Initial thoughts

[Ahriman]

Btw. one way to boost land trade routes versus sea ones is to increase the non-gold bonus they give.

I don't see why we would want to boost land trade routes relative to sea ones. I am really excited that sea trade is finally important, and so navies are finally important and sea dominance is finally important. We can actually finally have a British empire which gets its wealth from international trade guarded by a big fleet.

And of course, it's also historically accurate, in that sea trade was massively more important and more profitable. Land transport has always been expensive.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm happy with trade routes. They change the game in one of the most innovative ways I've seen in the Civ series. It might require a few tweaks here or there, but I want to keep trade in its unmodded state for a while.

Something important is we can only send 1 route from a source to destination (Washington to Paris), but can funnel multiple sources to one destination (Washington and NYC to Paris). It's sometimes more effective to split up our routes in the early game when distance and city count limit our options. I think we only need to cluster trade routes in a single city is if we have powerful buildings in a city like the East India Company or Colossus. Otherwise, we can just build an extra Carav/Harbor or two. This can also have a benefit if we're trying to trade with someone out of range of our primary trade city.

Say we have 2 cities in the early game Washington and New York, and our possible trade destinations are:

52 - major civ city
52 - major civ city
2 - citystate
2 - citystate

If we can build 3 trade routes, and send 2 from Washington and one from New York, we get 15 6 This is more income than sending all 3 routes from Washington. Even if we have the Caravansary in Washington, splitting up our trade gives more science.

In addition, I believe trade adds to national income, not city income. The in-city tooltip shows trade below the line separating base income from total income, indicating it is not not affected by % gold multipliers like the bank. I think it doesn't favor the capital or any other city.

I think the best approach to balance sea-vs-land trade for now is making land trade cheaper, but less profitable, so we want to switch over to sea trade once it becomes viable. The strategic decision is when to make that transition. This is basically what it's like already in BWN. I just emphasized it a little more by making the Caravan and Caravansary slightly less expensive.


@mystikx21
I agree the unmodded caravansary feels underwhelming with its high up-front cost and rare usefulness. We might build one per game, but I usually just skipped it and upgraded to sea routes. I'm really happy with the exotic food bonus on it (citrus, truffles, banana). I was trying to find a home for those resources for a year. They don't really fit anywhere, so the caravansary works great, giving the building situational value when we've got those resources nearby. Reduced cost also makes it much more competitive versus the Harbor.


@albie_123
Ancient ruins are the same abundance I've always seen. I think you just had a random lucky map. I see AIs clear barb camps about as often as before. I haven't noticed changes there, but I rarely see the camps in opposing territory anyway. Tenets are simply a different name for policies, the same thing with a different interface. AIs were more capable at capturing cities in Gem than BND due to a few adjustments I made to combat. Those improvements will return for Cep Basic.

In one of my games, I found it helpful to create an island city near another continent to trade with the leaders on that continent, because my original trade port couldn't reach that far. This is one of the few times I've had two trade cities operating simultaneously.




@xInVicTuSx
The effect ideologies have on each other depends on your current influence over the leader. This depends on your ratio of tourism to culture. If you have a strong culture, strong tourism, or both, you can make everyone else in the world very unhappy. The same also applies in reverse. It's so late in the game I haven't had much experience with it yet, so I'm going to leave it unmodded for a while.

Can we introduce a factor that inversely influences the gold bonus of trade routes? Like the more routes you have, the less it gives?

If I understand you right, this already happens because we exhaust the best trade options, and must send routes to less-rewarding destinations.

 

[mystikx21]

One quick catch

Zoos (old GK Theaters, GEM Publishing House) and Stadiums (GEM Cinema) only give 2 now. As they're currently modified in CEP, they're only going to give 3 total.

This is -3 from GK. There are more sources of happiness in ideologies (especially in Order and Autocracy) to make up the gap from those trees in GK, but a little less upfront.

