Improvements

[Thalassicus]

Ahh I didn't notice the +3 for Old Faithful. They really should have that in the hover tooltip...

Here's my thoughts when comparing them side-by-side:

5 - Krakatoa
2 3 - Old Faithful
2 5 - Barringer Crater (was 2, 3)
2 3 - Grand Mesa
2 1 1 2 - Great Barrier Reef
2 3 - Fountain of Youth (was 10 happy, plus healing promo)
2 5 - Rock of Gibraltar
4 1 - Mt. Fuji (was 5, 1)
4 100 discovery, - El Dorado (was 5, 500)
8 - Cerro de Potosi (was 10)

I think with Fountain/Dorado they were going for mythically profound bonuses, but realism and balance would both make these more reasonable in the realm of a particularly healthy hot springs, and rich easily-conquered citystate, respectively.

 

[Thalassicus]

(double post)

 

[Tomice]

Aren't the "mythical" NWs less likely to appear than the others? While they are clearly OP in vanilla, they could be a bit stronger than the others.

Also, some of them are worth working (Gibraltar, C. de Potosi), others aren't (Fountain of Youth, Old Faithful). Maybe all should be equally work-worthy?

 

[Ahriman]

I'd agree that making every natural wonder roughly equally valuable is the right way to go, but I don't think each has to be individually equal for tile-yield, its ok to have non-yield-based bonuses, like first to discover, or happiness from within-borders.

The changes above seem OK, except Cerro de Potosi is still too much, I'd say ~7 gold at the most.

I should add though: the things that really stops me from using this mod are:

Forts deal 1 damage to adjacent enemies and cost 1/turn maintenance (same as roads).

The AI can't use forts effectively and it can't understand the tile risk threat, so this ends up being an exploit.

+1 on Mines and Lumbermills with Engineering.

This ends up providing too much production too early, and solidifies the advantage that lumbermills have over mines.
I'd say a mine yield increase at say dynamite is fine, but engineering is far too early for 4 yield.

+1 on freshwater farms with Fertilizer.

Too much late-game food, and makes river-farms too much of a no-brainer, and makes river-hill-farms far too powerful.

Without these, I'd use this mod, but these ones mess things up for me too much.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree completely with you about Cerro de Potosi, I had only compared that to the one above it and you're right that 10 is too much. I'll change it to 7.

About forts, are you sure that's really the best reasoning? By the same rationale Citadels should be removed. I feel the better solution is for the AI to be fixed, because regardless of what's done with forts the AI still won't have a clue about Citadels.

Slow production has been a recurring community complaint about Civ V since the beginning, something many mods address, like the Economy Mod. Rather than just implement a flat production modifier though, I feel the bonus here is more interesting. Engineering is not an easy tech to get. It has a lot of prerequisites and unlocks no units, plus lumbermills do take a while to build, so you don't get the full effect for some time. Without a buff to this tech, I'd likely go for Civil Service / Chivalry every time instead, both of which unlock powerful units. Dynamite makes sense realistically, but from a gameplay perspective it would make the tech too powerful. It's already beelined to in every game due to Artillery's presence there.

The Fertilizer buff to farms, plus the buff to granaries, are both nerfs to Maritime city-states. The farm and mine buffs are also nerfs to trading posts. It's difficult to tackle these problems directly because of the low units of measure of the Maritime bonus and trading posts (Maritime can't provide half a food).

Considered independently of these cross-nerfs, riverside farms are only useful to a point: cities generally work a maximum of a dozen or so useful tiles when placed in efficient, close proximity. Since specialists have more limited usefulness in CiV than earlier versions in the series, increasing food past the level necessary to reach this population doesn't have much value, and it's better to replace excess farms at this point with trading posts or mines.

All this said... I've been thinking about giving trading posts a +1 buff possibly at Economics, and might move the +1 buff for Lumbermills to Machinery.

 

[Ahriman]

About forts, are you sure that's really the best reasoning? By the same rationale Citadels should be removed.

Citadels are rare in practice, whereas forts can be spammed anywhere.
And the AI does a terrible job of dealing with Citadels too.

But an AI that can deal with Citadels ("go around") might still be really terrible with forts that can be spammed everywhere (you can't go around!).

The Fertilizer buff to farms, plus the buff to granaries, are both nerfs to Maritime city-states.

When MCS are a problem, the right solution is to fix them, not to change the tile yield of every freshwater farm. 5-yield tiles are too much in this game.
4 food is already a massive amount; by adding extra food to farms, you solidify the advantage that hills and plains have over grassland/flood plain even further, making these really bad tiles.

The only way to get grassland/floodplain to work is if food from other sources are *scarce*, and so the extra food from grassland is really actually meaningful in order to achieve decent city size.

