of the King!
:king::king::king::king::king::king::king: :king::king::king::king::king::king::king::king:




:worship::bowdown::worship::bowdown: :worship: :bowdown::worship::bowdown::worship:



@ Slowpoke & other awesome modders:

Don't get me wrong, I think you're doing great work for the community. But I followed the creation process of Thal's mods from the beginning, discussed loads of stuff and agree with 99% of his changes. He even took my idea of partisans into the mod, so it really feels like "my" mod.

To use your Mega Mod or Valkrionn's Economy mod, I'd have to get used to different approaches, which sometimes feel "wrong" initially.
 
Oh I can see that :) I didn't know how long thal was going to be gone is all. Being stuck playing vanilla for 3 weeks or something would be pretty bad ;)
 
And I appreciate it Slowpoke, because I won't be around forever and eventually other mods will take the place of these ones. It's important to have an active community, not just one person, especially since these mods are a collaborative effort anyway. :)

I think I've eliminated any obvious bugs in v1.04.5 dev. I included Attila's newly updated mod, and I updated Copasetic's UI mod. I left out several others from the dev pack:
  • Harder free tech
  • Hover info
  • InfoAddict
  • Liberation boost
  • RED modpack
  • Tech Diffusion

Once I'm certain the balance mods are all working, I'll go looking for updates for these from their respective creators. I'd really appreciate testing assistance to identify bugs I've overlooked in this development testing version. I'm aiming for it to be the next "release" version, put out sometime this weekend.
 
I understand what you mean, Thal, and I understand that there's some kind of pressure that comes with a popular mod (updating, improving, bugfixes, answering to more or less helpful comments).

I was just very happy that I don't need to play vanilla or get used to another modpack. When I read the contents of e.g. mega mod, I find many interesting concepts that I'd surely like (caravans!) but also some that I'd miss (chariots moving after attack) and some that I don't understand without explanation (no puppet states?). I'd have to read through the whole thread to decide whether I agree to Slowpoke's changes, or if there's another modpack that suits me better.
Sure, finding a new modpack could be fun one day when I start to get bored by Civ5, but as of now the game just started to be fun due to what you changed in the last weeks.

I honestly think everyone who manages to create a huge conversion mod deserves respect. It's really just about my "lazyness" to adapt to something new every few weeks.
 
Btw, if you want to peruse my mod and there's stuff you like as mod components so you can use them as stand alones, let me know. Also, caravans is in fact a mod component. I think it's just called "caravans" on mod browser :) Unfortunately, I'm not sure how it'd work in balance -combined. If forges work as they do in vanilla, you will get more production out of them than you pay. You could just avoid the forge/caravan exploit I suppose.
 
I did a quick check of 1.04.5 dev and I decided to especially keep an eye on the balance of these topics while playtesting it during the weekend:

City Development:

- Are aqueducts now too much? (Note that the patch doesn't speed up city growth while they are still small - under 10 pop I think).
- Circus maximus vs. Baths of Trajan - which is the better national wonder?

Combat

- I'm unsure about upgrade paths now. The new patch lets you only upgrade lancers to gunships, doesn't it? Didn't you have other upgrade paths?
- Are city defenses too strong now (especially health regeneration)? How capable is the AI of taking cities?

Diplomacy

- With Thal's increased bribing costs and maritime nerf, are CS allies now too expensive?
- Does Thal's AI change to make them value gold more interfere with the diplo improvements from the patch?

Policies

- How does the new tradition tree compare to Thal's changes in other trees?
 
I'm not sure how often the game will start in offline mode, maybe there's a limit?

There's no limitation to offline mode for Steam, afaik.

Just happened: Civ5 won't start offline any more, so I have to patch no matter what. Luckily I'm more or less ready, though I wanted to quickly finish my pre-patch game :( Stupid steam, delaying updates should be possible!
 
