How to Fix Liberty

[Browd]

Part of the issue, as understand it, is that Monarchy's gold benefits rise with population, so a 20-pop capital at turn 140 or so will yield 10 gold, and a later game 40-pop capital will yield 20 gold. Given map constraints, in most cases, even the most ardent Liberty city spammer (leaving aside Domination puppets) will be more or less done dropping cities and building roads by turn 140 or so. If the average connection distance between cities is 5 road segments, and the spammer has 8 cities, the road discount would yield 20 gold per turn, which seems to a bit more than it needs to be. If the Liberty player later takes Wagon Trains, are his roads free (a la the Inca)?

The main virtue, in my eyes, of an extra trade route is that the Liberty player can choose to use the TR to address Liberty's relative gold disadvantage (vs. Tradition), or its relative food/growth disadvantage, but not both. And it isn't "free" since they still have to build/buy a caravan or cargo ship.

EDIT: Vic's suggestion would address the free roads issue.

 

[kaspergm]

Obviously the road discount should be moved from commerce, not duplicated.

As for the road discount giving too much gold, I don't really see that being the case, at least not compared to Tradition. Tradition also saves you maintenance on four culture buildings and four aqueducts, and given that the road discount policy has always been considered bottom tier in Commerce, I really don't see it being overpowered in Liberty, even if it does come earlier there.

 

[Calouste]

Free aquaducts in Tradition 100 % should require Engineering, full support on that.

As for the gold issues with Liberty, I still say give them the 50 % discount on road prices with Meritocracy. This will also be a huge synergy boost for current Meritocracy effect, because it will allow you to build the roads and therefore get the happiness much faster without losing gold on road support.

An extra Trade Route should go in Commerce. After all Commerce == trade, while Liberty is much more about general empire management which suites the infrastruture better.

Requiring Engineering for the free aqueducts is not that big a nerf, is it? You'd want Construction anyway for either the Composite Bows or the Coliseum, and then it's only one more tech, which gives you an additional trade route.

I like the idea of switching the road maintenance from Commerce to Liberty. I also think that Wagon Trains should be completely replaced, because Commerce shouldn't have a land-based component opposed to Exploration, Commerce and Exploration should work hand-in-hand. Wagon Trains at the moment is a more or less complete dud if you have a situation where Exploration is attractive. You don't want to be running land routes if you can run sea routes.

So replace Wagon Trains with something like Merchant Class, which gives an extra trade route and either a bonus to all trade routes, sea or land, or a discount on buying caravans and cargo ships. Or maybe just an additional gold from all commerce buildings.

 

[Calouste]

Part of the issue, as understand it, is that Monarchy's gold benefits rise with population, so a 20-pop capital at turn 140 or so will yield 10 gold, and a later game 40-pop capital will yield 20 gold. Given map constraints, in most cases, even the most ardent Liberty city spammer (leaving aside Domination puppets) will be more or less done dropping cities and building roads by turn 140 or so. If the average connection distance between cities is 5 road segments, and the spammer has 8 cities, the road discount would yield 20 gold per turn, which seems to a bit more than it needs to be. If the Liberty player later takes Wagon Trains, are his roads free (a la the Inca)?

The main virtue, in my eyes, of an extra trade route is that the Liberty player can choose to use the TR to address Liberty's relative gold disadvantage (vs. Tradition), or its relative food/growth disadvantage, but not both. And it isn't "free" since they still have to build/buy a caravan or cargo ship.

EDIT: Vic's suggestion would address the free roads issue.

I think thematically, an extra trade route should be in Commerce. And the road maintenance reduction shouldn't be there. Commerce should be about generating more gold, and being able to do more with it, not saving on maintenance.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I don't think Piety needs to be on the same level as the other three. I see it as a second generation tree, that just happens to be available early. You might get Maya or Arabia where you can ensure a first religion, strong faith, and your choice of reformation belief, but Piety is not about the foundation of your empire. (Or if it is, it should involve signalling that you will be on the weak side early on, like playing possum.)

Add to that, there's the fact the game has its aesops, among them that war is not profitable, science is king. I don't think you could get the actual developers to put out a game where science isn't trump, because they want it to be. So Honor being lacking is another inevitability, at least so long as Honor is "the war tree".
And hey, if Honor were any good, that would make fast expand harder.

