Getting Started

[Sneaks]

I have to agree with others saying that the National Epic is simply too strong with the per pop piece added. It becomes better than Stonehenge too easily, much in the way that I worry the NC should not be better than the Great Library.

Having done a bit of testing each way, I think that National Wonders in general need to be handled differently. I hate the fact that they simply cannot be built in large empires without endless building spam.

I would be much happier if the first tier of NWs required perhaps 3 of their parent buildings rather than 100%, and second tier perhaps 5 (the only second tiers in existence right now are Oxford and Hermitage)

This accomplishes several things:
-Single city NC tech rushes would be prevented
-Players are no longer penalized for successfully expanding
-National Wonders become the city specializers I assume they are designed to be within an empire.

At the cost of:
-OCC no longer able to build.

 

[Thalassicus]

That wouldn't be hard to do, I prepared for that possibility by setting up the tooltips so it recognizes -1 as "all cities" and other numbers as the amount specified.

The question is is, if we don't use national wonders as a way to balance expansion, what else is there? Earlier versions in the Civilization series had corruption or city maintenance, but that was removed. I suspect it's one reason why alpaca added it back for his mod. Changes like that at such a fundamental gameplay level are something I tend to hesitate from for mods theoretically designed to keep vanilla mostly the same.

 

[Sneaks]

I totally understand that, but frankly not having the National Wonders does little to inhibit vast growth, and you can game the system by going vertical first with a NC rush, something the AI cannot do.

The only non-maintenance way you can ever probably properly balance expansion with is scaling technology costs (albeit to a lesser degree than culture). This would also solve the glaring issue of culture being miles and miles behind all other victory types.

I totally understand the worry over making any fundamental changes, and thus your reticence to tackle issues like AI idiocy directly in a balance mod. I believe alpaca's city maintenance approach actually works rather well, and can probably be made to be configurable by the user (either in a config.lua like Jooyo did with CCMAT, or a pop-up after the DoM screen).

 

[Thalassicus]

To be honest I do prefer the concept of city maintenance over national wonders as a restriction on growth, never really liked that decision for Civ V. I've been trying to figure out ways to adapt the developer's system to work, though.

It could be something to explore in the next beta cycle. It'd probably require a week or so of experimentation to balance (particularly with the AI), and it's been over a month since I last put out a public release. Right now I'm focusing on squashing bugs and adjusting existing values to get a public version put out in the next few days.

 

[Thalassicus]

(delete)

 

[Ahriman]

The question is is, if we don't use national wonders as a way to balance expansion, what else is there?

Happiness. Use the intended mechanic.
If necessary, add non-linear happiness-per-city.

But think about what precisely goal it is that you're trying to achieve here.
Is your problem one of width vs height?
Is it that expanding doesn't require enough infrastructure?
I'm not sure that expanding forever should be a problem if you have the infrastructure to support it. Even with constant unhappiness per city, there is already the design feature that your base happiness/happiness from luxuries/happiness from wonders/happiness from most social policies shrinks in per-city-terms as you increase the number of cities.

* * *
I like the existing national wonder mechanic, my balance thoughts were just on specifics, particularly of how the new national epic overshadows other culture producers for value.

 

[bigfatjonny]

Are you saying when you trade a luxury for gold per turn, you're not receiving any actual gold? I honestly haven't ever looked at the finance screen, but since gpt trades seem to be working properly in my games I'd suspect it's some display error with the game's finance window. I haven't touched that part of the UI, but I will take a look and see if there's anything I can do.

Ok, here are the screen shots.
Screenshot of F2 screen, +5 GPT trade with Ghandi, screenshot of F2 screen = +5 income.
It appears that is is only an F2 screen issue as the total income per turn does increase in the top left.

Not a big problem, and i cant be sure if it is a BalanceCombined bug or not, but i dont have anything else installed or altered anything else.

Love the mod & appreciate all the work you have put it to it.
Thanks

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you, once I have time I'll check that out and fix the problem. I do suspect it's a vanilla game bug since I don't think anything in this package alters that screen.