Thanks for getting this up so quickly, Thal!:king:

I did a quick check of 1.04.5 dev and I decided to especially keep an eye on the balance of these topics while playtesting it during the weekend:

City Development:

- Are aqueducts now too much? (Note that the patch doesn't speed up city growth while they are still small - under 10 pop I think).
- Circus maximus vs. Baths of Trajan - which is the better national wonder?

Maybe Aqueducts should become a :c5food:yield increase instead?
Baths' effect changed? Maybe to a :c5culture:% increase with only 2-3:). That would be a fun and useful NW I think. And/or (and I don't know if this is at all possible) make the Baths' Happy bonus only apply during peacetime.

Combat

- I'm unsure about upgrade paths now. The new patch lets you only upgrade lancers to gunships, doesn't it? Didn't you have other upgrade paths?
- Are city defenses too strong now (especially health regeneration)? How capable is the AI of taking cities?

AFAIK, the upgrade paths and city defense changes were removed in the new dev version.

Diplomacy

- With Thal's increased bribing costs and maritime nerf, are CS allies now too expensive?
- Does Thal's AI change to make them value gold more interfere with the diplo improvements from the patch?

I think these should be fine (though I admit I haven't tested post patch vanilla to any great extent).

If possible, the "You're following the same path to victory as me" diplo message should be altered or removed, as it breaks immersion, imo.

Policies

- How does the new tradition tree compare to Thal's changes in other trees?

The new Tradition tree is really quite strong, though the new Monarchy effect is still pretty weak. Additionally, the left branch of the Liberty tree might need a buff now.

Unrelated, but it occurred to me that Autocracy could be more viable if it only conflicted with Freedom and not Liberty - might require a name change for Liberty tree though.

Other stuff:
[B-TI] - Nerf (and rename) the new OP mythological "Natural" Wonders?
[U-L] - Fix Siam's Maritime bonuses to actual 50%? This would require non-integer food numbers, which may not be possible.
 
I haven't started playing with the new mods yet, but have some questions:

The vanilla city defenses combined with the mounted nerfs seem stronger than the old mod - so is there an adjustment here?

Was an adjustment made for the vanilla improvement to food production, or was it done in the same manner as the Balance mod... just weaker?

Adjusting Siam as Seek mentioned would be good, as would the chariot adjustment as per Tomice. I think the goal with the chariot is to not make it too tempting. FWIW the price increase won't curtail my using it!
 
I decided to leave aqueducts in for the following reasons. Altering city growth on the high end of the scale is something that has its strongest effect in the mid to late game, when you can get cities of very high populations (20+). In particular, it needs things like the civil service and fertilizer buffs to farm output. The combined effect of aqueducts/hospitals/medical is the same as before (75% storage). As such, aqueducts primarily affect early game while the patch change mostly effects mid/late game.

Circus vs Baths have the same gameplay effect but simply with a different prereq. Spamming coliseums everywhere is already an advantageous strategy, so I feel buffing them even further with a national wonder reward might be less balanced than placing the wonder at the end of a different building chain. The name and historical reference follow from the requirements, since the Circus logically fits coliseums while the Baths better fit in a game with Aqueducts.

The patch notes originally stated all units would be part of upgrade chains now. I haven't looked into the details of that, but if this is not the case I'll re-instate some of the upgrades. They're merely commented out in the files, not deleted.

I removed the strength buffs to city defenses, though getting a true sense of how the AI handles things takes many games of experience and can't effectively be "theorycrafted" so to speak.

Bribing CSs was reduced 20% but completing quests yields greatly enhanced influence, sometimes double. These two things are designed to work together to make quests worthwhile to complete... in my last month or two of games I've started ignoring quests more and more (just because they don't feel worth it), which isn't very fun. Many of the quests are rather challenging (such as killing some citystate or winning in a war with a major civ who attacked the CS) so I want the rewards to feel like they match the risks.

