Greece

[Funak]

+2 Culture in every city.

This is way too powerful and was designed for the older CEP structure where you needed a lot more culture for each policy.
No idea if there is any point lowering it to +1 or if it should just be dropped

City-State Influence degrades at half and recovers at twice the normal rate.

This is probably enough alone, my problem with Greece in the basegame wasn't their UA but their two mediocre UUs

Unique Unit: Hoplite - 50% vs melee and mounted units

I think this one is unchanged so no comment, I think the promotion stays on upgrade, and if we make the pike upgrade into muskets this should totally be fine.

Unique Building: Odeon - instant culture yield amphitheater

Big fan of having a Odeon UB, not a huge fan of instant culture. I'd rather see it have some extra culture/turn instead.


All in all this at first glance feels like a civ with no real focus or direction but your bonuses are actually really strong and helpful for any type of victorycondition.

 

[BigBadBear]

I would vote for dropping the +2 culture. It's basically France's old UI merged with Greece's old one. Drop the instant culture on the Odeon, replace it with an musician or great writer slot? It came with a slot for a great work of <something> IIRC. Can a building have both a great work and specialist slot?

 

[Funak]

I would vote for dropping the +2 culture. It's basically France's old UI merged with Greece's old one. Drop the instant culture on the Odeon, replace it with an musician or great writer slot? It came with a slot for a great work of <something> IIRC. Can a building have both a great work and specialist slot?

Not sure about adding GWslots to buildigns, sure it is good, but it kinda forces the player to use your great artists/writers/musicians for great works to make us of them.

I was thinking something like a flat bonus to Culture/turn or perhaps having it add culture to some resourcetype.
You're completely right about adding a specialist slot, it would be fun if the new culturesystem hadn't killed the option of culturespecialists.
(What I mean is any extra culturespecialists outside of the original 2 you get from guilds would completely throw off the balance)

 

[mitsho]

More GW slots also gives you more choices to use. Also, forcing you to create GW isn't a problem, lots of UA for example force you into a religion, or towards a navy, or towards a wide play. So if you chose Greece, you should go towards it. My proposal:

Odeon: 1 Great Writing Slot, All great works in the city provide + 1 (culture? too strong? gold? too boring? science? maybe --> depends on the other bonus)

There would still be no synergies with city states and the hoplite, so maybe the odeon should give gold via the slots to enhance getting city states.

 

[Funak]

More GW slots also gives you more choices to use. Also, forcing you to create GW isn't a problem, lots of UA for example force you into a religion, or towards a navy, or towards a wide play. So if you chose Greece, you should go towards it. My proposal:

Odeon: 1 Great Writing Slot, All great works in the city provide + 1 (culture? too strong? gold? too boring? science? maybe --> depends on the other bonus)

There would still be no synergies with city states and the hoplite, so maybe the odeon should give gold via the slots to enhance getting city states.

Keep in mind that with CSD (which is baseline now from what I understand) citystates aren't all about gold anymore.

I'd personally say Odeon should be culturefocused, no idea if culture per great work is the best way to do it however, feels like it could get out of hand really quickly. a flat culture/turn is pretty boring but I wonder if that's just the best solution.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I'm definitely not a fan of the instant bonuses in general, it feels a bit "fiddly", a flat bonus on culture is neater even if it's less exciting.

Also, if we consider CSD as base line, something like +25% diplomatic unit production would be a small neat add-on that encourages the use of the main ability a bit more and kind of fits with the Odeon thematically (generally eloquent writers/people).

 

[Funak]

I'm definitely not a fan of the instant bonuses in general, it feels a bit "fiddly", a flat bonus on culture is neater even if it's less exciting.

Also, if we consider CSD as base line, something like +25% diplomatic unit production would be a small neat add-on that encourages the use of the main ability a bit more and kind of fits with the Odeon thematically (generally eloquent writers/people).

I'm honestly not sure Gazebo is every going to make anything baseline . While I personally like the idea of giving greece even more focus on diplovictory, I'm not sure it is actually possible without nerfing their base UA, which kinda feels like a silly tradeoff since their UA is more useful than building faster diplounits since it works with quests and stuff aswell. Other than that youre idea doesn't sound that crazy, I'm personally not really that high on Odeons, but weren't they more about writers as in great writers and not diplomats? And yes seperating those two is really a pain and a constant struggle

 

[Gazebo]

The additional culture per city was included (may reduce to +1, from +2, in a later version) in a previous version, and the Odeon is in as well. Grants Tourism without a great work, which is a nice boost to Greece's early Tourism (and allows Greece to focus on expansion and war in lieu of Great People generation). I think Greece is fairly balanced at this point, if a little on the strong side.