This is probably okay on balance, but it makes the zoo/stadium rather less valuable for the investment. Most of the sources of extra happiness are from much less expensive or are otherwise productive sources, meaning you can basically skip stadiums altogether, and in many cases, probably zoos too. I'd say it would help eventually to move some of them to those effects (Propaganda! or cultural renaissance?) to give extra happiness from the ideologies to zoos or stadiums.

 

[Stalker0]

One quick catch

Zoos (old GK Theaters, GEM Publishing House) and Stadiums (GEM Cinema) only give 2 now. As they're currently modified in CEP, they're only going to give 3 total.

Maybe i'm imagining it, but zoos seem easier on the hammers than the old theater was. Balance change or my imagination?

 

[Stalker0]

7. Ugh, "restore health" promotion, no thanks.

I actually like the restore health promotion myself, i like the decision to go for short term or long term gains, and sometimes going for the gamble with a hurt unit that is in combat.

But if remember correctly didn't we remove it due to issues with the AI?

 

[mystikx21]

They're the same. 200 in default for zoos. 500 for stadiums. Same as before. Less effective. If it's a balance change, it's a nerf.

I hate and despite the restore health promo. There is no short term gain. Either the unit is about to die anyway (and it's just a question of how much it can do before it dies) or the unit can be moved to safety. The worst is clicking on it by accident.

The AI does appear to try to flee more often now and try to preserve units. If it does that, it's probably even better that it uses actual promotions.

 

[Ahriman]

In addition, I believe trade adds to national income, not city income. The in-city tooltip shows trade below the line separating base income from total income, indicating it is not not affected by % gold multipliers like the bank.

This is true. But though the gold multipliers do not affect the trade route gold, my understanding is that banks/markets etc in the origin and destination city *are* counted in the formula that calculated trade route income.

But the removal of coast/river gold means that banks and such are now quite niche and not very powerful.

I think it doesn't favor the capital or any other city.

It favors having a single city for the source of your trade routes, because then you only need to build bank/stock exchange/national treasury/east india company/harbor in a single city to get all the benefits for all the trade routes.
Having said that, I agree with you that I don't think we need to change it at the moment, and the distance limits and limits on 1:1 are meaningful.

I just emphasized it a little more by making the Caravan and Caravansary slightly less expensive.

I think that's probably fine. The caravan routes still take up a full trade route slot, and that's more important than the hammer production cost.

I see AIs clear barb camps about as often as before. I haven't noticed changes there, but I rarely see the camps in opposing territory anyway.

I've seen unoccupied camps literally one tile outside enemy culture that have remained unclear for many turns. They clear the camp if they kill the barb with a melee unit, but they don't seem to clear the camp if the last unit dies from a ranged attack.

The effect ideologies have on each other depends on your current influence over the leader. This depends on your ratio of tourism to culture. If you have a strong culture, strong tourism, or both, you can make everyone else in the world very unhappy.

I know that my strong culture protects me from your tourism, but if I have weak tourism and strong culture will you really still get unhappy? I thought only tourism made others unhappy, but I'm not sure, and they tend to go together.

Zoos (old GK Theaters, GEM Publishing House) and Stadiums (GEM Cinema) only give 2 now. As they're currently modified in CEP, they're only going to give 3 total.

I find city growth to be slightly slower in general so I'm not sure that this is an issue, but it's hard to tell because I just played a religion game with Pagodas and some other happiness source and only a few cities, so I never had happiness problems.
I think it's important that happiness not be too easy to access, so that ideologogical unhappiness really can push people negative.
I really like that they've removed the huge AI happiness cheats.
But 2 happiness from a stadium does feel a bit lame. Moving the zoo and stadium to 3 and 4 would probably be fine.

I hate and despite the restore health promo. There is no short term gain.

They removed the 20% heal from promotion, that was the big thing. I find that I sometimes use the restore health promotion particularly on ranged units, so I can keep shooting things with them, and don't need to retreat them, so that I can finish capturing a city.
But I don't mind if the restore health promo goes away.

I haven't had enough warfare yet to judge the AI (and the wars I had were not fair fights, so hard to judge).

