How to Fix Liberty

[CraigMak]

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.



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.

I agree with everything Tommy says here. Casual players have no understanding of the game and therefor can not see what's wrong with it. The "free" GP from liberty counting against your GP count is one of my pet peeves. I always finish liberty AFTER earning a natural GP because of that. It forces me to finish liberty later than normal.

Monarchy also is quite OP, free aqueducts a bit too much.

Making settlers cost more so that the +50%/free settler is more novel, an incredible idea. 2 popping a settler with tradition would suddenly seem a lot less appealing if it costs way more hammers.

 

[GhostSalsa]

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

Casual vs pro distinction doesn't even hold up. Discussing different types of players is meaningless without defining what players want from the game.

"I'm a pro." So? What do you want from the game? To be harder? It's already harder if you want it to be. Just don't use Tradition or Liberty or Rationalism. Don't bribe AIs. Don't use broken mechanics. I don't know why this has to be pointed out.

A lot of gamers you dismiss as "casual" already to these things. They know how to make the game hard. Or, they truly just aren't good at the game. Either way they engage with flaws in the game mechanics that you don't. "What's it like to play when you can't buy settlers and steal workers on turn 15." Deity players can't answer this! Yet you want the devs to take away these exploits and hand you a new product without listening to people who already play with these limits. Haha.

Casual players are exploring aspects of the current game balance you don't see. They are play-testing your hypothetical perfect single-player game for you by encountering the rough edges of playing the AI on an even footing. Like the way the new warmonger penalty punishes limited conquest excessively, and ruins games when you try to play from behind via warmongering.

It's more efficient to take in all player experiences at once. You want a harder game. "Casual" players are already experiencing what that is like.

 

[Resipsa]

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.

Except that SC2 isn't balanced 100% around pros, they address concerns that their player base has with certain strategies being too easy in the lower leagues as well as for diversity in play at all levels. For example they are testing whether blink needs a larger cooldown to combat blink-allins that are too good. Pros can quickly identify a blink play with a reaper first opening and can easily handle it with bunkers and SCV pulls.


The analogy here is that you shouldn't have to open Tradition every game.

 

[Wodan]

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.

And so, qualitative anecdotes completely replace quantitative statistics?

Feedback from the die-hard user has its place. But by no means does it replace feedback from all the other audiences.

And, you're forgetting quite a few audiences, such as:

• Casual users: the ones who pay the bills
• Industry (reviewers): who set the tone of the product rollout and have a huge impact upon its reception in the marketplace
• Distributors and retailers
• Design experts (skill and experience in designing good games, and I don't mean programmers and graphic artists/modellers)

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.

There's some truth in this. But, the pros still lack quite a bit in what is needed to design a good game, with an extremely narrow focus. They have little to no formal training, and have little to no knowledge of the other audiences, in general.

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.

Starcraft balances THREE civs against each other. There is quite a bit of difference balancing 40+ against each other, with all the interactions and other elements.

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.

If true, then you should be able to rebut my arguments. And, please don't presume to know me... you have no idea my experience, skills, and what "group" I am a member of.

Bottom line, designing a game with input from only one of the audiences would be extremely foolish. That said, as I stated previously, Civ5 could definitely use some better game balancing, and your "pros" would be good sources of feedback. So would game design experts as well as others.

 

[CraigMak]

Casual vs pro distinction doesn't even hold up. Discussing different types of players is meaningless without defining what players want from the game.

"I'm a pro." So? What do you want from the game? To be harder? It's already harder if you want it to be. Just don't use Tradition or Liberty or Rationalism. Don't bribe AIs. Don't use broken mechanics. I don't know why this has to be pointed out.

A lot of gamers you dismiss as "casual" already to these things. They know how to make the game hard. Or, they truly just aren't good at the game. Either way they engage with flaws in the game mechanics that you don't. "What's it like to play when you can't buy settlers and steal workers on turn 15." Deity players can't answer this! Yet you want the devs to take away these exploits and hand you a new product without listening to people who already play with these limits. Haha.

