I'm afraid I'm gonna agree with this. Although CBP is still much better than vanilla game, so it's still my choice. Last full version (1-23) seems great for me at the moment, it's stable and features are simple enough.
I think these new changes seem complicated and bad on paper, but we just need a few playthroughs with the next full release and maybe we will change our opinions. Gazebo and the team know what they are doing. We should not forget that these betas are just testing and some of the new features are community members ideas, so if majority of community don't like those tweaks, I think they should be reverted or changed accordigly. Usually polls, discussions and testing are the only ways to know our thoughts. Funak is providing useful and clear own thoughts on the new changes in every beta and I think there should be more of these kind of posts from others.
I pretty much have to agree with Dallandra on all these changes. I was loving the community balance patch up through the 1/23 install, but now, I am seeing such fundamental changes to the game that I am not sure I want to continue with the mod. All these changes to wonder acquisition, science, faith and unit strength, have me wondering whether to even try one of these betas. I have not had time to search for each discussion thread to understand the rationale for each, so bad on me.
I am pretty glad that I've had no time to try any of the new betas lately. Except for the "under the hood" changes, literally every other change so far has made me want to play with CBP less and less.
I was against the science changes from the very beginning and we're starting to see now why. There's a massive tail on it, which is slowly gutting every other science-related ability (1 per 10 pop from the Babylon wall now? Really? Might as well not exist). You can say "oh, it all just needs a bit of tweaking!", but this is all tweaking that was not needed in the first place. The one game I did manage to start up was slow and boring and the science changes simply don't scale well with higher game speeds in the slightest. The fact that you just added at least some scaling science back onto the palace so early game doesn't slow to a crawl is all the confirmation that I need to see that this isn't really working.
The changes to wonder unlocking would've alleviated the slow science progression (and thus slow GAME progression in general) a bit, but then that got murdered again by being tied to techs once again. It was discussed before that the idea behind #policy requirements was as an alternate way of unlocking wonders for low-tech civs or games, now it's just yet another restriction on them that just hinders everyone instead of giving more gameplay choices.
Normally I'd just move on, but these made me stop in my tracks a little. I've documented the rationale behind every change we've made thus far. Aside from the re-organization of the mod into SQL, the only two big 'rule' changes (rather than raw balance) that have happened recently are the removal of free science from population, and the addition of a policy requirement for wonders.
Both of these changes stemmed from two changes we made a long, long time ago: the happiness system rework, and the removal of most % yield modifiers for cities. These changes were necessary to greatly reduce the tall v. wide dichotomy, so that a wide empire had as many benefits as a tall empire. We succeeded on that front. With one exception. Science.
Here's why: in vanilla civ, 1 citizen = 1 science, but 1 citizen also = 1 unhappiness. This isn't the case in the CBP. Because of this, food was now king, as it provided the two things you absolutely need to win: citizens and science. Food was so overwhelmingly important that any bonus to food was liable to throw off game balance entirely. There was a recent discussion about this, during which time (as others can attest) I had a 'eureka' moment (edit: I was actually at a conference when it happened, and proceeded to stop listening and start doing some math to see if I was right. I was). The free science was the problem. Every yield has, rule-wise, one core rule. Food had two. Now, it has been brought in line and has one rule.
If you've played previous iterations of civilization, you'll see why we made this change, and you'll also see that the removal of free science from population is actually the final step of the happiness system (but we didn't know that at the time).
I'm not going to ask you to try the beta, because - frankly - I don't need your approval to make changes that are necessary for the viability of the mod. But I also don't take kindly to 'if you do or don't do x, I'm not going to play your mod anymore.' Those kinds of statements sound really entitled, and clash with the ethos of the community. Testing, feedback, suggestions - these are what matter.
Anyways, on to the rest of the posts I need to address.
No one cares about demonstrations, but the situation where you want to tell a unit to wait until fully healed without having to wait for it to have full movement happens multiple times per game. If this was intentional it was a REALLY stupid change.
Button was not unintentionally removed. Changes under the hood fixed a flaw in the functionality of healing that's been there since day 1, IIRC.
Pantheon: Goddess of Protection doesn't give a healing bonus.
I'll look at this, as well as the other pantheons.
Am I right assuming that Byzantium could potentially benefit twice from the same bonus ?
Not sure what you mean.
GG/GA aren't awarded with exception of ranged units Vs cities
Combat reward XP against Barbarians but not City-States or other Civs, with the same expection as above
Authority yelds on defeating unit work fine
The setup option allowing GA/GG against Barbarians works
This is probably related to the VMC74 integration. I'll take a look.
Same. Kinda disappointing that we were talking about reformulating brazil's UA in the other thread and all we got was a tiny numbers change that does nothing to fix the overlying problem. But, I imagine this may be just a last-ditch effort on the current one, so I'm not too mad.
I have yet to see a UA that differs substantially from the current UA (in terms of gameplay). This was a balance change, not a last-ditch effort.
Do you need the changes to reflect which patch they are from?
If not, I'm almost finished with the first part, then I'm onto updating similar entries and deleting generic modifications ('Fixed bugs from github requests', or whatever).
I do not, no - they can all be lumped together (obviously some are going to overwrite others, so most recent changes trump older ones). You are a hero.
I don't know about the musketeer change, but I would say that if any ranged unit really fit with the idea of forcing retreating, it would be machine guns.
G, might it be easier to just make the Musketeer the Tercio replacement for the French? With generic Musketmen backing them up?
The musketeer promotion was an experiment of mine. It probably (99% sure) it won't stay. But the promotion is there, for whoever asked for it.
Anyways, the musketeer is unloved as a ranged unit, and will most likely make the switch back. I'd really prefer to have 2 ranged UU and 2 melee UU in the renaissance, so if someone wants to make a case for the janissary or the carolean stepping into the ranged UU role, be my guest.
G