I adore KrikkitTwo's idea for national wonders.

edit:

I agree, the developers should go to the "pro's" for advice on how to balance the game. They should be listening to people like Tommynt, Merle, Yoruus etc... Casual players should be completely ignored if they want this game to be balanced for fair play. The game should be balanced around high levels of competitive play and not steam rolling the AI with OP abilities that are completely absurd.

I agree, but then you come upon the aesthetic question. Yes, games should be balanced and competitively deep, but that can lead away from what is aesthetically pleasing. Competitive balance is better ("gameplay > realism"), but there's a tipping point where a video/card/board game is "suddenly" boring or dull.
That's why I think balance is about doing two things. You have some elements of design that are dictated by aesthetics, regardless of the impact for game balance. Then you use your leeway on other elements to make the game balanced given those set elements.

Some UAs were clearly dictated by aesthetics and not balance. That only means care needs to be taken to buff the right elements to keep it all balanced, not that those things should be abandoned.

 

[Mustakrakish]

If buffing Liberty makes honor/piety less viable, then also buff honor/piety.

In general buffing 3 trees is better than nerfing 1 because that makes the choices more significant. (unless culture is too powerful.. THEN we should talk about nerfing tradition instead of buffing the others)

Agreed. The policies are designed to be good, desirable things. We don't want to nerf them into the ground to the point that they all feel "meh" (isn't that one of the complaints with the vanilla game when it was first released?).

Agreed. My points exactly.

I disagree with you on all fronts.

The game shouldn't be "balanced" around casuals who can't re-evaluate facts.

Buffing liberty, as you suggest, will make current unviable honor/piety openers even less viable.

If something needs to be nerfed - it needs to be nerfed, no need to buff everything else to "match" it. Monarchy needs to be nerfed, clearly OP in anything bigger than 2p game while it has to be situational, best in about 20-30% of cases.

I agree, the developers should go to the "pro's" for advice on how to balance the game. They should be listening to people like Tommynt, Merle, Yoruus etc... Casual players should be completely ignored if they want this game to be balanced for fair play. The game should be balanced around high levels of competitive play and not steam rolling the AI with OP abilities that are completely absurd.

Well look at you hardcore pro experts... both emerging last year.

The whole using of "casual" and "hardcore" when it comes to such a game as Civilization is fascinating. What exactly makes one "casual" in civ... amount of hours sank in? Difficulty level? Extend of micromanagement? Ah, nevermind, this conversation is off-topic and leads nowhere.

On topic: KrikkitTwo and megabearsfan said it. It's about making the choices significant. When the choices are all really good in their own way, that's when it gets interesting. Not when all choices are meh or somewhat decent. Of course some minor nerfing may be done to match the buffed trees.
Look at vanilla in the first months after release and how the game got better eventually as it came along to BNW... If you try to look at it in a nutshell, big problem was insignificance of choices (policies all weak / improvements weak / building weak etc.) and people of course talked about it a lot. And what made it better in the end compared to vanilla post release (along with other stuff that makes the game what it is now)? Making stuff matter/significant (policies - improvements - buildings etc.) We don't have such low tile improvement values, such underwhelming policies, buildings etc.

Just give Liberty an extra trade route, perhaps in the opener (much earlier than Monarchy, but still have to build a caravan or cargo ship). That should address the Trad/Lib gold gap (the gold from Monarchy and from the trade route will both rise during the course of the game). And, at least on higher difficulties, the trade route will provide a modest science boost, as a partial counterweight to Tradition's growth bonuses.

The easiest nerf to Tradition, that would do the least damage to the tree, would be for the finisher's free aqueducts to appear only when you've researched Engineering. It would provide a modest disincentive to mindlessly beeline Education, and would be consistent with how Legalism works.

Sounds reasonable.

 

[CraigMak]

I don't think Piety needs to be on the same level as the other three. I see it as a second generation tree, that just happens to be available early. You might get Maya or Arabia where you can ensure a first religion, strong faith, and your choice of reformation belief, but Piety is not about the foundation of your empire. (Or if it is, it should involve signalling that you will be on the weak side early on, like playing possum.)