Casual players are exploring aspects of the current game balance you don't see. They are play-testing your hypothetical perfect single-player game for you by encountering the rough edges of playing the AI on an even footing. Like the way the new warmonger penalty punishes limited conquest excessively, and ruins games when you try to play from behind via warmongering.

It's more efficient to take in all player experiences at once. You want a harder game. "Casual" players are already experiencing what that is like.

You are wrong here. It is not about making the game harder, it is about making the game balanced. So that one policy tree is not superior to the other or one unit is not the free win unit. No one cares about making the game harder when it's human vs human.

Also, the pros have spent vastly more hours than any casual player experimenting in SP and MP. They are pros because they have done everything and tried everything both in SP and MP. Some causal player randomly clicking about a few times a week can't compare to their levels of experimentation.

 

[Wodan]

So that one policy tree is not superior to the other or one unit is not the free win unit.

Define "superior" please?

Also, the pros have spent vastly more hours than any casual player experimenting in SP and MP. They are pros because they have done everything and tried everything both in SP and MP. Some causal player randomly clicking about a few times a week can't compare to their levels of experimentation.

You're wrong about the "pros". Most of them focus on finding and perfecting exploitative strategies, not experimenting with every conceivable permutation of gameplay (as you claim).

 

[kaspergm]

"I'm a pro." So? What do you want from the game? To be harder? It's already harder if you want it to be. Just don't use Tradition or Liberty or Rationalism. Don't bribe AIs. Don't use broken mechanics. I don't know why this has to be pointed out.

You are wrong here. It is not about making the game harder, it is about making the game balanced. So that one policy tree is not superior to the other or one unit is not the free win unit. No one cares about making the game harder when it's human vs human.

I think the topic is sort of moving in an unconstructive direction, discussing who's pro and who's not pro doesn't really lead anywhere.

The discussion here is not about difficulty. The point is we want to have multiple options and all of them being viable. Not necessarily 100 % equally viable all the times, but all of them being viable more than just a marginal number of times. When Tradition is so good, we don't get that choice, because it limits the game to being always Tradition. Playing houserules like "no Tradition" also doesn't fix the problem, because then there's still no choice, the difference simply being that now we never go Tradition where before we always went Tradition. What we want to hit is sometimes Tradition.

 

[tommynt]

Feedback from the die-hard user has its place. But by no means does it replace feedback from all the other audiences.

Feedback obviously is needed from every1 if devs want improve the game.

But balancing the game can be only done by people who understand the balance of the game.

Also very often bad players look just for buffs to make things easier, whats usually not good for the longplayability of a game.

 

[Vitruvius]

You are wrong here. It is not about making the game harder, it is about making the game balanced. So that one policy tree is not superior to the other or one unit is not the free win unit. No one cares about making the game harder when it's human vs human.

Also, the pros have spent vastly more hours than any casual player experimenting in SP and MP. They are pros because they have done everything and tried everything both in SP and MP. Some causal player randomly clicking about a few times a week can't compare to their levels of experimentation.

I agree with CraigMak that the game needs to be balanced around Multiplayer, however few people play it. I barely multiplayer myself. All good games are balanced for multiplayer. It is the only way to balance the game because it is free of AI exploits and AI handicaps. Balancing for Single player does not make sense because there are 8 difficulty levels and an AI to think of. It is impossible to come up with a solution that fits everything.

 

[Calouste]

I think the topic is sort of moving in an unconstructive direction, discussing who's pro and who's not pro doesn't really lead anywhere.

The discussion here is not about difficulty. The point is we want to have multiple options and all of them being viable. Not necessarily 100 % equally viable all the times, but all of them being viable more than just a marginal number of times. When Tradition is so good, we don't get that choice, because it limits the game to being always Tradition. Playing houserules like "no Tradition" also doesn't fix the problem, because then there's still no choice, the difference simply being that now we never go Tradition where before we always went Tradition. What we want to hit is sometimes Tradition.

I think we can keep the discussion about who's a pro and who isn't really short.

Anyone who actually makes money of playing Civ5, please put up your hand.

 

[Resipsa]

Starcraft balances THREE civs against each other. There is quite a bit of difference balancing 40+ against each other, with all the interactions and other elements.