My brother suggested an idea for national wonders, and I'd like to see if yall would find it more fun than the current method. Instead of a 'hard cap' requiring the necessary building in 100% of cities, what if national wonders have a soft cap:

• Requires 3 copies of the necessary building (like Sneaks suggested)
• Increase cost-per-city modifier of the national wonder

In other words... transfer the cost from the required buildings to the national wonder itself. For example, right now the national college costs:

Option A (vanilla)

• 80
• +24 cost per city modifier
• +80 per Library
• Total = 80 + 104*cities

Option B (idea)

• 80
• +50 cost per city modifier
• Total = 80 + 50*cities

These numbers are simply estimates, we could try anywhere from 40 to 100 per city, but you get the idea. I reduced the per-city from 104 because with libraries we get the effects of the actual libraries, while the added NW cost isn't giving any other bonuses. With this method, founding a new city simply adds to national wonder costs instead of the annoyance of canceled construction. This would still require a high overall expenditure for large empires, but wouldn't require spamming unwanted buildings (only to sell them after).



@Ahriman
I already adjusted happiness, and I like to spread changes out instead of concentrating them in one place.

A secondary point to consider when evaluating artists is the lack of modifier buildings for most of the game. Science gets the university, gold gets Markets and Banks , production admittedly doesn't get much, either, and culture gets the late-game broadcast tower - which is why I also changed the opera to provide a +50% culture modifier and +1 culture instead of a flat +4 culture.

I've been thinking about this a while, good idea with the Opera House! Since a secondary buff of national wonders was the specialist slots I think a % will synergize better.

I think this is the major stuff in .14, some of which was in earlier versions:

• Jaguars obsolete at Metal Casting (as in vanilla).
• UUs based on Musketmen obsolete at Dynamite.
• More adjustments to AI city spacing.
  I've been fiddling with this for a while now. From my autoplays it seems they now settle cities about 3-4 tiles apart, up from 2.
• 50% Opera House (was 5 culture).
  This comes out to 2.5 from Temple/Monument alone, but increases artists from 2 to 3 culture, so with 3 or more artists active it's a net buff (typically in culture-victory focused games).
• 0.5 per pop Museum (0.75 since it requires Opera House).

National Wonders look like this in 2.0.14 beta, compared to the public release of 1.08:

• National College
  -20% cost.
  30% cost per city (was 20%).
  Requires Philosophy (was Writing).
• National Epic
  -20% cost.
  30% cost per city (was 20%).
  50% (was 25%)
  50% (was 0)
  Requires Temples (was Monuments)
• Oxford University
  -40% cost
  30% cost per city (was 10%)
  1 per population
• National Treasury
  1 per population
• Agra Fort
  20% cost per city (was 10%)

I'm updating often lately because I want to get these details and any bugs hammered out for another public release.

 

[SSgtDuke]

If you're always annexing when a city's out of resistance, is the Courthouse that easy to build/buy? My goal is 1-2 cities at a time can be annexed, any more would drop into very unhappy state.

I think the courthouse is good where it's at. Because it has such a high markup value, I generally buy production buildings and then build the courthouse. Like you said, I'm only building courthouses in one or two cities at a time in order to preserve happiness. The long resistance times, weak puppets, and annex system massively slow down conquest growth and I think it's working very well right now. Though I still might suggest reducing the resistance time a tad. Sometimes I see something like population 12 and resistance time 14 turns. I don't think the resistance time should be greater than the population at capture time (post war casualties).

I haven't seen any improvements disappear in my games, and didn't code anything that might cause it.

I haven't seen this in my current game. Probably just a fluke last game.

This should be removed. There's no good reason for having the only naval unit of the era require a strategic resource that not all players will have.

What about caravels? I think they become available just the tech before. The caravel/frigate combo is basically the same as destroyer/battleship. You don't need the SR, but having it will give you some extra firepower at the cost of movement speed.

 

[SSgtDuke]

Still playing 2.0.08

Next policy
I have had a number of instances where the next policy turns counter at the top got down to zero but I wasn't given a notification to choose a new policy. I really started noticing this after I had museums in a lot of towns and my culture per turn significantly increased. I could open up the policy screen and choose my new policy. It's kind of like when you find cultural artifacts in ruins and it bumps you over the limit. Maybe because you're doing the mod-added cultural bonuses after the notifications take place?

Combat odds panel
Any chance you can raise the height of the combat odds panel in the bottom left? When there are more than three bonuses you can't make out the additional bonuses. Bumping it up so you can clearly see four lines of bonuses (with a little extra so you could see part of a fifth) would probably be good.

