Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
I'll try to remember to look through things later to find some good strategic matches but many good options certainly exist there.
Player's Guide to Complex Traits
- Thread starter Thunderbrd
- Start date
Thunderbrd, you mentioned that you created the traits based on a point buy system. This makes me curious on what the cost of different types of modifiers are, as those costs seems to be a central to the actual balance of the traits.
One specific thing that I am curious about is whether the cost of the modifiers change over the different tiers, since the relative value of say flat modifiers to cities lowers in further eras.
One specific thing that I am curious about is whether the cost of the modifiers change over the different tiers, since the relative value of say flat modifiers to cities lowers in further eras.
Its just National Culture reaching milestones (some base, and then *8 previous step), that let you pick trait.
This was since developing traits were added (just different multiplier to previous step).
Complex Traits adds more traits, and there are two levels that are unlocked at Renaissance and Information era.
Those upgrades can be picked just like any trait.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
I did not try to apply dynamic costs to variables based on era, however I did try to bear this fact in mind in the trait designs. Thus in tier 1 traits I did not allow as high flat change values to be anything higher than +1 on a yield or commerce but allowed much higher assignments on tier 3 traits. This is one reason why tiers gain in power overall as they increase.
The costing charts where all values were established and recorded and where all variables were assigned and accounted for on each trait are displayed publically on the google worksheets that are given links to on the fist page of this thread if you would like to review in detail how costs were setup and applied.
Could they have been more exactingly designed? Sure. I let the super computing power of the human brain handle the heavy lifting of dynamic cost value adjustments by setting some guide rule boundaries through unexpressed estimation processes during creation.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
A little ultra-specific I suppose. lolThat's "heavy" man!
Anq
Prince
Birds have super power in their skull too! These agile beings are more capable of your man's daily job! lol
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Well, they ARE the dinos who survived an asteroid-impact mass-extinction event!
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Now that the New Traits are in place and the "major" bugs addressed, when will we release v39?
I'd like to include my changes for the information/prehistoric tech tree and correcting the Telegraph issue for @pepper2000. I don't want to hold anyone back though.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
I don't feel held back. We'll get to that release soon enough I'm sure.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
I asked because we really need to get non SVN Players Off the old v38.5 that is out there as our last official release.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
I agree.
I have been trying out a new trait strategy, which is based on the free golden ages you get from spiritual if you play with divine profets and can get to the religion tech(s) first (so it is mostly applicable at lower difficulty, or when you become a tech leader later). This can be combined with glorious for tons of power in those golden ages (including making them much longer), especially really early on when those flat bonuses are very powerfull. It is possible to go glorious first, use the golden age from captured fire to slighshot you ahead very early one, then pick up the second trait spiritual before you reach druidism (assuming you arent beeling for it too hard). You can then combine this later with honest and progressive, for double the bonus power and even longer golden ages.This is especially usefull in the periode where you are expanding to new cities, since this bonus will both make them much more profitable and shorten the time they need to get build up. While these all mostly have their main impact early on, it is not like the slave bonuses which become invalid later on, they just dont matter as much, and having lots of long golden ages does help, espeically since there are religions in most mid-game eras too, so you will have a guarenteed periode where you can shift government without anarchy. I am not sure how the negative side would work out, since I play with pure traits and no negative traits.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Yep, there's a lot to work with in that strategy. I was personally trying out much the same with Strategist as one of the first picks as well, to give a second common source of GP birthed based GAs. Are you finding it's TOO powerful do you think? I'm not sure yet myself.
I had tried to use strategist as well, but it was quite a let down when so notices That you do not gain a free golden age each era, since you don't technically get a general, and all those great hunters didn't count either.
It is hard to say what is too powerful, it is indeed powerfull when it is ongoing, but flat bonuses are going to be quickly outpased by other bonuses when cities grow in size, so I don't think the golden age ones are too powerfull by themselves. The other point is that a lot of the golden age boosting traits also seem to need your golden ages if you do not play with pure traits, which makes stacking them much less powerfull.
Spiritual is kind of the key that make this engine go off, since it allows you to get a lot of these golden ages in the periode where the flat bonuses are very powerfull. Without those the bonuses to golden ages from glorious can still be activated early for the captured fire, but there wouldn't be more golden ages for quite a while meaning it wouldn't be too much trouble balance wise, perhaps it could even be considered a poor choice.
What it really comes down to is the uptime for golden ages, and how big those flat bonuses are in relation to what you could have gotten from other traits. If the golden age uptime ends up with less than 25% then the flat bonuses would be inferior to other traits, you probably need an uptime closer to +50% to see a singnificant unbalancing effect. This is why I termed it mainly as a tempo pick, which also provide some effect later, since it mainly allow you to go through some key parts of the game faster if you play it just right, which you then need to turn into an advantage long term.
It is at least an alternative to slave bonus stacking, but I guess slave bonus stacking is more generally powerfull, though it does require you to throw a lot more traits at it and does fall off much more brutally late in the game ( though do remember that you can easily decide a game much before then, if you have 2/3'rds of the map by then and an era or 2;in advantage, then it doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't put you on the brink of collapse).
If you want to fix something, I would mainly suggest to change the form of bonuses from powerfull golden ages (the main problem is getting large flat bonuses very early) or spread the bonuses over more traits that also do some other nice things, and are still stackable, such that you don't get so much if the needed power with just 2 traits (which is the reason the timing works). Personally I don't think it is quite needed to need it right now, and I play with generally longer golden ages, since I found them otherwise quite short in the default setup on the faster game speeds (maybe 1-3 techs long).
That reminds me. The aerial trait seems a bit weird to me, in that it wouldn't really be possible to be genuinely aerial until flight is developed, a good way into the game. In particular, I wouldn't associate archery in itself with "aerial" combat. It's very useful to use from the air if you can already get there, but I don't see how (say) an obsession with figuring out how to fly in ancient times would lead to archers being better. Perhaps the trait could do with being renamed, to something like "ranged" or something to better describe the flavour you were going for?
Planning on starting a new game soon on what I would call 'casual' or 'easy going' settings which will include such things as Unlimited Wonders, Animals Stay Out, etc. As part of this mindset I'm also planning on using Pure Traits and No Negative Traits. Will there still be a point in using Complex Traits with these settings? I use and enjoy all your combats such as Size Matters and Hide&Seek. The goal is to allow for both me and the AI opponents to easily gather as many benefits as possible.
Yes, you can use complex traits like this, though use it with Developing Traits.