 

[mystikx21]

Wars are pretty bad so far. Japan kept attacking me and getting slaughtered my last game. Part of this was I had jungle and rivers in the way so I had plenty of time to hose down their troops with arrows. They did send a fairly large force of ships at me, but since I was Ottomans, they mostly ended up as my ships.

Danes were at least pillaging a lot of fish and being annoying with some crossbows attacking on the fringe, but they had a bunch of desert hills and mountains in the way between us to slow them down and keep me from hunting them down (also built Great Wall, so I wasn't all that interested in hunting him down).

I think the point on zoos and stadiums was that for the higher cost, they're no better than colosseums (and cost more upkeep), and there were plenty of cheap sources of happiness out there instead. Pagodas being one of the chief ones, but also the late game ideologies influencing walls or granaries or factories and the like around the same time. If you're getting plenty of happiness for things you already built, or are likely to build, why bother with a high cost investment? I'd say we could leave the arena at 2, and boost it with a policy as needed, and then zoo at 3, stadium at 4 (GEM had these at 3, 4, 5, but growth was easier with coastlines.. I routinely had a couple of size 30-35 cities). Reducing some of the late game effects by 1 or have them apply to fewer things to compensate if happiness is too easy to come by.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the point on zoos and stadiums was that for the higher cost, they're no better than colosseums (and cost more upkeep), and there were plenty of cheap sources of happiness out there instead. Pagodas being one of the chief ones, but also the late game ideologies influencing walls or granaries or factories and the like around the same time. If you're getting plenty of happiness for things you already built, or are likely to build, why bother with a high cost investment? I'd say we could leave the arena at 2, and boost it with a policy as needed, and then zoo at 3, stadium at 4

On the one hand you are saying happiness is cheap and easy to get, but on the other you think the happiness buildings aren't strong enough.

Happiness for me is one of those things that i don't care about....until i do. Then i really really want happy. If i need to buy 2 happy zoos to get out of growth penalties i will.

This is one of those things i just don't believe we can make a call on yet. Its very easy to say "the old game had 3, so 2 is obviously too low" but i don't think we have the experience to say that yet.

 

[Stalker0]

Either the unit is about to die anyway (and it's just a question of how much it can do before it dies) or the unit can be moved to safety.

Completely disagree. I have had plenty of times where that extra health let my unit last one more round....and one more round might be all i need.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

It seems anytime the game promises "+ on all sea trade routes" it only means foreign ones.
Bummed me out when I rushed them.

Also, strategic resources feel overly plentiful again, i liked it more in GEM when they were rarer and made Russia's trait more important.
That said, Ideologies appearing to require 3 factories would either require Coal to be an exception or perhaps them losing the requirement in order not to break the game. >.>

 

[mystikx21]

On the one hand you are saying happiness is cheap and easy to get, but on the other you think the happiness buildings aren't strong enough.

Happiness for me is one of those things that i don't care about....until i do. Then i really really want happy. If i need to buy 2 happy zoos to get out of growth penalties i will.

This is one of those things i just don't believe we can make a call on yet. Its very easy to say "the old game had 3, so 2 is obviously too low" but i don't think we have the experience to say that yet.

Actually what I'm saying is that if happiness is relatively easy to get, then the buildings that only provide happiness should be reasonably powerful providers of it, or we have no real use for them. If they're reasonably strong, we may find other uses for our ideological choices than providing cheap happiness. If they're weak, we will find other uses for our production/gold expenses and ignore them (colosseums are cheap, only cost 1 upkeep, and are available at a time when there are no cheap sources of happiness, they are a different matter).

The second part is that the amount of cost involved in providing that 2 happiness is absurdly high, which discourages their use further. The problem in the old GK version was a ton of buildings did little or nothing for the cost they required, Museums for example (same deal with water mills at 2/1, even at 1 upkeep). I think a lot of the buildings changes in BNW, the ones that actually have them, are likely to be improvements (GP slots or GW slots). But if a building was reduced in its marginal value, I think it's fair to ask why. This is a marginal value question, and the buildings are failing so far as I can tell.