I'm ok with the smokehouse boosting cows and deer and sheep, those were too weak, though I think the right solution would have come later in the game. The ancient and classical eras are far too early for 3 food/2 hammer/1 gold river-sheep.

Dynamite makes sense realistically, but from a gameplay perspective it would make the tech too powerful. It's already beelined to in every game due to Artillery's presence there.

This is true, but can be partly solved by a) Removing the ability to beeline (which is mostly done already), b) nerfing artillery (the fact that they're such a dominant no-brainer means they're not balanced right) and IMO ideally splitting dynamite into two techs, a civilian explosives tech and a military Indirect Fire or Breach-Loading Guns tech, or whatever.
But I can see that may be beyond the scope of this mod.

(Maritime can't provide half a food)

Are you sure?
MCS with Siam seem to be providing +1.5 food?

If its an interim solution until you can tweak MCS, I can understand that, but its not a very good solution IMO; you're fixing one problem with an even more radical change, one that can potentially allow a single tile to feed 3 specialists.

The right way to boost specialists is to boost Great People IMO, NOT to try to make specialist yields competitive with tile yields.
You should compare specialist yields to tile yields including the GPPs; GPPs should be the main reason to go for specialists. If thats not the case, then the problem is that the great people aren't valuable enough yet.

Considered independently of these cross-nerfs, riverside farms are only useful to a point: cities generally work a maximum of a dozen or so useful tiles when placed in efficient, close proximity

Again this is the wrong solution IMO.
You should not take for granted that placing cities in "efficient, close proximity" is desirable. You should try to make it so that cities can work a lot of tiles, and that super-mega cities are valuable.
If big cities aren't worth getting, the response should be to make them worth getting, not to say that its ok for tiles to have incredibly high tile yields.

The more you boost tiles, you keep also weakening the GP improvements.

I think the goal should be to try to make 1 gold ~= 1 hammer ~= 1 food, and then every tile can have a base yield of 2, an increase of 1 with an improvement, and an increase of 1 with a tech. And bonus tiles (wheat, sheep, etc.) should have a tile yield 1 greater than a normal one.
Or possibly have 2 techs that boost them, to a final yield of 5.
But the total yield from every "good" terrain type should end up being the same (in number of resources), the differentiation should be from when they get the bonuses (eg fresh water tiles before other tiles, lumbermills before mines so there is some reward for not chopping forest-hill, etc).

I would ideally increase the cost of research agreements, and if necessary increase the cost of city state gold-purchase.

 

[Tomice]

The production boost from engineering is one of the best things this mod has achieved. Civil Service is no longer THE first medieval tech to take every time, now there are 2 main paths: CS and Engineering. Also, the added production is much desired by almost everyone here in the modding forum, and one of the first things Thal changed.

The smokehouse in its current form does wonders when trying to settle non-river, hilly regions early. Otherwise they'd be +/- useless.

 

[Ahriman]

The smokehouse in its current form does wonders when trying to settle non-river, hilly regions early

Why *should* non-river, hilly regions be desirable/valuable in the early game?
Grassland should be valuable, you should want to seek it out. The more available you make food from other sources, the weaker grassland becomes.

 

[Tomice]

Why *should* non-river, hilly regions be desirable/valuable in the early game?
Grassland should be valuable, you should want to seek it out. The more available you make food from other sources, the weaker grassland becomes.

Because the buffed sheep & co still don't allow to build a huge metropolis in mountain regions. But if you have 3-4 sheep in a cluster of 20+ hills (without a river, of course), you're at least able to create a decent production city of size 5 or such, to fill gaps in your empire - and especially your road network.

Without the upgraded pasture tiles, you'd have to rely on MCS to have a chance of settling in such a region.

I still find riverside grassland very valuable for my science cities, and farmed non-riverside grassland is still the only non-ressource tile able to provide surplus food (which is needed after the MCS nerf in the latest patch).

 

[Ahriman]

I think you missed the point; the question wasn't why should you still be able to build a reasonable city in a hilly non-river region, its why you should be able to do so *early*.

Boosts should come at roughly the same time as those from other tiles - no earlier than civil service, definitely.
I'm fine for a sheep tile with pasture + smokehouse to give 3f/2h in the medieval era, but thats too high for the ancient era.

In the early game, tiles provide 2 yield, and 3 with an improvement.
Bonus tiles should provide 3 yield, 4 with an improvement.
They shouldn't be providing 5 yield in the early game.

 

[Tomice]

In the early game, tiles provide 2 yield, and 3 with an improvement.
Bonus tiles should provide 3 yield, 4 with an improvement.
They shouldn't be providing 5 yield in the early game.

I have to admit I don't know all the ressource yields by heart, especially not vanilla compared to TBM*. But usually the +1 additional yield is a secondary effect of every ressource in vanilla, be that luxury, strategic or food.

