Overpowered Rock Bands

[Tiger Genocide]

Has anyone made a mod to turn off the Rock Band jingle? It's getting waaaaay too old, and is overpowered against my eardrums, now and the audio is too loud compared to other sound effects like that crowd cheer on the timeline. The AIs make tons of them and if I hear 5 jingles in one turn, my blood boils. Once is enough, just show the notifications for the others in that turn....

 

[Archon_Wing]

A question.

So let's say I get a Rock Bands with 3 crappy promotions, that don't apply to the target, but they can use their ability elsewhere. Is it worth it to try to level them up there, or just take the risk with 0 promotions.

(eg, I can get a water park promotion, and I need to send Rock Bands to Kongo, but only Pedro has a water park)

 

[Victoria]

Is it worth it to try to level them up there,

Did some analysis on this a while ago, it’s pretty much 50/50 as you get a lot of tourism for creative differences on a wonder. What probably swings it is how many rock bands you have/likely to have and how close to victory you are.
If not playing for a CV and are going for cool bands then water park seems best, if you have lots of faith then a wonder.
Going for the promo on a 250 venue will not give great short-term tourism but increases surviveability and promotional chances but there is still a fair chance of splitting up.

 

[Chocolate Pi]

Mathematically unlikely, RNG possible over a couple of games.
More to the point, if your bands are making 30,000 tourism per concert you already have won.
Are you sure you did not mean 3000-5000 output per turn

Sure 100% agree, just saying that getting 30% to that level would have created a lot of tourism. A hell of a lot, taking roughly 20 domestic tourists into foreign per concert.
For relevance to the OP then a 30k tourism boost allows you to go quite late into a CV but 30% of your bands is exceeding the curve somewhat so do not expect to get that many every game.
A nice calculation challenge for the maths whizzes out there as to the probability of this.

I like math! According to our understandings from the other thread, the cumulative lifetime odds of getting any +2 band to level 4 ought to be 9.4006%. Worth noting that the first level up is half the battle, and it's easy from there.

This number does not match my experience, though I have no mechanical explaination as for why my rolls should be different--just the anecdotes of my dozen games. No mods.

Since my last post, I played a chopless Large Immortal game. I could afford 8 bands, of which the first 5 died instantly and the last 3 survived to level 4. (So 3/8) Right after I won, I hit one more turn so I could grab a screenshot:

(As you can see/guess, this particular CV went long because it was against Greece.)

It is entirely possible that I have just gotten consistently lucky, but this has been my experience across about 12 RS games involving bands.


Edit: Small amount of bonus math for fun--the expected (average) cumulative lifetime Tourism of a Level 4 Album Cover Rock Band (with the minimum amount of pre-level-4 sales) is a whopping 696,415 Tourism. This series calculation excludes the final performance, and of course is the raw value before Goes To 11.

Realistically, you will run out of turns/Wonders before the tail of this is realized (even if you wouldn't have won the game only a short way into this), but it is still very illustrative of the state of affairs.

Edit 2: Given the nature of the victory condition, this chart might be more helpful:

This chart is Album Cover level 4 performance cumulative-survival performance, and ignores pre-level-4 record sales. It also assumes record sale performance and tourism bomb performance are independent, which is an incorrect simplification but one that shouldn't affect the results much. (It causes the data shown to be very slightly under the real results.)

Due to the way the math works, you can also read this as a very close approximation for the full lifetime results of any band that does make it to level 4. (So, a Album Cover band that makes it to level 4 will by turn 12 have produced a lifetime average close to 114.8k)

 

[Archon_Wing]

Did some analysis on this a while ago, it’s pretty much 50/50 as you get a lot of tourism for creative differences on a wonder. What probably swings it is how many rock bands you have/likely to have and how close to victory you are.
If not playing for a CV and are going for cool bands then water park seems best, if you have lots of faith then a wonder.
Going for the promo on a 250 venue will not give great short-term tourism but increases surviveability and promotional chances but there is still a fair chance of splitting up.

My current tactic is to save up like ~5000 faith, switch to theocracy, and buy as many as possible. I also try to sack anyone's Holy Site if I can too if an emergency pops up. So usually I can get like 6-7 Rock Bands at once, though it usually dies down,

 

[Victoria]

@Chocolate Pi at least you are appreciating your luck, cannot understand it and agree with our reaction and our experiences are more average.

@Archon_Wing I would go for the +2 promotions unless you were fairly close as you do not have the volume.

 

[Slip de Garcon]

Ok so another example. Just played a (king) game and was not doing well, being roundly beaten on culture by Pericles.

Was trying to sneak a science victory but it was getting hard to sabotage all the AI players' space programmes, particularly Greece.

However... I held back on rock bands until I got the 'choose promotions' card, then released approx a dozen rock bands with theatre and wonder promotions on Greece. Second promotion was the loyalty one.

Within about ten turns Greece had lost their four largest cities and their space programme.

Soon after I won an utterly undeserved science victory having been in third place on points embarrassingly recently.

So in summary: yes, rock bands are overpowered.

 

[Socrates99]

Ok so another example. Just played a (king) game and was not doing well, being roundly beaten on culture by Pericles.

Was trying to sneak a science victory but it was getting hard to sabotage all the AI players' space programmes, particularly Greece.

However... I held back on rock bands until I got the 'choose promotions' card, then released approx a dozen rock bands with theatre and wonder promotions on Greece. Second promotion was the loyalty one.

Within about ten turns Greece had lost their four largest cities and their space programme.

Soon after I won an utterly undeserved science victory having been in third place on points embarrassingly recently.

So in summary: yes, rock bands are overpowered.

What was the turn time on that victory?

 

[Slip de Garcon]

What was the turn time on that victory?