Populism
I tried the Populism policy in the Autocracy tree, which should cause units to heal an additional HP per turn, and it appeared to have no effect. Units continued to heal +1 outside friendly, +2 inside friendly, and +3 in a city. I was quite happy to grab this policy right before launching a major difficult invasion, then nothing. The double SRs policy works nicely though.

I also noticed that the Cristo Redentor wonder screen didn't have any bonus text.

 

[Thalassicus]

Something I hadn't considered is the population changes I modded in probably take effect after the resistance time is calculated. I reduce population by -2, which matches what you're seeing.

I did some searches through the game code for 'resist' 'capture' 'raze' and other words... didn't find anything which might affect the resistance time. It's either stored under a strange name or hardcoded, but I'll keep an eye out for something that might work. The Lua documentation is incomplete here. An "IsResist" function checks if a city is in resistance, but isn't in the documentation, so who knows what other hidden functions might exist!

Thank you for pointing out the thing with next policies, that's definitely as a result of manually adding culture from museums. I'll add a check to show the policies popup if culture > required culture.

I'll see what I can do about the combat odds panel.

About populism, I think I know where the problem might be and thank you for pointing out the bug. I've been wondering about this promotion... would yall find it more fun to have the +1 healing promo, a free March promotion everywhere, or even both in one (+1 healing per turn regardless of movement)?

 

[Txurce]

About populism, I think I know where the problem might be and thank you for pointing out the bug. I've been wondering about this promotion... would yall find it more fun to have the +1 healing promo, a free March promotion everywhere, or even both in one (+1 healing per turn regardless of movement)?

Free March is more exciting, and both sounds good, too. I don't know if it would be OP that late in the game.

 

[SSgtDuke]

I've been wondering about this promotion... would yall find it more fun to have the +1 healing promo, a free March promotion everywhere, or even both in one (+1 healing per turn regardless of movement)?

I'd like to try out just the +1 healing policy. This is something that you can't get a promotion for since Medic now only heals those in adjacent tiles and not yourself. I don't think March should be added to the mix, both because it could OP the policy and it's something you can already earn normally. I think it's much more interesting when policies give you something that you can't get any other way.

 

[Thalassicus]

If policies become more or less powerful I can always shuffle them around in the tree, or limit the promotion to certain unit types. Basically we can tweak the numbers so what I'm wondering more is the "fun factor"

• Option A (new promotion)
  Heal 1hp per turn extra when standing still.
• Option B (free March)
  • 1hp per turn
  • +1hp extra friendly territory
  • +1hp extra in a city
  • +1hp extra from adjacent Medic
    (total max of 4 per turn)
• Option C (new promotion)
  Option A without the 'standing still' requirement (1 per turn everywhere regardless of actions).

 

[jacyp]

Playing the .11 version, the policy in Piety tree that was suposed to convert 75% of the happiness to culture is giving 100%.

 

[Thalassicus]

@jacyp
Thanks for pointing that out, fixed the problem.

 

[Txurce]

Playing .11 (and .05) I have twice built a factory, then later been offered the choice of building a factory in one turn.

EDIT: Also, a trade route between my capital and two cities was broken, even though they are both roaded through my own territory, shortly after completing harbors in them (post-RR).

 

[Sneaks]

I like that direction with the national wonders, and I honestly wish there was more to do with this mechanic.

Ideas:

Science NWs

Tier 1: Royal Library - 3 Libraries - Does what NC does now

Tier 2: National College - 3-5 Univ - Rename of Oxford University

Tier 3: Academy of Sciences - 3-5 Public Schools + RL and NC - Specialist Yield +1 Science

Culture NWs

Tier 1: National Epic - 3 Temples

Tier 2: Hermitage - 3-5 Opera Houses

Tier 3: National Archives - 3-5 Museums + Hermitage +NE - Specialist Yield +1 Culture

Commerce NWs

Tier 1: National Treasury - 3 Markets

Tier 2: National Mint - 3-5 Banks - 15% gold from trade routes

Tier 3: Federal Reserve - 3-5 SEs + NM + NT - Specialist Yield +1 Gold

Happiness NWs

Tier 1: Circus Maximus - 3 Colosseums (would like to see rename to amphitheater

Tier 2: Baths of Trajan - 3 Aqueducts

Tier 3: World's Fair - 3-5 Stadiums + CM - Either +10 unmodded happiness or +1 happiness per city

