Overbalancing and overcomplexing

[Golfer]

Hello from an old time civilization player here! Thanks for a great forum and community, and a lot of kudos to Thalassicus and everyone who contributed to the mod.

I've done a lot of searching but couldn't find an answer to some of my concerns I'd like to share:

Changes to "Promotions" is the only part of this mod which prevents me from playing it. Disabling "Promotions" folder or files in it with "_" breaks the game as seen here. Some of the notable changes in Promotions I disliked were changes to Blitz/Logistics which are first attack reduces movement to 1 and 75% attack. It's obvious that these promotions were more powerful and desirable than others, which to me is perfectly fine in a game because that's what makes it fun. The moment you get "Yes! I got this promotion finally!" gives a lot of satisfaction, whereas now it's very questionable and actually a downgrade in case of ranged units. It's a very situational promotion and assuming that 75% x 2 = 150% from previous 200% is a wrong way of looking at it. Personally I wasn't keen to excessive and complex changes to unit stats and combat system, underground changes to defenses of naval units which aren't shown on civilopedia or mouseover and wiki references being vague for those who don't know math.

I think it's better not to go obsessed with overbalancing the game because nerfing what is "overpowered" will make the game boring, unremarkable and uninteresting. After all the game is supposed to be the way developers intended it to be, not something that will keep changing every "patch" based community complaints (like mine is now). Again I liked 80% of changes that I read from wiki (which is unfriendly and unstructured for newcomers btw) but 20% of other changes were significant enough for me to forfeit my great desire to try this masterpiece of a mod, and I'm afraid it did the same to others who weren't confident in simplicity and clarity of the mod.

Knowing that anything can be changed by you or community feedback can take a lot of fun from the game. One of the things that made old games fun was the fact that they were provided "as is" and you accepted it the way you want.

If your girlfriend becomes the way you want her to be - you'll get bored of her and look for a new one, and vise versa.

Thanks for reading and sorry for my bad english!

 

[mystikx21]

The basis for both is not just that they are powerful but that the AI doesn't use either of them very well. I've never seen them take a second attack with a unit. Which means that they're basically like "I win" buttons for combat for the human in vanilla. I'd say that's a lot less fun than customizing balance. It's not really a downgrade if you get to fire off two shots. It's just less total damage than in vanilla (but still more than you would get normally). Blitz should still do full damage, just not with ranged attacks. Nerfing things that are overpowered isn't typically what was done, it's usually making things that were too weak possibly useful.

If you have complaints about specific or general units that are stronger/weaker than others, we're open to suggestions, but the vanilla/GK combat balance was abysmal and requires a lot of modification to make it balanced and fun. Elite units requiring resources are too weak, naval units aren't very important, etc. With the old games, their "as is" wasn't this messed up and were therefore still fun with much less customizing. Customizing is therefore more fun because we can fix what's broken and useless and make it useful and fun rather than play a game that isn't very much fun at all. (It's also easier to modify in my opinion than it was in Civ4, about as easy as Civ2-3 were).

I'm not sure what wiki references are vague, but let me/us know what needs clarity (Thal runs the mod and wiki page but I post a lot of the information over there). There were previously a lot of details on there but it was simplified to show unit strengths at "normal" combat levels, including promotions and effects. Some of it is out of date because of recent changes and some of it just hasn't been cleaned up yet for presentation. I mostly posted a lot of information rather than summaries just to get details out there first.

Naval units should be pretty straightforward. All naval ranged ships get a bonus ranged defence to encourage using combined arms at sea as on land, capital ships (those requiring a resource) get a bonus to city attacks, and hunter ships get a bonus to attacking/defending against other units.

 

[Golfer]

The basis for both is not just that they are powerful but that the AI doesn't use either of them very well. I've never seen them take a second attack with a unit. Which means that they're basically like "I win" buttons for combat for the human in vanilla. I'd say that's a lot less fun than customizing balance. It's not really a downgrade if you get to fire off two shots. It's just less total damage than in vanilla (but still more than you would get normally). Blitz should still do full damage, just not with ranged attacks. Nerfing things that are overpowered isn't typically what was done, it's usually making things that were too weak possibly useful.

If you have complaints about specific or general units that are stronger/weaker than others, we're open to suggestions, but the vanilla/GK combat balance was abysmal and requires a lot of modification to make it balanced and fun. Elite units requiring resources are too weak, naval units aren't very important, etc. With the old games, their "as is" wasn't this messed up and were therefore still fun with much less customizing. Customizing is therefore more fun because we can fix what's broken and useless and make it useful and fun rather than play a game that isn't very much fun at all. (It's also easier to modify in my opinion than it was in Civ4, about as easy as Civ2-3 were).

I'm not sure what wiki references are vague, but let me/us know what needs clarity. There were previously a lot of details on there but it was simplified to show unit strengths at "normal" combat levels, including promotions and effects. Some of it is out of date because of recent changes and some of it just hasn't been cleaned up yet for presentation. I mostly posted a lot of information rather than summaries just to get details out there first.