The difference: While strat. and lux. ress. have very strong primary effects dominating city placement, food ressources have no primary function at all! They can very often be ignored completely when placing cities in vanilla.

Shouldn't the lack of a primary function justify a slighly higher yield, especially when you have to build a smokehouse first? Food ressources are still much weaker than the others.



*)"Thals's Balance Mods", we really need an abbreviation

 

[Ahriman]

usually the +1 additional yield is a secondary effect of every ressource in vanilla, be that luxury, strategic or food

I'm talking about the bonus resources here; cows, wheat, sheep, bananas, deer.

Their initial bonus is fine, their problem is that they don't receive the scaling benefits from Civil Service, Fertilizer, Steam Power, etc. so they do not retain their superior yields.

There's a similar problem with some of the luxury and strategic resources, which IMO should also retain their superior yields (though I suppose there is an argument for some resources eventually becoming less relatively valuable).

I don't think the bonus resources (ie non-strategic, non-luxury) necessarily need to be hugely game changing, but they do need to always have a tile yield that is superior to a non-bonus tile.
I don't think the bonus resources should be as important as luxury or strategic resources, they should just have the slightly higher yields, but not radically higher yields.

 

[Tomice]

I'm not sure if I understand you:

You think that food/bonus ressources are too strong in the early game but too weak in later eras (post fertilizer), because they lose their advantage over e.g. riverside tiles?

Also, we have another question of preference/philosophy here: Should food/bonus ressources be valuable?
__________________________

In vanilla, food/bonus ressources were considered too weak by many, they were largely unimportant for city placement and in some cases even weaker than standard tiles IIRC.

Thal added +1 with the smokehouse to them in the early game. Would you suggest moving this effect to a later building or would you prefer having the current smokehouse AND a lategame boost for food ressources (another building available somewhere around fertilizer maybe?)? There's not much inbetween that could be done due to the civ-typical small yield numbers.



Personally, I prefer meaningful food/bonus ressources like we have in TBM now, because I strongly believe a special tile should always be worthy. So there's no reason to change anything now, at least not in the first 3 eras, I'm not that experienced past renaissance.

Even better, though, would be a system where food ressources are treated like strat. ress., just that they allow the construction of growth-boosting buildings (similar to coal and factory). I suggested this some time ago, and some mods already implemented this.

 

[Seek]

I'm talking about the bonus resources here; cows, wheat, sheep, bananas, deer.

Their initial bonus is fine, their problem is that they don't receive the scaling benefits from Civil Service, Fertilizer, Steam Power, etc. so they do not retain their superior yields.

There's a similar problem with some of the luxury and strategic resources, which IMO should also retain their superior yields (though I suppose there is an argument for some resources eventually becoming less relatively valuable).

I don't think the bonus resources (ie non-strategic, non-luxury) necessarily need to be hugely game changing, but they do need to always have a tile yield that is superior to a non-bonus tile.
I don't think the bonus resources should be as important as luxury or strategic resources, they should just have the slightly higher yields, but not radically higher yields.

Isn't that (a slight boost for bonus resources) *exactly* what the Smokehouse provides?


I'm a little confused as to what you're arguing for here: Are you suggesting a mid-late game boost for some resources? For the Smokehouse to be moved back in the tech tree? Your earlier posts seem to contradict what you wrote here..

EDIT: Ninja'ed by Tomice - and much more eloquently I might add..

 

[Ahriman]

Sorry for the confusion.

You think that food/bonus ressources are too strong in the early game

I think they're too strong in the early game *with the smokehouse building*.
They're fine early game in vanilla.

In vanilla, grassland tile provides 2f, ->3f with farm, improved yield = 3.
In vanilla, cow tile provides 3f, -> 3f1h with pasture, improved yield = 4.
In vanilla, grassland farm gets boosted to 4f with civil service or fertilizer, -> yield =4.
At this point, the pasture is no longer superior, which is a problem.

So: solution should be to have the pasture get the bonus from civil service or fertilizer, or a similar era tech, to bring it to yield 5, but to only do so at the same tech needed to bring the farm to yield 4.

But in the mod:
Pasture cow goes to 4f1h in the ancient era with a smokehouse, for a yield of 5, long before the farm tile can even reach a yield of 3.

I think thats too much of a bonus. I think the bonus tiles should be 1 yield ahead, not 2 yield ahead at any point in the tech tree, particularly in the very early game when yields are so important, particularly food.

So what I'm suggesting is that the smokehouse boost is coming too early.
Remove the bonus from the smokehouse, and add this bonus instead to pasture tiles with civil service/fertilizer or similar era techs, to avoid tiles with a yield of 5 in the ancient/classical era.

