Getting Started

[V. Soma]

Thanks you for the Options described, Thal!

I like C and/or D.

 

[Polycrates]

Cool cool!

I'll disagree with Tomice about air units needing a buff...I've found them to be very powerful indeed. With 1upt they're the one unit type that can really concentrate force at a given point, their speed and range means they can respond wherever they're needed to take advantage of opportunities or just to avoid being caught with your pants down, they're good against land and sea units and cities, and they can cause significant damage with minimal fear of loss or retaliation. They also gain xp like crazy and have excellent promotions (except for stealth bombers, which are most likely bugged). In my last game I took a whole continent with just air units and a single mech inf.

 

[Ahriman]

Since there's so many ideas floating around, I think it might help to discuss options in terms of advantages and disadvantages.

This is a good idea.
I think my preferences are summarized by
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10096441&postcount=826

I think its possible to avoid the "all-or-nothing" approach if oil is sufficiently common but scattered and low-yield (2 per field).
The whole point of Civ5 strategic resources is supposed to be to get away from "all-or-nothing", which is what we had in Civ4 where a single oil well could support unlimited tanks.

I think the basic argument is: strategic resources should matter, but there isn't enough room to make more than 2 late-game resources be important. If you have aluminium but just make it for high-end aircraft (stealth bomber, jet fighter) then thats a really boring and uninteresting resource.

I think there is possible already excess late-game units - how often to you use or build AA guns and their upgrade, and AT guns and their upgrade? So I don't think adding more units is the right fix.

* * *

Now that I think about it, that actually makes a lot of sense... CKN have -2 strength and Logistics, so Longbows could start with -2 strength and +1 range.

Well honestly I think 14 strength is too high for crossbows; ranged attacks need to be well below the strength of the best units of the era.
I'm not sure crossbows should 1-shot pikemen. Compare spearmen:archers vs pikemen:crossbows.
But the problem is most severe on the longbowman, so fixing this at least would be a good compromise. I also don't see why longbows should give England 3 move infantry for the rest of the game.

A ranged defense penalty seems reasonable for Hoplites, or what about a reduced bonus vs horses?

I think a ranged penalty makes more realistic sense [the big difference with hoplites is that they're in tightly-packed slow-moving formation), and it gives them a vulnerability that anyone could potentially exploit, and it means that they'll take more damage from cities and so will still be noticeably worse city attackers than swordsmen will.
If you're making spearmen strength 8 and hoplites strength 10, a 20% ranged attack penalty would make hoplites on par with spearmen vs ranged attacks.
I'd be fine with reducing their bonus vs horses too though, so they retain the same anti-cav abilities as spearmen but are superior in melee combat vs anything else.

It's difficult to balance a unit with +2 strength, 5 moves and faster great general creation

One possibility that is a bit more out-there; to emphasize the fact that these were awesome, but were historically a Praetorian-guard type unit (small group of elites), make them extremely powerful, but have them consume 2 horse resources, so you can only build 1 per horse tile.

Understood on coal, dummy resource seems like the best "fudge" fix.
What makes it particularly frustrating atm is that it blocks upgrade paths. Caravel and Frigate upgrade to ironclad, so I can't upgrade them to destroyer when I've already used all my coal on building factories.

 

[Tomice]

I agree on all changes in the balance-combat readme, were probably most changes are.

While I smell some possible pitfalls, that's an excellent version to test.

I see all horse and iron tiles now provide 2 units of the SR? That's good. Let's see how the single oil tiles will work out.

 

[Thalassicus]

If anyone's curious about resource placement follow these steps:

1. Start a game
2. Enable "No Reward Popups" game option (important! ).
3. Open FireTuner
4. Click "Active Player" tab
5. Click "Modern Era Techs"

This will reveal the map and all resources. You can then end your turn to more easily see where people started, and compare start locations.

Most other stuff being discussed is now in, though I forgot about the range penalty for Hoplites and will add it (they do have reduced bonus vs horses).