Add to that, there's the fact the game has its aesops, among them that war is not profitable, science is king. I don't think you could get the actual developers to put out a game where science isn't trump, because they want it to be. So Honor being lacking is another inevitability, at least so long as Honor is "the war tree".
And hey, if Honor were any good, that would make fast expand harder.

I adore KrikkitTwo's idea for national wonders.

edit:


I agree, but then you come upon the aesthetic question. Yes, games should be balanced and competitively deep, but that can lead away from what is aesthetically pleasing. Competitive balance is better ("gameplay > realism"), but there's a tipping point where a video/card/board game is "suddenly" boring or dull.
That's why I think balance is about doing two things. You have some elements of design that are dictated by aesthetics, regardless of the impact for game balance. Then you use your leeway on other elements to make the game balanced given those set elements.

Some UAs were clearly dictated by aesthetics and not balance. That only means care needs to be taken to buff the right elements to keep it all balanced, not that those things should be abandoned.

I believe that making the game fair and balanced should be first and foremost on the developer's minds. Making the game fun, aesthetic, appealing and engaging will naturally fall into place. The graphics/sound effects department can take care of that stuff anywhere it's lacking as well.

Look at a strategy game like Starcraft and see that a game can be both very appealing while at the same time fair/balanced at the competitive pro level. The developers cater to the needs of high level players, balancing overpowered strategies that sprout up. The cries of casual gamers that don't have a clue what they're talking about are completely ignored for the sake of a truly balanced and competitive game.

The polar opposite would be a game like World of Warcraft where every whim of the casual gamer was met without question. The result is a horrible steaming pile of garbage where anyone with 1 hour per day can become a God at the game. Leveling became far too easy and mindless chimps could defeat instances by randomly mashing the keyboard.

 

[layelaye]

maybe give liberty a +1 happy per luxury, with the faster workers. right now liberty lacks in gold / happy / food. granted it shouldent get food as it is about going wide but its happy isnt high enough. a +1 happy per lux would encourage you to settle good locations with new lux more often.

 

[CraigMak]

Agreed. My points exactly.





Well look at you hardcore pro experts... both emerging last year.

The whole using of "casual" and "hardcore" when it comes to such a game as Civilization is fascinating. What exactly makes one "casual" in civ... amount of hours sank in? Difficulty level? Extend of micromanagement? Ah, nevermind, this conversation is off-topic and leads nowhere.

Sounds reasonable.

I don't recall claiming to be one of the "pro's". I stated the names of three of the top players in the world. Their opinions on balance should be valued over others including myself.

The casuals are those who don't play multiplayer at all or people who don't play enough to understand the intricate mechanics of the game. If you are able to defeat/challenge the likes of those 3 I listed you are in fact a pro. If you play vs AI only or multiplayer once a week, you don't have the experience or understanding to be making balance recommendations.

Although some things are so appallingly unbalanced that even the most inexperienced person can recognize it. Such as Spain getting 1000's of gold/20 faith per turn or Attila spamming horse archers and dominating everything or Babylon getting a scientist mega early in the game. The list go's on and on.

 

[Wodan]

The casuals are those who don't play multiplayer at all or people who don't play enough to understand the intricate mechanics of the game. If you are able to defeat/challenge the likes of those 3 I listed you are in fact a pro. If you play vs AI only or multiplayer once a week, you don't have the experience or understanding to be making balance recommendations.

If we want a game that only pros play, then by all means let's take only the viewpoints of the "pros" into account.

The game needs to have appeal to a number of different target audiences. (We can try to list them if that's beneficial to the discussion.) The viewpoints of the "pros" are not going to be the best, nor should they be the only, input gathered to improve Civ5 or to design Civ6. And that includes the OP / "how to fix Liberty" or other policies.

That said, I'm the first person to say that Civ5 has some big imbalances in game design. It certainly could be improved, both in concrete terms, and in terms of the design process (to get the proper inputs/viewpoints so the decisions can be made).

But I don't agree with your suggested approach at all, Craig. That's like designing a new sedan using race car drivers as the only input.

 

[kamex]

The exploit is to build the monument early, to get to Legalism all the more quickly, and then sell the monument 1 turn before you take Legalism. You get a bit of gold and save 1 gpt for one turn, and the next turn you get your free monument.

