patch changes - xml number changes

[vexing]

globaldefines:

POLICY_ATTACK_BONUS_MOD 33 -> 20
BUILDING_SALE_DIVISOR 10 -> 4
DISBAND_UNIT_REFUND_PERCENT 10 -> 25
POLICY_COST_INCREASE_TO_BE_EXPONENTED 6 -> 3
POLICY_COST_EXPONENT 1.7 -> 2.0

globalAiDefines:

FRIENDS_CULTURE_BONUS_AMOUNT_ANCIENT 4 -> 3
FRIENDS_CULTURE_BONUS_AMOUNT_INDUSTRIAL 10 -> 13

GlobalDiplomacyAiDefines:

OPINION_WEIGHT_TRADE_MAX -30
OPINION_WEIGHT_COMMON_FOE_MAX -50
OPINION_WEIGHT_ASSIST_MAX -30
OPINION_WEIGHT_LIBERATED_CAPITAL -80
OPINION_WEIGHT_LIBERATED_CITY -40
OPINION_WEIGHT_GAVE_ASSISTANCE 20
OPINION_WEIGHT_PAID_TRIBUTE 30
OPINION_WEIGHT_NUKED_MAX 50
OPINION_WEIGHT_CAPTURED_CAPITAL 80
DEAL_VALUE_PER_TURN_DECAY 3
DEAL_VALUE_PER_OPINION_WEIGHT 10
COMMON_FOE_VALUE_PER_TURN_DECAY 25
COMMON_FOE_VALUE_PER_OPINION_WEIGHT 50

building costs:
watermill, library, lighthouse, barracks 70 -> 75
circus, walls 80 -> 75
forge, monastery, garden 100 -> 120
temple, aqueduct, colosseum 120 -> 100
armory 100 -> 160
castle, university 200 -> 160
bank, theatre, opera house 250 -> 200
seaport: 180->250
museum, military academy, public school 350 -> 300
arsenal 450 -> 300
hostpial 350 -> 360
factory 400 -> 360
solar plant, nuclear plant, spaceship factory 800 -> 360
stadium, broadcast tower, medical lab, stock exchange, research lab, hydro plant 600-> 500

national epics: all went to 125 + 30 per city, nc was 100+20

great lighthouse, stonehenge, pyramid, colossus 220 -> 185
great library 250 -> 185
great wall 280 -> 250
angkor wat, hagia sophia, chichen itza 350 -> 300
machu picchu 420 -> 300
notre dame, porcelain tower, hijemi castle 600->400
sistine chapel, kremlin, forbidden palace, taj mahal 600 -> 500
big ben 700 -> 625
brandenburg gate 650 -> 750
louvre 850 -> 750
statue of liberty 1000 -> 1060
eiffel tower 1000 -> 1250
cristo redentor, pentagon, sydney opera house 1200 -> 1250

units, not going to list everything
rocket parts 1000 -> 750 and 700->500 for boosters
nukes went 1200->1000
atom bombs 850->600
modern and future went from 1000/800/700/600 -> 425
industrial 550 to 380 -> 375
muskets went from 135 -> 150
medieval went from 165->120
classics went 90->75
late ancient went 70 or 60->56
archer went 75->40

 

[Polycrates]

Very informative, thanks heaps for this!

A few things that strike me as odd though, maybe someone can explain...

globaldefines:

...snip...

forge... 100 -> 120 Why?
seaport: 180->250 Why? It was hard to justify even pre-patch. Now it's been made only half as effective and they're still jacking the cost up? Even when the cost of everything else has been reduced? What? Were people somehow doing deity seaport rushes somewhere out of my sight?
great library 250 -> 185 Which would be all well and good except it's been confirmed it still gives the free tech as well
porcelain tower... 600->400 Are you kidding me? And it still gives the free Great Scientist as well as the huge RA boost? This is really worrying for balance
brandenburg gate 650 -> 750

 

[chazzycat]

Agreed, Great Library looks to be very strong now, also WTF on the porcelain tower. Not sure why they decided to make this the super-science wonder and also trim 1/3rd of the cost. Seems kinda crazy. Notre Dame also seems very, very strong given the general hapiness shortage.

As for forges the maintenance was reduced so I assume that's the reason.

I also don't like the changes to seaports, it was one of my favorite buildings before and now it's kinda meh. I don't think it was too overpowered given how long it takes to reach navigation. But if I had to guess why they did it, they probably figure that your coastal city should already have the harbor bonus, and so it will have better production, enabling it to build the seaport faster than prepatch levels.

 

[vexing]

they just normalized the building costs by their place in tech tree, start of renaissance 200, middle 250 (seaport), end 300. i agree that the seaport shouldn't cost so much, especially since it's half as powerful as before

 

[RealHuhn]

They even normalized the whole tech tree didn't they?