@Ahriman
Yep, I added Ironclads in the frigate→ironclad→destroyer upgrade path simultaneously with changing their resource to Iron back in the day, those two things were designed to go together. Reverting it to Coal was just a temporary fix until I got over my laziness and added the dummy unit. It's back to Iron in the current dev build, with an unbuildable dummy unit hidden away in the Great People section of the civilopedia.

The reason range ↔ mobility convert is those are relatively equivalent promotions, like logistics ↔ blitz. The question is, does it overpower Elizabeth compared to former superpower civs like Greece/Babylon, or simply bring her up to par? It's hard for me to really know because I've played so few games as her. Has anyone else played Elizabeth a few times (with the Steam Mill)? If we can determine the longbow promo upgrading does overpower her in relation to other civs, I can change longbows from +1 range promotion to 3 base range.


@Tomice
I figure that while 3s/1s for iron and horses was more demoralizing than all-2s, doing a different split for oil and uranium might work out. They are scarce after all, in real life, and it's crazy hard to balance resources with all the same deposit size due to how the code is structured. Also, Refrigeration and Oil Platforms are now more valuable. They used to be on the low end of the scale for deposit size. Considering how sea oil is often 1) in inconvenient places for cities, 2) requires higher tech, and 3) deposits are scarcer than the land variety, I figure individual deposits should give a little more reward.

Hopefully things have turned out alright. Basically the total quantity of oil on the map is about the same as vanilla, but with some sucked out of the giant deposits and scattered around randomly in tiny ones. Hopefully this should let all civs get at least a few oil (since several more units now use oil than before), though the big deposits are still in deserts/snow/water.

 

[Ahriman]

It's back to Iron in the current dev build

I'd tend to just make them resourceless, so relative to frigate they're just a slower, coast-only high-strength unit. An iron requirement is harmless, but its also meaningless. Why have a resource constraint that isn't going to bind?

Also, oil deposits in oceans provide 5 oil, so Refrigeration and Oil Platforms are now much more valuable. They used to be on the low end of the scale for deposit size. Considering how sea oil is often in inconvenient places for cities, requires higher tech, and deposits are scarcer than the land variety, I figure individual deposits should give a little more reward.

Hmm.... not sure about this. 5, relative to 2 from land deposits?
That's enough for an awful lot of oil units.
We can playtest and see, I think I'd keep them to 3 or 4.
I also see an AI problem with over-reliance on sea-oil; very easy to send in a suicide destroyer and pillage it, and get their entire oil-military to be 50% strength.
The AI doesn't seem to defend resources.

 

[Thalassicus]

You have a point about the AI. It's why I tend to prefer finishing games before the modern era, due to AI usage (or lack thereof) of air and naval units. The game feels unfinished when it comes to aircraft and ships. To be honest I'd rather design the game in a good manner and hope we can fix the AI sometime, since this is so late in the game it rarely has much impact. It wouldn't exactly be hard to code a battleship to park itself over oil resources, if we had access to that, compared to other more complex things the AI does.

Still, make sure to generate a map and see the cumulative effect of the changes, there's way too much and too complicated to detail here. Just on a basic level though, there's many more land deposits than sea ones, the sea deposits are rather rare.

 

[SSgtDuke]

It's why I tend to prefer finishing games before the modern era, due to AI usage (or lack thereof) of air and naval units.

Have you played against a strong civ in the late modern era recently? Two days ago I got absolutely pounded by a dozen fighters and jet fighters (and later nuked) as I tried to advance on their territory. The multiple successive attacks shredded my mech inf, tanks, and rocket arty. I've finally been convinced to escort my army with some AA. Maybe this was a fluke, but it seems the AI is quite competent with air power now.

It made me think about the discussions I've seen about land units firing against and doing minor damage to attacking aircraft. Before my experience I agreed that they shouldn't be able to damage the aircraft, but now I've seen that it's important for balance.

Though I've never seen any significant sea power, possibly never an AI battleship (or other ships beyond destroyers). With a couple destroyers I have been able to dominate the seas in just about every occasion. Seeing the AI (and myself! ) actually protect their valuable resources would be great.