Anyway, its not a huge deal, I don't think its game-breaking, but it can be very random; a Civ that happens to have 2 cows nearby can get a huge ancient era food boost.

 

[Tomice]

As you said: It's doubtfully game-breaking.

I might underestimate the relevance of a bit extra yield during the classical era, but since granaries have to be researched and built first and CS is often beelined, it's not such a huge timeframe. Also, apart from sheep in clustered hills regions, in my experience most cities end up having 0-2 bonus food tiles (especially if we only count "meat" tiles actually boosted by the smokehouse). It is really rare that a smokehouse is really powerful with 3 or more boosted tiles, im my games so far at least.




Oh, and thx for the compliment, Seek!

 

[Thalassicus]

I haven't really explained my primary motivation behind all these mods clearly, so perhaps this will help. As Sid famously said a game is a series of interesting decisions, and conversely if those decisions aren't interesting the game isn't either.

The purpose of the smokehouse is to make bonus resources better than the surrounding terrain in the early game.

There's some notes from the developers in this file:
\Assets\Gameplay\Lua\AssignStartingPlots.lua

They designed bonus resources to equalize terrain. The problem is, once all luxury/strategic resources are claimed, carefully selecting city placement then becomes meaningless, and a lack of choice is boring. Why carefully decide where to put cities if it doesn't matter where the city goes?

Think of it like a curve:

This mod's primary goal is to move the game towards the peak of the scale. Sometimes this means moving right by equalizing overpowered/underpowered options, sometimes it means moving left by mixing things up. Firaxis recognizes it's important to have some things on the left side of the scale, like luxury and strategic resources, and they've gone this route with natural wonders too.

It's easy and does make the game very balanced to go to the right side... many games do this with a hard-counter system of units for example. Natural wonders originally were that way. I and many people find it more fun to move things a little leftwards though, making city placement an important decision based on luxury, strategic, AND bonus resources, plus natural wonders.

The AI already prioritizes bonus resources, so this helps them a bit too (as the player knows in vanilla not to).


Along these lines, I've been thinking about natural wonders the past few days. I found it rather fun to aggressively seek out and settle the more powerful natural wonders. Instead of making them all "meh", it might be fun to both nerf the overpowered ones and buff up some of the others too:

8 - Krakatoa (was 5)
3 3 - Old Faithful (was 2, 3)
3 6 - Barringer Crater (was 2, 3)
3 5 - Grand Mesa (was 2, 3)
2 1 2 3 - Great Barrier Reef (was 2, 1, 1, 2)
2 1 5 - Rock of Gibraltar (was 2, 0, 5)
3 3 - Fountain of Youth (was 10 happy, plus healing promo)
4 2 - Mt. Fuji (was 5, 1)
5 100 discovery, - El Dorado (was 5, 500)
10 - Cerro de Potosi

The reef, fountain, fuji, dorado, and cerra are all very desirable in vanilla... the others less-so. By fiddling around with the numbers a bit I think we can get them all roughly the same in value, and about equal to luxury resources.

 

[Seek]

Along these lines, I've been thinking about natural wonders the past few days. I found it rather fun to aggressively seek out and settle the more powerful natural wonders. Instead of making them all "meh", it might be fun to both nerf the overpowered ones and buff up some of the others too:

Thanks, I was hoping you'd go this route!

 

[Thalassicus]

The real question is how should the yields be valued? This is what I've currently got... 4 = 6 = 3 etc:

"Worth" = 10 * SUMPRODUCT( inverse of weight row; quantity row )

 

[Tomice]

Thx for the in-depth explanation, Thal, it's much appreciated.

Concerning food/bonus ressources I wanted to add that civ5 has the problem of only three types of regions in gameplay terms:

- Riverside (awesome because of +1 and )
- Normal (2 base yield)
- Desert/Tundra/Snow (bad)

Cows, Fish, Sheep and such help to find "sweet" spots in the absence of rivers, at least in TBM.

All this said... I've been thinking about giving trading posts a +1 buff possibly at Economics, and might move the +1 buff for Lumbermills to Machinery.

You could also buff trading post with a naval tech if they are coastal. Humanity settled on coasts usually for transport reasons, this is hardly represented in Civ5. Also, it might be a more interesting buff to TP. Finally, limiting the TP buff to a certain tile type might be weaker if you are in doubt about the OP-ness of a TP buff.

EDIT: While typing this, I just thought how the gameplay would change if rivers would only provide +1 if you build a trading post there? no more super-yield riverside farms with 5 yield total, but still better than no river. Trading posts would actually be where one would expect villages (coast/river and maybe lake, if we want that).


_______________________


Regarding natural wonders, what about the rarity? Are all NW equally common? If not, should the rare wonders be a bit stronger? (I know too much luck involved is bad for balancing, but a little bit?)