There's no difference in tech cost per column.

 

[magnus333]

If you look at the costs for buildings, units, wonders and sciences they are all very consistent by science tier (horizontal groups across the tree). It looks like a lot of time and effort went into the math needed to balance the pacing of the game across the various play styles (culture, science, production, wide, tall, happiness, etc) and then I imagine they ran out of time to code/balance/design/implement/test/iterate on every little detail in a single patch.
We'll probably see some changes to those listed oddities in coming patches but only 4 anomaly's out of all the changes in this patch is pretty good in my book.

Also, the Forge had it's maintenance reduced by 50% and presumably stacks with the Honor increase so a slight increase was likely warranted there. The other 4 stand out though.

 

[chazzycat]

Oh I see...that makes much more sense.

 

[Brichals]

Ah I noticed I got 25 gold for disbanding a worker, more than before.

 

[Martin Alvito]

They even normalized the whole tech tree didn't they?

There's no difference in tech cost per column.

Compass is cheaper than other techs at that level, but AFAIK it is the only exception.

 

[vexing]

i added a 332 tech tree to the gallery, including tech costs/10, and unit/building/wonder costs by place in tech tree at the bottom.

 

[Thalassicus]

This is a very helpful list, thank you.

Compass is cheaper than other techs at that level, but AFAIK it is the only exception.

Both Optics and Compass.

 

[snarzberry]

Compass is cheaper than other techs at that level, but AFAIK it is the only exception.

I think Globalization is more expensive than the rest of it's level, that's one other that I can think of. Not sure if there are any others.

 

[MadDjinn]

hmm, I actually liked it better when certain key techs cost a little more. - all along the tech paths.

 

[vexing]

I think Globalization is more expensive than the rest of it's level, that's one other that I can think of. Not sure if there are any others.

the three that have been listed are all (as is clearly visible in the tech tree screenshot).

hmm, I actually liked it better when certain key techs cost a little more. - all along the tech paths.

i agree, i can't really get behind their near total normalization of production costs either. i feel sorry for the people who did all the balance work there. they had all their work gutted and replaced by a simple increment by position in tech tree, normalize unit cost * 4/3 = building cost, building cost * 5/2 = wonder cost, with very few exceptions.

 

[magnus333]

Modifying costs is an awful way to "balance" anything in a compounding game like civ. There are so many different ways to circumvent those costs (research agreements for example, civ unique abilities for another) that its impossible to balance around. Either you exploit the means to circumvent the costs and slingshot to a guaranteed victory with ease or you don't circumvent the costs (most casual players fall in this category) and the game is exceedingly difficult or slow (boring).

That also creates extremely one-dimensional game play where doing one thing in every game always works (boring) vs doing things differently in reaction to the map, other civs and events that unfold in game.

Civ is ultimately about pacing various mechanics over 500 turns and the only way to balance that is with linear costs. Linear costs require that all units/buildings/wonders be relatively balanced against each other however, which is something they made great strides towards in the last patch.

i feel sorry for the people who did all the balance work there. they had all their work gutted and replaced by a simple increment by position in tech tree,

I think this is completely inaccurate. I think no time was spent on balance work at all prior to these last patches and high costs were a quick and dirty (and bad) reactionary adjustment to complaints like "longswords are too strong".
While the current scaling costs sound simple, there are a ton of complicated factors that likely had to be taken into account to arrive at those simple numbers. For instance, the amount of production available both in Tall and Wide cities, the production pacing coming from buildings (lots of changes here), the production coming from various terrain types such as plains/grass (note how stone was added to grass, likely for this specific reason), the relative power of dozens of buildings/wonders/techs/units...
I'd be willing to bet that the current values took at least a hundred times longer to arrive at then the old ones. Mostly because I think the old ones took no time at all and they were a major reason why the game was so flat.

 

[Thalassicus]

Modifying costs is an awful way to "balance" anything in a compounding game like civ.

That also creates extremely one-dimensional game play where doing one thing in every game always works (boring)

Ruling out one method of balance is not a good approach to balancing the game. Compare these two buildings:

Workshop
Cost: 120
Maintenance: 2
Production: 2
Production: +10%
Engineer: 1

Windmill
Cost: 240
Maintenance: 2
Production: 2
Production: +10% for buildings only
Engineer: 1

The result is the very problem you want to avoid: one-dimensional gameplay with no reason to build the windmill before the workshop (if we build the windmill at all). The problem is basing costs on the tech tree perspective, instead of the city-production perspective.

To balance these two buildings in importance, the simplest and most straightforward solution is 1) equal cost 2) give Windmills a slightly higher modifier. This is what I did in TBC.