I'm very pleased with the direction Firaxis took revamping the Tradition tree. They fixed some of the issues with prereqs I'd noticed as well, and I like their creative approach to the new Monarchy effect (gold per population in capital). It might be a little weak right now but I like the concept. They also changed the land-purchase policy to culture-aquisition, something else I identified might be a good idea. I feel very happy with their changes and feel the Tradition tree is in good shape now. I also like how they buffed Piety, another tree I felt was week. This all said, I still think a few policies here and there are somewhat underwhelming, and that having a land-purchase policy in Liberty will match the early-expansionist playstyle better than 1:c5culture: per city.

On the topic of natural wonders... the fountain of youth in particular raised my eyebrows! 10 happiness AND hands out free medic promotions? That's a rather large bonus when it's mostly up to RNG luck if the wonder will be within a reasonable aquisition range. One of their stated goals was to reduce the deviation of awesome vs pathetic start locations... and a few national wonders seem to be a little too powerful to fulfill this goal.
 
I removed the strength buffs to city defenses, though getting a true sense of how the AI handles things takes many games of experience and can't effectively be "theorycrafted" so to speak.

On the topic of natural wonders... the fountain of youth in particular raised my eyebrows! 10 happiness AND hands out free medic promotions? That's a rather large bonus when it's mostly up to RNG luck if the wonder will be within a reasonable aquisition range. One of their stated goals was to reduce the deviation of awesome vs pathetic start locations... and a few national wonders seem to be a little too powerful to fulfill this goal.

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation, which makes sense to me. Your point about "theorycraft" is exactly why I asked.

The FOY and El Dorado both seem OP early on in the game. Here's a paranoid thought: what if they always spawn outside the human player's territory in SP?
 
Basically, I just want to play with city defenses the way they are in vanilla post-patch for a few games before making any judgments about fine-tuning them. They were buffed, which many people felt was needed, so for now it seems best to leave them as-is until more experimentation can reveal possible strengths or weaknesses in game balance.
 
Basically, I just want to play with city defenses the way they are in vanilla post-patch for a few games before making any judgments about fine-tuning them. They were buffed, which many people felt was needed, so for now it seems best to leave them as-is until more experimentation can reveal possible strengths or weaknesses in game balance.

Glad to hear it - this is exactly what I was thinking.
 
Two more items to consider:

1. Taking out one of the Wat GS slots.

2. Moving iron discovery back to IW, given the horseman nerfs. Iron is now valuable enough that researching it longer may be a good idea.

Side question: does the Capital RR boost mod still work?
 
I'm getting a TXT_KEY error with the aqueducts in game. Thanks again for the fast update to your MOD!!! If there is anything else I can do to help just let them know.
View attachment Saved Game File.zip

Edited - BTW I'm using the new v1.04.5 and have no other MOD's running except those that are DL'ed with Balanced-Combined MOD!!
 
The vanilla game seems to have a bug regarding CS acknowledging roads being built. I don't know whether that's something that can be addressed within the Diplomacy mod.
 
Using 1.04.5 dev I have bugs with the city dev part. No smokehouses but granaries, buggy civpedia entry for aqueducts (showing strings).

Might be that I just need to reinstall the game, I had many various mods and versions installed over the last few weeks.
 
Great to see you back thal. Playing post patch after having played with your mods here are my observations:
Firstly FoY isn't THAT OP. 10 happiness is big yes but that's just like settling a spot with 2 luxuries, however, combined with the healing thing it is a bit much, yes. El dorado probably needs to be balanced more.

0 Scientist slots in libraries is just plain ridiculous, completely removing the specialist component from the first half of the game isn't something I would advocate at all. If not for pure balance then at least for fun's sake at least let there be 1 slot!

I really miss the added production to mines and lumbermills. Can't wait till that get's brought back! I also miss the smokehouse bigtime! Those food resources are rancid once again!

You need to take a long and hard look at the new city growth formula and its effect on the game, this looks like the most likely thing to throw things out of whack.

Good luck and happy modding!
 
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