The devs aren't trying to balance the civs against each other. Its 2 or to a lesser extent 4 Social Policy trees against each other.

 

[CraigMak]

And so, qualitative anecdotes completely replace quantitative statistics?

Feedback from the die-hard user has its place. But by no means does it replace feedback from all the other audiences.

And, you're forgetting quite a few audiences, such as:

• Casual users: the ones who pay the bills
• Industry (reviewers): who set the tone of the product rollout and have a huge impact upon its reception in the marketplace
• Distributors and retailers
• Design experts (skill and experience in designing good games, and I don't mean programmers and graphic artists/modellers)

Most of these groups in your list do not care about the game's playability. Their focus is on profitability and appeal to the lowest common denominator. If the design experts were such experts how could they possibly believe that Spain getting 2000 gold/20faith per turn is balanced? How could they be so foolish as to think Attila's horse archers are balanced? How could they create a unit that can move, shoot, then run away making it virtually invincible(camels/keshiek)? How could they come up with the Great Wall and think that is not horribly OP to the point it is banned in every duel/teamer ever. These flaws are so blatantly obvious, even a simian monkey could see them.

Clearly game balance and game play is not what's on these people's minds.

There's some truth in this. But, the pros still lack quite a bit in what is needed to design a good game, with an extremely narrow focus. They have little to no formal training, and have little to no knowledge of the other audiences, in general.

I never said that the pros should be designing the game from the ground up. They should be listened to about game play mechanics and balance which is what they know. The pros know how the game works better than the designers. They are being subjected to every aspect of the game for countless hours. They have the knowledge and experience necessary to understand the implications of everything that was programmed.

Starcraft balances THREE civs against each other. There is quite a bit of difference balancing 40+ against each other, with all the interactions and other elements.

Balancing Starcraft is actually a vastly harder task than a game like Civ 5. This is because the 3 races function in completely different ways. In Civ, all the civs function the same and 95% of the units are identical. It's not hard to balance Civs that make exactly the same units 95% of the time.

What's sad is that there are very few unique units in the game and out of that small number they made quite a few horribly OP. Imagine balancing Civs that operated under completely different mechanics from one another.

Protoss warp things in, Zerg spawn units from larva, Terran hard build everything in buildings. The difference between the mechanics of the races are immense. The fact that they can be even remotely balanced is an incredible testament to Blizzard's effort and ability.

 

[Mutineer]

You got off topic. I still personally believe that the only thin need to change is to remove border grow bonus from tradition. That why it is always good to take traditioning opening, it just give too mach. 3 cut/turn + border grow bonus. Remove later and all starting policy trees would be ballanced. Border grow is the main problem for non traditioning openings.

 

[Calouste]

You got off topic. I still personally believe that the only thin need to change is to remove border grow bonus from tradition. That why it is always good to take traditioning opening, it just give too mach. 3 cut/turn + border grow bonus. Remove later and all starting policy trees would be ballanced. Border grow is the main problem for non traditioning openings.

IMO the border growth bonus is useful, but overrated. Cultural border expansion is heavily weighted to expanding to flat land or ocean with only a little regard for the actual value of the tiles, specially in the third ring. For example, if you're coastal, your city will pick the resource-less ocean tiles in the second ring before it starts thinking about expanding to a third ring hill or forest. If you want useful tiles soon, you have to buy them.

 

[adwcta]

Tommy and Craig have got one thing right.

You need to have a very good understanding of game mechanics to have good feedback on balance. "Pros" who innovate strategies, refine turn times, delve into the math actually know what all of the effects are to every change.

I do think that even if you think the game should be balanced for Prince and not Deity, that you should be able to appreciate that people who regularly beat deity, and more importantly, add to the discussion (not just copy strategies, but refine them or analyze mathematically, or innovate), and that their evaluations of what is balanced probably considers more factors than most other people.

Everyone has their own biases, but I don't think its wrong to think that people who can beat the game on the highest difficulties, in various ways, will be in a better position to evaluate balance. I think a prince player can validly identify that something is not balanced... But he's in a poorer position to evaluate what should be done to fix it than his deity playing clone.