 

[vexing]

I'd be willing to bet that the current values took at least a hundred times longer to arrive at then the old ones. Mostly because I think the old ones took no time at all and they were a major reason why the game was so flat.

i'll take that bet. i'll even give you odds.

consider this: the building prices are just simply incremented "round" numbers going up the tech tree, specifically 60, 75, 100, 120, 150, 200, 250, 300, 360, 420, 500
the other numbers are derived from those. (3/4ths for units, 5/2nds for wonders)

i highly doubt more time was put into that than the original costs, however it doesn't really matter because civ was / is still unfinished.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Hold on... it's not really all about the cost of anything - more like how the path (sometimes alternating, btw) to specific victory conditions can be "guided" towards a set of strategic choices. Forget techs bee-lining for a second and think effective flow of assets.
Just the newest preq link between Computers & Globalization is indicative of that reasoning for example.

 

[magnus333]

Ruling out one method of balance is not a good approach to balancing the game.

My point was that exceptional costs are not a method of balance, they are poor game design brought on by a lack of mathematical oversight. I'm not ruling out a method of balance, I'm ruling out bad game design!

Compare these two buildings (windmill vs workshop)... The result is the very problem you want to avoid: one-dimensional gameplay with no reason to build the windmill before the workshop (if we build the windmill at all). The problem is basing costs on the tech tree perspective, instead of the city-production perspective.

I would argue that "the problem" as you put it has absolutely nothing to do with anything but bad game design from the onset. Originally, production buildings were the only line of buildings that didn't have a tiered setup. This led to the problem (particularly noticeable on advanced starts) where factories where really the only production building worth bothering with. If you recall civ5 1.0 the basic strategy was to avoid building workshops AND windmills in your dozens of cities and later on build factories if you somehow managed to not beat the game by that point (which was rare).
The current setup in vanilla is significantly less one-dimensional than original and while the current setup isn't ideal, its a remnant of a lack of foresight from the beginning.
If you look at building pacing, all the basic buildings for each yield type unlock almost exactly every 3 science tiers. ie: Market tier 3, bank tier 6, stock exchange tier 10. Library 2, university 5, public school 8, research lab 12. Then there are additional 'bonus' buildings like the mint/observatory which do not follow any established pacing setup.
Why the single most important yield (production) didn't have a tiered building setup from the beginning is beyond me, but I would argue that the Windmill should have been a default production building (not limited to buildings only) in the tier from the beginning. ie: workshop tier 4, windmill 7, factory 9, power plant 13.
There should have been an early "bonus" production building somewhere around tier 4-7 that gave the production bonus to buildings only (with no base hammer yield this building would have been Tall-only in design, just like the aqueduct). This would have made balancing production across the game and play styles infinitely easier than the debacle it has been since launch and it would be perfectly in line with the design concepts employed across all other building types!
This begs the question, why haven't they done this yet? The answer to that is simply time. They only have so much of it and this is probably a very low priority compared to the myriad of other issues they have been tackling.

To sum up, I think you're looking at two buildings with a very narrow focus and extrapolating a solution to a perceived problem when the real issue requires a broader view of buildings/pacing and their evolution over the last year in general. If your mod bumps the Windmills modifier up more than 5% I can practically guarantee you that it would be completely overpowered for the way I play my games with the latest production costs (excluding other changes in your mod). That would actually make my games far more on-dimensional in the grand scheme of things as I'd be less likely to vary my play style from game to game since my favored play style would be so powerful.
In my opinion, your mod should do the following instead:

1. convert the windmill to base production instead of building production
2. insert the windmill between the workshop and factory as far as requirements go.
3. remove the ridiculous nohills requirement of the windmill. (realism is always a plus)
4. move the factory back a science tier somehow so base building production chain is paced better (every 3): workshop tier 4, windmill 7, factory 10, power plant 13.
5. Run a bunch of test games to measure the expected hammers/t/city in extreme Wide, extreme Tall and 'normal' games. Based on those results readjust the hammer costs of all buildings/wonders/units from tier 7 on.
6. If you find one play style to be lacking, add a new bonus production building around tier 4-7. If Wide is lacking, give the bonus building flat hammers, if Tall is lacking give it a % modifier and no flat hammers.
7. Lastly, if you don't want people like vexing to discount all your work as effortless, be sure to not round the results to the nearest increment of 5 (like all other game mechanics do...).

/my2cents

 

[Thalassicus]

We're sort of getting offtopic here.

The realism concern of #2 is solved by just renaming the flatland building. Where else would the hill-balance effect go? Hills provide the city +1 and +25%; flatland city sites need a balancing factor.

While it's tempting to add new units and buildings to the game, I avoid doing so unless absolutely necessary. It can quickly result in scope creep.

Changing the flatland building to also affect units+wonders would result in unequal bonuses for units, buildings, and wonders. Right now each of these three categories get about a 10-20% production bonus from buildings.