Don't get it.... Sounds like a waste of hammers...

 

[Light Cleric]

I don't recall claiming to be one of the "pro's". I stated the names of three of the top players in the world. Their opinions on balance should be valued over others including myself.

The casuals are those who don't play multiplayer at all or people who don't play enough to understand the intricate mechanics of the game. If you are able to defeat/challenge the likes of those 3 I listed you are in fact a pro. If you play vs AI only or multiplayer once a week, you don't have the experience or understanding to be making balance recommendations.

Although some things are so appallingly unbalanced that even the most inexperienced person can recognize it. Such as Spain getting 1000's of gold/20 faith per turn or Attila spamming horse archers and dominating everything or Babylon getting a scientist mega early in the game. The list go's on and on.

Well guys I guess we all suck and just need to go home and stop making balance suggestions because we don't have time to multiplayer 24/7. You have to play multiplayer to balance single-player, too. Sorry I wasted people's time

I'm with Calouste earlier, part of the reason I don't multiplayer is because that kind of sentiment...I'd go play LoL or something if I wanted to deal with that kind of crap. I'd like to learn because MP is a different beast but I don't want to deal with people's internet egos.

 

[mrwho]

How about reducing civilian unit maintenance cost in Citizenship?

I think Piety and Honor are far more worthy of attention, though.

 

[Ninakoru]

If we want a game that only pros play, then by all means let's take only the viewpoints of the "pros" into account.

...

But I don't agree with your suggested approach at all, Craig. That's like designing a new sedan using race car drivers as the only input.

It shouldn't be that way. There's always a middle ground for everything.

You could design many things using aesthetics/ fun/ coherence as main priorities, THEN, once the game is played for some time by the top players, gather their feedback and make some adjustements in order to avoid the "always this choice" possibilities.

On the MP thing, I have played MP a few times, but is not my preference. On ALL the games I played, people end up leaving at any point before industrial. Is a pain to actually start a game full of people, takes much time to get all the slots filled... And MP in this game is in bare bones.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

How about reducing civilian unit maintenance cost in Citizenship?

I think Piety and Honor are far more worthy of attention, though.

That would be a great idea (civilian units maintenance free?)

 

[Paszczak]

Changing the way National Wonders work would already be a huge buff to Liberty. As things stand right now, settling after turn 60 is often counter productive because it delays <insert national wonder crucial for your VC> by X turns.

Why not have National Wonders become better every time a specific building is built in one of my cities instead of being impossible to build as long as I haven't reached a certain number?

Example:
1) National College doesn't require a Library in every city and has a static cost, let's say 250 .
2) National College may only be built in a city with a Library, so at least one Library is required.
3) It gives 3 and 10% more immediately in the city it's been built.
4) Every time a library is built somewhere in the empire, NC gains extra 1 and 5% more in the city it's been built.

We've solved a number os issues with these changes:
1) Rushing NC and libraries in 1 cities is no longer the only winning strategy, in fact it might not even be optimal anymore.
2) Give the player incentive to build National Wonders he normally wouldn't (Hermitage in a non-culture game...).
3) Give the player incentive to Annex capture cities and build Libraries, Workshops etc. when he normally wouldn't.
4) And most importantly - give the player incentive to actually settle/conquer cities with Liberty, as every new city will boost the Capital in the long run and make it competitive with Tradition's front-loaded boosts.

 

[manu-fan]

That would be a great idea (civilian units maintenance free?)

I'll second that. Maybe tone it down a bit and say '5 civilian units are free'.

 

[kaspergm]

Why not have National Wonders become better every time a specific building is built in one of my cities instead of being impossible to build as long as I haven't reached a certain number?

Example:
1) National College doesn't require a Library in every city and has a static cost, let's say 250 .
2) National College may only be built in a city with a Library, so at least one Library is required.
3) It gives 3 and 10% more immediately in the city it's been built.
4) Every time a library is built somewhere in the empire, NC gains extra 1 and 5% more in the city it's been built.

The idea of the national wonder not requiring the building present in every city is sympathetic - after all, the national wonder doesn't stop functioning when you found a new city AFTER the wonder is build which doesn't have the building, so it's completely nonsense that you can't build the wonder without the building in all cities.