Sorry, no idea.

I'd got to the future age and everyone had GDRs if that gives you an idea.

 

[Socrates99]

Just asking. The thing is, people are easily pulling sub 300 SVs, RV and dom can both be done really early depending on map conditions, I've even pulled off a turn 295 diplo victory. It's hard for me to label something that puts CV on par with other victories as "OP." Winning a late game with bands makes them strong but not "OP."

 

[greenOak]

Just asking. The thing is, people are easily pulling sub 300 SVs, RV and dom can both be done really early depending on map conditions, I've even pulled off a turn 295 diplo victory. It's hard for me to label something that puts CV on par with other victories as "OP." Winning a late game with bands makes them strong but not "OP."

I agree. Late game bonuses need to be strong for them to be worth it. Currently, most late game stuff sucks and can/should be avoided building. Rock bands are actually refreshing in this regard. I do think indie rock city flipping is pretty obnoxious though.

 

[Slip de Garcon]

I do think indie rock city flipping is pretty obnoxious though.

Indeed. It should be possible with a massive coordinated effort to flip a city.

Not inadvertently flip their capital through one concert too many.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well that ability in particular is broken because it clearly wasn't tested.

It should probably give -10 loyalty over 5 turns, where playing again only refreshes the duration and not stack

 

[Chocolate Pi]

Just asking. The thing is, people are easily pulling sub 300 SVs, RV and dom can both be done really early depending on map conditions, I've even pulled off a turn 295 diplo victory. It's hard for me to label something that puts CV on par with other victories as "OP." Winning a late game with bands makes them strong but not "OP."

I totally agree with the premise that that Rock Band victory times are not the problem, and not out of bounds with other win times. In that lens, the "raw power" is not the issue.

The messy part can be looked at in 3 ways:

• Rock Bands are super RNG dependent.
• Rock Bands have very flat counter-play--you can body-block concert sites in your own territory with units, and that's it; all or nothing.
• The average case Rock Band output still trounces that of all other sources of Tourism. If you try a CV with just Rock Bands and I try to win with every other CV option combined, you will beat me virtually 100% of the time. (Unless it's on a small enough map that I could successfully body-block, in which I will win 100% of those games.)

We could simplify the issue to "Rock Band is the only strong part of CV, and all the rest are usually underpowered." But that glosses over the RNG, the lack of good counter-play, and the probably-overly-aggressive city-flipping behavior.

 

[Victoria]

Rock Band is the only strong part of CV,

Great writers will win you a game before Buddy Holly hits the ground.

 

[Thibaulthc]

Is rock bands' ouput related to the number of civs in game??

If no, they might be OP when playing against few civs indeed.
Let's say your tourism output is 1000 late game, if you're playing against 10 civs, it's a total of around 15k tourism every turn with the modifiers. Much more powerful than most rock bands.
But if you're in a duel, and IF the rock band's output stay the same even against only one civ...then they are much more overpowered.

Maybe some rules should be added to defend against rock bands: policy cards / congress redsolutions that lower their influence, not allowing them to cross borders without Open Borders, making their output related to the numbers of civs in game,...

 

[Victoria]

Is rock bands' ouput related to the number of civs in game??

Nope. It is pure tourism aimed normally at a single target. The formula is here Ok so what do Rock Bands actually do?
So yes, on a tiny map it is OP and on a huge map, not so OP but it is not that simple. Even on a huge map it is about targeting your competitor also to reduce their domestic tourism... and this will also get better with a smaller map.
They should really divide the result by 12 then multiply it by the number of civs starting the game.
Indie bands of course are something quite different and should just be binned as a stupid OP toy.

 

[Basajaun]

Just asking. The thing is, people are easily pulling sub 300 SVs, RV and dom can both be done really early depending on map conditions, I've even pulled off a turn 295 diplo victory. It's hard for me to label something that puts CV on par with other victories as "OP." Winning a late game with bands makes them strong but not "OP."

Standard speed I guess?
Ive been lately pursuing Science victories (standard map, epic speed, king diff) and up til now I got Kupe on the head (t 486) and Matthias 2nd (t 508). It goes so fast through the tech tree, that last night (with Kupe) I was researching future tech while finishing my space projects, whilst the AI was getting into Renaissance. Still, I had to purposely play "bad" before my own Culture Victory caught up on me. I used all the research/production cards, and left the culture/tourism ones to rot.

Then I got out 4 rock bands to mess about my neighbors while my SpaceX program reaches its target and not fall asleep in the process. Some turns later, my previous "80 turns to win" Culture Victory was now "2 turns to win". Fortunately one turn later the SV screen pops.

Im by no means an expert, and I rarely chop unless I have a very good reason to do it: I have a builder laying around or I can easily get one, and know Im going to put something that will replace it. The bigger the size of my empire, the less I do this. Plus, if I play Kupe, then I will SURELY not chop, and plant woods everywhere when I can. I like low climate impact and as much natural, non-IZ production as I can grab (which with the maori is quite mad)

 

[Tuvok694]

It still leaves me speechless that there are actually people who think that the rock bands (especially the "indie" promotion) are NOT overpowered.
I mean, it only takes about between 1200 and 2000 faith points to take out ANY foreign city with two districts in ONE turn, no matter how large, even a capital?? This is ridiculous.

 

[Victoria]

It still leaves me speechless that there are actually people who think that the rock bands (especially the "indie" promotion) are NOT overpowered.
I mean, it only takes about between 1200 and 2000 faith points to take out ANY foreign city with two districts in ONE turn, no matter how large, even a capital?? This is ridiculous.

Well, if you can choose your promotions you can win a domination victory without even going to war....
Now that is just damn silly.