G

 

[Llednar Twem]

So...I found something that seems quite powerful. I'm personally nowhere near good enough at this game to judge if it's actually "overpowered", but it seemed quite strong, so I figured I'd mention it. It might not even belong here since it relies on the Events and Decisions mod, but this is the core mod I'm using and the mechanics of the Balance Patch greatly help to enable it.

Basically, in Events and Decisions, Greece has the unique decision "Develop the phalanx formation". If you have at least five hoplites and have researched iron working, you can instantly upgrade all of your hoplites to pikemen at the cost of 400 gold and one magistrate. In addition to getting them extremely early, these pikemen also get the "phalanx" promotion, which grants +25% combat strength when next to another friendly soldier.

The Balance Patch comes into the picture by making five hoplites very easy to get without even really interrupting other projects. Warriors can be upgraded to spearmen (or hoplites, in this case) with gold rather than requiring lucky ruins. Additionally, the "conscription" policy in Might will spawn melee units instead of ranged ones at new cities as long as you haven't researched hunting. Both the pyramids and the might tree give a free settler, so with your starting warrior and the one spawned from your capital, that's already four hoplites.

As I said, this may not be an issue at all. I'm bad at this game in general and play on lower difficulties, so I can't really judge. I just thought it might be worth mentioning.

 

[Funak]

Some civspecific-decisions are extremely powerful, I'd love to see a list of them (I bet I could find one pretty easily but I guess I'm lazy)

I think for example that the netherlands can get 2 extra maxium traderoutes, the inca can get a pretty freaky goldbonus and the celts can instantly spawn 2 great musicians and get a pile of free culture. Balancing around these civ-specific decisions is fine imho, adds more power to a civ without having to change the uniques.

However what I'm currently not really onboard with is the different decisions for different religions, I feel like the ones I've seen are extremely poorly balanced and I would love to being able to pick a religion based my favorite symbol or just my favorite religion. Not being forced to pick a religion over another because the decisions are better.

If it is possible I would love to see religious decisions being randomed(while still keeping relatively balanced ofc) that way you can get some randomfactors into religion aswell which I'm pretty sure people would enjoy.



Edit: Also I am planning to update the original posts in these leader balance threads to match the current stats, but that's a lot of work and I'm kinda busy, if someone feels like contributing just write a post in the thread and I'll copypaste it to the original post.


Edit2: I actually tried out the decision and it was, hilarious buffed up pikemen at ironworking I wouldn't say its overpowered however just really strong(but as mentioned before many civ-specific decisions are really strong)

 

[Anastase Alex]

I would love to see this happen personally:

Give Hoplites a promotion that gains great writer points when killing an enemy (Trojan war style)

OR: give greek grate generals the option to create a great work of writing.

 

[Finarvi]

I like the idea of expending GG for great work. It's a weak bonus but it'd add something new and thematic. Sometimes if you fight too much, you get many GGs which takes more maintenance than they help. For me it'd be good to expend few for GWs as I almost never build Citadels (they're cool, yeah, but weak compared to +15% military strength mobile boost and I prefer winning than losing).

 

[Funak]

I like the idea of expending GG for great work. It's a weak bonus but it'd add something new and thematic. Sometimes if you fight too much, you get many GGs which takes more maintenance than they help. For me it'd be good to expend few for GWs as I almost never build Citadels (they're cool, yeah, but weak compared to +15% military strength mobile boost and I prefer winning than losing).

Greece doesn't have any slots for great works of writing, so this would be a rather weird change

 

[Finarvi]

Does odeon replace amphiteater or what? There are always too many slots in amphiteatres + national epic.

 

[Funak]

Does odeon replace amphiteater or what? There are always too many slots in amphiteatres + national epic.

Yeah I think the odeon replaces the amphitheater, and I think it doesn't have a slot.

 

[DoctorMcGann]

I really like the idea of expending GGs for writing, but the UB totally counteracts that.

 

[Gazebo]

I really like the idea of expending GGs for writing, but the UB totally counteracts that.

In the upcoming version, I have the Odeon granting +5 Culture to the City when you defeat an enemy unit (like the Triumphal Arch, but for Culture). Similar end-result as the GW stuff, but easier to code.

G

 

[DoctorMcGann]

I like that. I suppose that also saves you the trouble of coming up with a ton of unique GWs for Greece.

 

[Strec]

The choice of bonuses on odeon is surprising, I would have think Greece would have bonuses on Marble and Bronze for statues or stone for monument (not sure because I don't know if their monuments and theater are in marble or stone).

For now I'm testing the start of game with Greece and I can determine really if it's better to get Might (with a few big cities, pupets and a permanent war with at least one civ) or Liberty with a quick expansion.

edit: first game with an adequate resource : lapis lazuli. Monopoly give +10% golden age length, medium interest for Greece.

 

[Thibaulthc]

I liked playing with Greece, but the permanent +25% strength due to at least 5 allied CS was a bit too strong IMO.