BUT the way you suggest obviously wouldn't work at all. +5% in city with NC for each library build in empire? That's like the ultimate free-pass for ICS! Build 10 cities and have +50% science in capitol. Build 20 cities and have +100% science in capitol! Build 30 cities and have +150% science in capitol!! The bigger the better, no matter how many cities and how poor those cities are, which obviously doesn't work.

What you could do instead is have NC provide a science bonus of 50% x [number of cities with libraries]/[total number of cities]. What this would do is top the bonus of NC at 50% (when all cities have libraries) but will be less than this if only some cities have libraries (+40% if 4/5 cities have libraries for instance). Benefit of this would be to allow NC to be build at any time in a city with library, however I'm not sure that this would be a benefit for wide empires, because while it would allow for earlier NC, it would also mean that each time you found a new city, NC gets to work less efficiently until you get the library build, which means that founding a new city will actually give you a science reduction. If this was done, one would probably have to re-think the per-city science penalty!

 

[tommynt]

Well guys I guess we all suck and just need to go home and stop making balance suggestions because we don't have time to multiplayer 24/7. You have to play multiplayer to balance single-player, too. Sorry I wasted people's time

LC totaly missed the point I think.
Isnt it TOTALY OBVIOUS that its impossible to make good balance suggestions if u dont even understand game mechanics?

I m no engineer, I dont tell people how to build bridges, but when engineers try tell me how to improve accounting thats not helpful either. U need good insight to existing status to improve things.

I'm with Calouste earlier, part of the reason I don't multiplayer is because that kind of sentiment...I'd go play LoL or something if I wanted to deal with that kind of crap. I'd like to learn because MP is a different beast but I don't want to deal with people's internet egos.

judging something before even trying, eh?
If u dont like comunicate with other people u can just turn off chat.

On topic.
I dont think liberty need buffs but tradition needs nerfs!
Espacially Monarchy is way too powerful. Thhats 20 happynes and like 50 gold in late game. No other sp is even close to as strong.
Another slight nerf to Tradition might be to make settlers not buyable and maybe even cost slightly more hammers.
And remove either the 15% or the free Aqueducte from finishing tree. Either of both is strong enough allready.

Suddenly u got a much better balanced game and sp gets also a bit more challenging as small Tradition empires dont dominate ais so easily.

The one buff to liberty i d like see is to make the free great person really free and not increasing count, like that its way too weak for a tree finisher - just comapre it to traidtion finisher -

Liberty is fine as it is compared to other trees, just tradition stands out too much, like every sp there is great and more powerful as comparable sp in other trees.

 

[CraigMak]

If we want a game that only pros play, then by all means let's take only the viewpoints of the "pros" into account.

The game needs to have appeal to a number of different target audiences. (We can try to list them if that's beneficial to the discussion.) The viewpoints of the "pros" are not going to be the best, nor should they be the only, input gathered to improve Civ5 or to design Civ6. And that includes the OP / "how to fix Liberty" or other policies.

That said, I'm the first person to say that Civ5 has some big imbalances in game design. It certainly could be improved, both in concrete terms, and in terms of the design process (to get the proper inputs/viewpoints so the decisions can be made).

But I don't agree with your suggested approach at all, Craig. That's like designing a new sedan using race car drivers as the only input.

No, your race car driver analogy is completely flawed. Going to the experienced pros for advice would be more akin to going to experts on cars such as the writers of Car and Driver magazine, automotive enthusiasts and those people who have spent the most time driving the sedan. IE the guys with 500K miles on their odometers.

If you want to improve your product you go to those who have used it the MOST and understand it the best. Not some casual user who has no understanding of its shortcomings or even understand how it works.

The reality of the situation is that after balancing the game according to the pros, the casual players probably would barely even notice a thing because they didn't even recognize that there was a problem in the first place. It's business as usual for them randomly doing whatever they feel like doing in the game. While the pros reap the benefits of a fully balanced product.

Look at Starcraft, one of the most successful games in existence. It is 100% balanced around the pros and is obviously not only played by pros. Your analogies and logic are inherently flawed on fundamental levels of thought.

You hold your viewpoint only because of the fact that you are defending the casual player group which you are a member of.