Production NWs

Tier 1: Ironworks - 3 Workshops

Tier 2: Assembly Plant - 3-5 Factories + Ironworks - 75% production

Military NWs

Tier 1: Military Epic - 3 Barracks

Tier 1: Agra Fort - 3 Walls

Tier 2: West Point - 3 Military Academies - 50% GG spawn rate

 

[Ahriman]

Instead of a 'hard cap' requiring the necessary building in 100% of cities, what if national wonders have a soft cap:

I prefer the vanilla mechanism. It works well, it isn't broken. I don't see any need to change things just for change's sake.

@Ahriman
I already adjusted happiness, and I like to spread changes out instead of concentrating them in one place.

I don't think that is a good strategy here. The very deliberate core design for Civ5 was that happiness be the limit on growth. They very deliberately moved away from having multiple mechanisms that achieved this, and I think it was a good design decision.
The right way to get expansion limits to work is to concentrate on making happiness really work *right*. If you try to achieve a goal using several mechanics, its much harder to get balance right, and its much harder to make sure that mechanics like happiness really work as binding constraints. If you have one constraint that is tight, that is much more efficacious than having ~3 separate restraint mechanics, none of which are actually binding.

50% Opera House (was 5 culture).
This comes out to 2.5 from Temple/Monument alone, but increases artists from 2 to 3 culture, so with 3 or more artists active it's a net buff (typically in culture-victory focused games).

I think just 50% culture is too weak, I'd probably either leave it with a happiness or with a core culture of +1 as well.
I don't think the opera house should only be worth building in a culture-victory focused game, it should be a decent source of culture for anyone who wants to earn social policies. Its only the 3rd tier building in a 5 tier line, it should be more generally useful.

I think the courthouse is good where it's at.

It feels reasonable where it is at the moment.

The long resistance times, weak puppets, and annex system massively slow down conquest growth and I think it's working very well right now.

Agreed. I like the really long resistance times. It means that conquest is a slow process, but is very rewarding once you eventually get the city (because its large) but it sucks up a lot of happiness.

What about caravels? I think they become available just the tech before.

Caravels are utterly useless in combat compared to a frigate. Its like comparing warriors to swordsmen.
Ideally we'd actually have some diversity of naval units, but this is a balance mod, not a unit-adding mod.

Still, given that England no longer has a ship of the line, we do have art already for 2 units of that era; we could have the ship of the line as a battleship-type unit that required iron, and then the frigate as a faster/weaker destroyer-type unit.

I've been wondering about this promotion... would yall find it more fun to have the +1 healing promo, a free March promotion everywhere, or even both in one (+1 healing per turn regardless of movement)?

I prefer +1 healing. When to heal and when to move is an interesting strategic decision that is lost if your entire army has march.

This is something that you can't get a promotion for since Medic now only heals those in adjacent tiles and not yourself. I don't think March should be added to the mix, both because it could OP the policy and it's something you can already earn normally.

This too.

 

[Mentos]

Although I’m no big fan of breaking existing game features, like National Wonders, I know it’s quite annoying if you currently build one for many turns and have to delay conquering a city just because of that. Sometimes you just forget you currently build one and blam: production for nothing.

That list above from Sneaks doesn’t look that bad. Such minimum building requirement will also force the player a bit too expand before you can benefit from all these wonder-buildings.
A general requirement of 3 sounds good, otherwise the poor Gandhi would suffer too much with too many cities as requirement. Also by forcing more cities, you are going to eliminate such feature-buildings on duel-size maps and no National Wonders at all with "One-City Challenge" game option then.

Here is my breaking game feature idea for National Wonders:
Instead of numbers of prerequisite buildings: city or total population requirement. Gandhi would very well like that!
No population 1 city needs Circus Maximus or offers enough workers/employees to occupy National Archives, Colleges, etc. Commuter traffic is more a modern era thing.
You just have to wait until the citizens are ready to support it. Airports aren’t built next to farm villages either (maybe).
I see the point though that it's maybe hard to know when you can finally build National Wonder A or B. More notification popups would be maybe too annoying.

I don't know, maybe it's just best to leave the National Wonder requirements as they are.