Heals on pillaging also an option if you really need to heal in many cases. I'm still not following. Running away usually works just fine in a scenario where a unit will die. I can see the ranged unit that needs to get another shot off case to help take a city, but not much else.

 

[albie_123]

Every AI seems to have been toned down, aggressiveness wise. Militaristic AI's are even less of a threat than they already were.

 

[Tomice]

To clarify, I meant to keep the national limit of 8 or so TR's, but to additionally add a limited number per city. Venice and OCC's should be exceptions of course. I doubt this would be too difficult to implement.

Regarding very tall playstiles, we have a ton of possibilities on where to implement additional trade routes. If we don't want it in the tradition tree, we still have (national) wonders. E.g. a NW that gives unlimited trade routes in one city if you have Caravanseries in every city or so.


But hey, my post was just meant to bring this option to public attention. I wouldn't want such heavy balance changes for the next two weeks either.

 

[mitsho]

If I understand you right, this already happens because we exhaust the best trade options, and must send routes to less-rewarding destinations.

But those trade routes start from the same city. Not sure if that is a problem, but we were discussing it here.

Other observations so far: Buying tiles seem to be too cheap and with the new first CEP patch, I do run out of things to build and gold is too plenty again. Trade Routes seem to be a priority for the AI as they buy them quite quickly. That makes for a stronger AI if they can patrol the area with their larger start army (= luck).

 

[Ahriman]

On happiness: I suspect that we might be increasing unhappiness per city anyway, so we're already going to disrupt the BNW balance, which means more powerful zoo/stadium would help to dampen the aggregate change.

Every AI seems to have been toned down, aggressiveness wise. Militaristic AI's are even less of a threat than they already were.

Yeah, I think this is the case. It's a tough call; they want to make the AI able to play the peaceful game, and to let the human do so.
I suspect we can be ok with most peaceful AIs in general, but we still want to have some AIs that are more militarily focused. And I think that we want many AIs to invade their neighbor (especially the human) every chance they get if they detect that the human has a weak military and that there is a chance to take a city.
The threat of being attacked by an aggresive AI is a very important disciplining factor to prevent the human from focusing too much on economy.

But those trade routes start from the same city.

The idea was, if I have four trade routes, two cities A and B and there are two good trade route destinations C and D and two bad trade route destinations E and F, if I route all my trade routes out of A then I will have A-C, A-D, A-E and A-F, but if I share my trade routes having them start in both my cities, then I can get A-C, A-D, B-C, and B-D. So only using the good/profitable destinations.

Buying tiles seem to be too cheap and with the new first CEP patch

I thought we were holding off on economy changes? I'm not sure I understand why CEP is making these changes already:
"City development starts faster, then slows down sooner (population growth, and culture/gold tile expansion).
Slightly increased construction speed in the early game (higher prod/gold income, lower costs), and reduced construction speed in late game (higher costs, lower income)."

Plus: I don't think more policy trees is needed.
In my last game by the end of the game I had 4 full trees, 3 picks in another tree, and 8 tenets.
Adding access to another tree is just overkill and starts forcing me to pick policies I don't really need, which reduces their value.
I think it ignores that there are a bunch of extra ways in BNW to get free policies: the ideology wonders, the world congress projects, etc.

 

[albie_123]

It's a tough call; they want to make the AI able to play the peaceful game, and to let the human do so.

At first I agreed but after playing a few more games I'm finding it ridiculously peaceful to the point that I'm considering it's a bug. Even Monty and Shaka won't touch me despite having a handful of comp. bows to defend five cities. Definitely needs looking at.

 

[Ahriman]

I generally agree, I would lead towards more aggression. Being invaded is fun!

 

[albie_123]

Just for the usual suspects though. It's nice having Gandhi, Kamehameha and Ramkhamenendifficulttospell not backstab me 24/7 for once.

 

[albie_123]

Well, just got to lategame, and wow, now that you can vote for yourself again, diplomacy is now entirely about gold! Buy city-states AND buy other delegates! Disappointing, and I hope this is fixed.