Naval units should be pretty straightforward. All naval ranged ships get a bonus ranged defence to encourage using combined arms at sea as on land, capital ships (those requiring a resource) get a bonus to city attacks, and hunter ships get a bonus to attacking/defending against other units.

Hi and thanks for reading and reply! I have no complaints and don't have the right to I'm only saying what I dislike in case anyone finds it valid, because I had to disable the mod as soon as I learned how far it went from the original. I don't think shortcomings of AI are a valid reason to nerf aspects of the game, instead of improving AI in some other ways perhaps? In cases the Archer needs to shoot and run, this promotion is only a downgrade. Correct me if I'm wrong, but submarines being a ranged invisible units are now melee and visible units with a much lower bonus against ships - it's a complete overhaul of a unit which is opposite of its original design. Beating AI is a lot of fun to me, with strong abilities and cunning tactics alike, whereas balancing everything to the point when a human player becomes just another "AI" with a slight advantage over a long period of time isn't. Diablo 3 is an example of how overbalancing took the fun out of the game, and this isn't even an online game. If someone wants challenge one can always go with a no-reload option and have much more fun and thrill from the game.

There are other examples, but my concern would be isn't it better to improve other abilities instead of nerfing units and abilities which were fun? I understand Communitas has been in development for a long time and so is the community, but I find the mod to be less user friendly to a newcomer because of how far it is steering away from the original game and its expansion, sheer amount of undocumented changes, lack of a clear changelog and beating down the few fun aspects.

As for wikipedia, the most important thing I was looking was a changelog and a full table of contents, I used "Special:AllPages" but other newcomers might not be able to. I'd be happy to help organize it but unfortunately I have no time, and when I do I play Civ

 

[mystikx21]

I don't like the submarine change either. One of the advantages of modding is you can easily change what you don't like. The change to logistics/blitz is in the promos directory. All you'd have to do is remove the change to ranged attacks, for example. Submarines is a bit more complicated (I've undone it on my end, but it takes several steps to avoid upsetting game balance).

Most changes are not based around nerfs, as I said. I think many changes are based around improving your choices so weak things (like policies or stables or forges or museums) are more interesting decisions. A lot of changes to the base game have actually come out of the modding community for that reason. It's rare that a feature gets removed entirely or nerfed. Usually to balance things, they've been beefed up and improved rather than neglected.

When the latter happens it's usually because we are limited on what can or cannot be modded, like the AI's abilities to make decent combat decisions. We can improve it's economic or scientific performance but there's only so much to be done with the combat abilities of an AI. And that's more or less always been the case. BTS was the closest I've seen to a competent combat AI in any Civ and even that was heavily reliant at times on massed forces.

 

[mystikx21]

As far as the wiki, a full change log would take a lot (the unit page used to be far more involved) Summary pages are simpler but aren't always providing enough details. I am pretty sure GEM has a ToC but you sometimes have to drill down to get somewhere. That could be improved.

Here's the code to change the blitz/logistics on ranged attacks (if you're curious). You would just open the GEA_Other file in notepad and find these and copy/paste them over top (removes the ranged attack modifier, or just delete that line).

Spoiler :

<Update>
			<Where Type="PROMOTION_BLITZ" />
			<Set Blitz="0"			
				 ExtraAttacks="1"
				 CanMoveAfterAttacking="true"
				 PortraitIndex="9"
				 PromotionPrereqOr1="PROMOTION_SHOCK_2"
				 PromotionPrereqOr2="PROMOTION_DRILL_2"
				 PromotionPrereqOr3="PROMOTION_SIEGE"
				 PromotionPrereqOr4="PROMOTION_COVER_1"
				 PromotionPrereqOr5="PROMOTION_AMBUSH_1"
				 PediaType="PEDIA_SHARED"
				 />
		</Update>
		<Update>
			<Where Type="PROMOTION_LOGISTICS" />
			<Set	 PromotionPrereqOr1="PROMOTION_ACCURACY_3"
				 PromotionPrereqOr2="PROMOTION_BARRAGE_3"
				 PromotionPrereqOr3="PROMOTION_TARGETING_3"
				 PromotionPrereqOr4="PROMOTION_BOMBARDMENT_3"
				 PortraitIndex="9"
				 Description="TXT_KEY_PROMOTION_BLITZ"
				 PediaEntry="TXT_KEY_PROMOTION_BLITZ"
				 Help="TXT_KEY_PROMOTION_RANGED_BLITZ_HELP"
				 PediaType="PEDIA_NAVAL"
				 />
		</Update>

 

[Thalassicus]

@Golfer
Welcome to the community!

Have you tried playing Gem? Civ is too complex a game to get a good sense of things by looking at numbers alone. I recommend jumping in and trying one or two games.

The important part of a project is the overall goals. These are described on the Goals page of the wiki. Did you have a chance to read that?