Now, fun... thematic game design, diversity, etc are all democratic. But balance... That's different. You need brains, experience, creativity, and skill.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Tabarnak]

Civ5 ''best way to play'' is around happiness and growth. These 2 basic things are the bread and butter of science, gold, average production(per city, not the total).

So, if you have to cut down somewhere you have to modify or eliminate Monarchy by something else and the Tradition finisher. These 2 things are the center of the ''problem''.

Otherwise, you have to add happiness and /or growth somewhere else in the other ancient trees.

Fact is : Tradition>Liberty.

Problem is: Happiness and Growth>everything else, because the 2 most powerful things systematically bring you all the rest over time.

 

[CraigMak]

Tommy and Craig have got one thing right.

You need to have a very good understanding of game mechanics to have good feedback on balance. "Pros" who innovate strategies, refine turn times, delve into the math actually know what all of the effects are to every change.

I do think that even if you think the game should be balanced for Prince and not Deity, that you should be able to appreciate that people who regularly beat deity, and more importantly, add to the discussion (not just copy strategies, but refine them or analyze mathematically, or innovate), and that their evaluations of what is balanced probably considers more factors than most other people.

Everyone has their own biases, but I don't think its wrong to think that people who can beat the game on the highest difficulties, in various ways, will be in a better position to evaluate balance. I think a prince player can validly identify that something is not balanced... But he's in a poorer position to evaluate what should be done to fix it than his deity playing clone.

Now, fun... thematic game design, diversity, etc are all democratic. But balance... That's different. You need brains, experience, creativity, and skill.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Yes, however I am not simply talking about people who beat the AI on Deity. I am referring to people who spend massive amounts of time beating other human beings who are highly skilled at the game. This is where real balance issues are revealed. Because the human opponent is going to exploit those imbalances and defeat you if they can in ways the AI will never try because it's stupider than an 8 year old child.

 

[CraigMak]

You got off topic. I still personally believe that the only thin need to change is to remove border grow bonus from tradition. That why it is always good to take traditioning opening, it just give too mach. 3 cut/turn + border grow bonus. Remove later and all starting policy trees would be ballanced. Border grow is the main problem for non traditioning openings.

While border growth is quite strong, the most OP part of tradition is Monarchy giving truly limitless amounts of gold and happiness as well as massive amounts of growth bonuses being awarded once the tree is finished.

 

[layelaye]

Cut down monarchy to 1/3 and make trad's bonuses apply to 3 cities and require engineering. done.

 

[Ninakoru]

I think we can keep the discussion about who's a pro and who isn't really short.

Anyone who actually makes money of playing Civ5, please put up your hand.

Well, we all know what a professional gamer is, but the term "pro" is also used to point at top players...

On topic:

I assume I am a bit of a balance freak, but lets get things clear. This game would be near impossible to get a pefect balance point. And there are so many factors that affect every single choice is hard to get all of them in the same range, however the game as it stands now have a grave unbalance issue, ancient policies being on the top of the list, to the point there's still unbalance even if it's a MP game with no AIs involved.

You reach a minimal balance point when at least each ancient policy could work better than the other if some specific circumstances are met. Even in this situation the game doesn't stand up.

Examples:

- I get egypt as neighbor, he takes up all the city spots i wanted, and wonderwhore like mad. Moreover we are isolated and I could crush him early with not additional diplo penalties. What policy I should get if I want their cities? Tradition or Liberty (should be honor).

- I have little space to expand, and want badly some early wonders to my strategy. Policy? Tradition (here is fine however).

- I get a great faith panteon oportunity, and I could get a great religion with some work. Policy? Tradition (should be piety).

- I get lots of land to expand with lots of resources and no nearby civs. Policy? Tradition or Liberty (should be Liberty the uncontested option).

- I always play on deity... policy? Tradition near always, maybe Liberty on specific circumstances (should be much less dependant on the game difficulty)

This extends on many other game options, like not using specialist slots for any other thing other than scientist and ocasional ingeneers, always pledge to protect CSs, always going science over anything...