 

[Thalassicus]

@SSgtDuke
That's extremely helpful feedback for me, in an area of the game I don't have much experience. Thank you! It's good to know the AI at least sometimes uses air properly now... perhaps all the AI patches have improved it in that regard. It sounds like you had a really fun and challenging game there.

I've done a quick hotfix to the latest dev version with:

• Hoplite ranged penalty.
• Longbows start with 3 range instead of +1 range promo (different when upgraded).
• Ottoman trait name now civ-specific instead of leader-specific.
• -1 size sea oil deposits.

 

[V. Soma]

Thal, how about starting testgames in a later era
- industrial or modern - to see AI use of air and ships and nuke?

 

[Thalassicus]

That's a good idea... I've never used the advanced start in Civ V, oddly enough. I just enjoy the first half of the game too much!

Seems like a good time to try though, thank you for the suggestion.

 

[Tomice]

The firetuner hint is interesting, I'll try it out!

Maybe you should edit your post to tell people they need to activate the tuner in config.ini, it took a long while for me to find that out

 

[Seek]

Option F: ???

Would be to dramatically rearrange the tech tree. If there was a bottleneck between the Industrial and Modern eras forcing a delay of Aluminum units by a significant amount, this could solve the problem. It would also alleviate the RL issues in the tree such as Combustion not being a req for many late units that obviously use combustion engines.

This seems like a simple and effective way to resolve the issues in a way that wouldn't deviate too far from vanilla, which is a stated goal of the mod. This is not to say that the other ideas put forth here shouldn't be considered, just that maybe this should be done first and further adjustments made later as the need arises.

 

[Ahriman]

If there was a bottleneck between the Industrial and Modern eras forcing a delay of Aluminum units by a significant amount, this could solve the problem.

I'd be tempted to add such a bottleneck anyway.

Make Electronics require Combustion, make Atomic theory require Flight (how are you going to drop that bomb without aircraft?), make Mass Media require Telegraph, make Radio require Replaceable parts.

But I still don't think this would be enough to solve the problem and make oil meaningful.

 

[Txurce]

I already proposed making oil and uranium dominant in the modern era and dropping aluminum. In both cases the balance would come by increasing the quantity, yet having more units requiring them than a midsized civ could field. Thus choices have to be made whether to go military or not with uranium, or how much aircraft vs navy or tanks. This uses the preponderance of unit types to create an interesting, dynamic situation.

With regard to units, I like the hoplite adjustment, and feel the CC should be either no faster or no stronger than horsemen. I have a problem with the longbowman's move advantage. It's really powerful and makes no sense. I'd rather keep their hp's at 14, which also fits historically with their longbowmen wiping the floor with French knights.

 

[Tomice]

I believe the CCs are already being changed to 4 move, which is reasonable.

The longbowmen don't carry the range promotion over, because their base range was changed to 3. That does mean they can get the range promotion and have 4 overall range, which was impossible in vanilla. Except Thal already did something about that, too.

 

[Torvald]

Dear Thal & Others,

I have just finished an enjoyable Civ-5 game using the mods from "Balance - Combined v1.08", plus a handful of other minor mods. Saw that the current development version is now v1.09.9dev, so downloaded that tonight to try for my next game.

However, I noticed a possible glitch in one of the mod components, and wanted to ask about that before using it. Version v1.09.9dev contains mod component "Balance - Technologies v5", which I've not seen before. Also, when viewing the readme file for this mod component, it instead displays the contents of the separate mod "Balance - Research v6".

Please advise as to whether: (1) the Technologies mod got added by mistake and should be ignored, or (2) it is okay to use and simply has the wrong readme file.

Thanks.

 

[orangecape]

I have made a bunch of changes in my mod (most recent stuff is not released yet though) to make sure all units are balanced. The crux of the issue is thus: Swords are the best. Horses are great in the field, smashing ranged/siege. They are weak vs. Swords due to terrain/fortification bonuses and weak vs. cities, but they are also weak vs. the spammable spearman. What corresponding weakness do Swords have? The answer of course is nothing-Swords are solid in all types of combat. I think the key is that Swords need to be weaker vs. ranged units. I don't think assigning a specific promotion is the key so much as making ranged units worth building (which in vanilla they really aren't, barring UUs) and making Horses not get so foiled by spears/pikes.