The changes are based around making the game fun, not buffs or nerfs. I believe a game with multiple interesting and challenging choices is more fun than a game where our decisions are determined in advance by memorizing the "best" overpowered choices.

The reason for the promotion change is to give human players those interesting choices. (The AI is not important here.) If one option (blitz) is always better than another choice (other promotions), then we don't have a choice for what to do. Consider a promotion which makes ranged units attack twice at 1/2 strength. What would the effect be? It doubles the rate archers gain experience. This is very powerful in the long run, regardless of how much it increases damage.

 

[Golfer]

@Golfer
Welcome to the community!

Have you tried playing Gem? Civ is too complex a game to get a good sense of things by looking at numbers alone. I recommend jumping in and trying one or two games.

The important part of a project is the overall goals. These are described on the Goals page of the wiki. Did you have a chance to read that?

The changes are based around making the game fun, not buffs or nerfs. I believe a game with multiple interesting and challenging choices is more fun than a game where our decisions are determined in advance by memorizing the "best" overpowered choices.

The reason for the promotion change is to give human players those interesting choices. (The AI is not important here.) If one option (blitz) is always better than another choice (other promotions), then we don't have a choice for what to do. Consider a promotion which makes ranged units attack twice at 1/2 strength. What would the effect be? It doubles the rate archers gain experience. This is very powerful in the long run, regardless of how much it increases damage.

Short version: Amazing experience so far!
Long version: In spite of a few show-stoppers for me - I gave it a shot. Played a few games on Emperor (that I played Vanilla G&K before) and got wiped I understood accepting the patch the way it is, one can't like everything and decided to evaluate overall experience that it delivers. And it delivers... Thank you and everyone else who contributed and contributes today. It's a much more challenging, deeper and new experience now, so much more fun indeed and those unique opportunities - they rock! Started a new game because of difficulty, seeing how good it started I'm confident of everything else that lays ahead - whether to my liking or not thanks for this experience and keeping the mod up to date, being polite and patient with complaints

About Archer promotion, I understand the concerns but it stands at the point of being an unbalanced upgrade or being a situational downgrade. Personally I'll avoid picking that upgrade only for the sake of knowing it will lower my single-shot damage. It's more of a psychological concern than practical

Hat off

 

[AlpsStranger]

About Archer promotion, I understand the concerns but it stands at the point of being an unbalanced upgrade or being a situational downgrade. Personally I'll avoid picking that upgrade only for the sake of knowing it will lower my single-shot damage. It's more of a psychological concern than practical

Hat off

Yeah man. Pop a pill and get over it Gem is pretty cool and it would be a shame if you missed it.

Thal is open to suggestions. I just don't think he's open to "leave it overpowered for the lulz" and "make it ridiculously imbalanced because I'm nostalgic for Master of Magic."

Champion Paladins, attack!

 

[Zaldron]

The reason for the promotion change is to give human players those interesting choices. (The AI is not important here.) If one option (blitz) is always better than another choice (other promotions), then we don't have a choice for what to do. Consider a promotion which makes ranged units attack twice at 1/2 strength. What would the effect be? It doubles the rate archers gain experience. This is very powerful in the long run, regardless of how much it increases damage.

Just remember that two attacks at 50% str will do *significantly* less than one attack at 100% str assuming that the units were fairly evenly matched at the 100% level, due to the way combat mechanics work.

 

[Dunkah]

Yes I noticed this as well and actually stopped picking that promotion for just that reason.

I understand that you get double xp, but what good does it do you if you are not getting full attacks. Artillery goes from doing 25 avg damage to a city to 7 damage or less. (Don't know how the math works).

 

[Ahriman]

I haven't checked lately, but it used to give ~25% penalty. I think that's fine. -50% seems like too much.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Yes I noticed this as well and actually stopped picking that promotion for just that reason.

I understand that you get double xp, but what good does it do you if you are not getting full attacks. Artillery goes from doing 25 avg damage to a city to 7 damage or less. (Don't know how the math works).

Perhaps the right number isn't 75% then. Maybe 80% or 90% would get Thal's intention across.

 

[Dunkah]

The point is that for whatever reason it is not doing 75% it seems more like it drops down to 25%.

Seems like there is a flaw in the Math. And if the point is to try and get more xp, why hot just have the promo double xp?

I think HMG's with three or even four shots would be way cool. You have to charge them and take them out or your in trouble. Or bomb the crap out of them.

 

[Lissindiel]

Submarines is a bit more complicated (I've undone it on my end, but it takes several steps to avoid upsetting game balance).

Can you post a "fix" for submarines too?

 

[mystikx21]

I created a naval mod mod dependent on Thal's work which undoes the subs change without upsetting the late-game ship balance too much (I hope).

If that helps.

 

[Lissindiel]

Thank you. Those changes to naval combat was the only thing, that prevented me from installing GEM again.

 

[mystikx21]

Let me know if there are any issues or bugs with that. I haven't updated it in a while, but I don't think Thal changed units in the last couple updates either. Mainly check promotions and that late units only have the combined sonar ASW promo once.