For example, I left Horses at 11 Str, -33% vs. cities in my mod but spears are 8 str and +25% vs. Mounted. This makes spears a lot more useful vs. swords without making horses too flimsy.

Archers/Chariots need to be buffed. I buffed Archers and Chariots to 7 Ranged and 6 Combat each. They hit hard against melee units but still get stomped thoroughly by Horses with their tremendous mobility. The changes to Spears mean that Chariots aren't so woefully useless too since they can actually take a hit from a Spear and live.

Similar sorts of buffs/changes need to be applied to Crossbows and Pikes.

A few other big considerations:

1. The jump from 11 str to 18 str is way too big compared to 18 to 25. I lowered the base str of Longsword/Knight to 17 so that the curve would be smoother.

2. For Knight/Cavalry to be useful they need 4 Speed. At 3 they simply aren't fast enough to be ever worth going for, and at 4 they retain the Horse benefit of smashing ranged and siege units while still being weak against cities. Cavalry also need their ridiculous penalty vs. Mounted to be removed.

 

[Thalassicus]

The reason in the past I've specifically avoided creating such a bottleneck of techs around the modern era is because of the developer's clear design decision to allow a space race victory while skipping the bottom half of the industrial, modern and future tech tree - while the military techs require far more progress. This is one of those things I feel is a "fundamental gameplay characteristic." The merits of this decision of theirs can be debated, but I'd rather not change their design principle. Modern units are still using a strategic resource (whether it's Aluminum or Oil), so the other options aren't fundamentally different. Hope this makes sense.


@Txurce
Did you propose that in one of these threads? Sorry if I forgot about it!


@Torvald
I've been considering changing the name from Research to Technologies, though it's odd... 1.09.9 should be back to the Research name. Either way it's still the same mod.


@orangecape
I was thinking about making spears 50% vs swords, similar to what you did, so they're a bit less of a hard counter and more all-around useful. Something to remember though is spears and horses are affected differently by terrain, promotions, and other modifiers. Consider a spear and horse with 1 terrain promotion (shock/drill) and great general nearby, just ignoring terrain modifiers for simplicity:

• Spear = (1 + .25 + .25 + .2) * 8 = 14
• Horse = (1 + .25 + .2) * 11 = 16

It starts rather significantly favoring horses. To keep spears at least equal against horses when a few modifiers are on each, it's helpful to consider the situation post-bonuses too.

• Spear = (1 + .25 + .5 + .2) * 8 = 16
• Horse = (1 + .25 + .2) * 11 = 16

This would make them about equal in a case of ~40% bonuses apiece, which is relatively average for combat.


Rather than modify longsword or knight strength (as Ahriman also suggested) I modified the value of the techs they appear on. The Longsword tech is slightly harder to beeline to now, and Chivalry tech is now the only medieval tech which can immediately research a Renaissance tech for the era jump. They're both only slight alterations, but do shift the value of the units somewhat. It also has the added benefit of neatly organizing the tech tree... there's no more bizzare-looking four-way linkage between Education/Chivalry/Acoustics/Banking for example.

I think I removed the Cavalry penalty vs mounted. I added a Lancer bonus vs cavalry instead. This basically has the same result for lancers (good against knights and cavalry as the tooltip indicates) but Cavalry no longer lose to Knights.

My belief the reason horses have a larger movement speed than knights or cavalry is roads. By the time of Chivalry the map's typically plastered in roads, so overall a mounted attack force can probably move two to three times faster - in their era - than horses could in theirs. It's also easier to get them promoted high enough for Mobility by then, which brings them back up to 4 moves.

 

[Sneaks]

I always took the smaller movement for Knights and Cavs also to account for the fact that the complex attacks/physical weight of the unit would slow it down.