Poll: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[Thalassicus]

If you've played the TBC mod, please list a few things from each category you feel are too powerful, or you almost never get. I'll use this to set priorities in the weeks ahead.

• Policies
• Wonders
• Buildings

 

[Architect]

I would love it if someone took a good hard look at the modern era. Its sorely lacking wonders and buildings. At least for me the games I'm playing are lasting much longer so having some more options up there to go for would be very nice!

 

[AlpsStranger]

I really dislike the "Free Culture Building in first four cities" policy effect. It's sloppy, you have to meta-game it to really make it useful, it's just icky... Perhaps a culture bonus to monuments instead?

 

[Zaldron]

I haven't played TBC since 7.5, but in the 7.x series...

Great merchants at the end of the game provided a huge amount of gold. I would actually seek them out ahead of everything else (Except possibly engineers when I needed to rush a wonder). Compared to the nerfed great scientists I was getting something like 15 turns worth of gold compared to 4-5 turns of research off the scientist. And that doesn't include the CS influence. I bet great merchants would be competitive at say 3/4ths their current amount.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Zaldron
It's important to distinguish between income and profit (income-expenses).

In the renaissance I typically have about 400 income. A Great Merchant in the Modern era gives 2400, which is less than 6 turns of Renaissance income. Most of my games don't last to the Modern era so I don't have much data for that, but clearly it would be 5 or fewer turns' worth, the same amount as a scientist in your games.

 

[Zaldron]

@Zaldron
It's important to distinguish between income and profit (income-expenses).

In the renaissance I typically have about 400 income. A Great Merchant in the Modern era gives 2400, which is less than 6 turns of Renaissance income. Most of my games don't last to the Modern era so I don't have much data for that, but clearly it would be 5 or fewer turns' worth, the same amount as a scientist in your games.

When comparing percentage modifiers I agree completely, but I don't believe it's meaningful to compare gross gold income with net science income (there just aren't any science expenses). When I get 1800 gold in one shot with a merchant it *doesn't* have any expenses taken out of it. Instead, it's added straight to my pool of useful gold and amounts to the much longer turn count I was alluding to.

Put another way, the observation I've made playing a few games is that the single great merchant near the end of the game is 1 or 1 1/2 CS from 0 to ally for a bunch of turns. The scientist is a few turns off a tech and just seems much weaker. Most likely I'm just not using the scientists right though.

 

[Thalassicus]

There's two reasons I use income for balance:

• Income is less volatile.
• Income is always positive.

Profit can fluctuate a lot from golden ages (from positive to zero or negative) while income changes by a smaller margin. Profit can also drop to zero when a lot of cities are conquered quickly. This makes income a more stable indicator of economic strength.

We must also have a way to value gold sources when our profit is 0/turn (since 1800/0 = undefined). Income is the next best alternative since it doesn't ever result in divide-by-zero. The merchant does have some finite value regardless of our economic circumstances. For example, a Renaissance-era trade mission from a Merchant equals the cost of 3 markets... no matter what state our economy is in.




==================

Back on topic, we're unable to alter the free-culture-building policy since it's done in the c++ side of the code (which only Firaxis has access to).

Does anyone else have a particular good or bad thing they can think of from those 3 categories? Cmon... surely something has been bothering you!

 

[jacktannery]

* Policies
Too powerful: none, they are well balanced, except maybe the bonus happiness from commerce is HUGE if you are a warmonger. This policy is the best warmonger policy in the game, far better for war than anything in honour or autocracy, because warmongers get lots of access luxuries that they cannot trade with the AI. If this policy were moved to autocracy instead it would make more sense. Commerce should give +X happiness for each TRADED resource instead or something.
I never get: Autocracy – I never need it by that time, as my main problem for warmongering is happiness.

* Wonders
Too powerful: none, all of them are well-balanced.
I never get: The Kremlin (though this is a great wonder for the AI) & Brandenburg Gate (completely useless at this stage in the game – I usually have too many Great Generals).

* Buildings
Too powerful: none, all of them are well-balanced.
I never get: I rarely build walls/castles/arsenal, but these are great for the AI. I probably would if I played at Deity (I’m still battling through Emporer). Forge is very rarely worth it but I am glad that it is in the game. This building does NOT encourage carefully placing and specialising cities as coal is revealed so late. If coal were revealed with iron but not workable til the modern age, then this building would really reward specialising cities and placing them well.

 

[Babri]

* Policies
Too powerful: none, they are well balanced, except maybe the bonus happiness from commerce is HUGE if you are a warmonger. This policy is the best warmonger policy in the game, far better for war than anything in honour or autocracy, because warmongers get lots of access luxuries that they cannot trade with the AI. If this policy were moved to autocracy instead it would make more sense. Commerce should give +X happiness for each TRADED resource instead or something.

Interesting. Maybe 2 per traded resource.

I never get: Autocracy – I never need it by that time, as my main problem for warmongering is happiness.

Autocracy can boost your . +3 from courthouse is absolutely fantastic. So 10 conquered cities = 30 .

 

[Ahriman]

except maybe the bonus happiness from commerce is HUGE if you are a warmonger

It is even better if you are Arab, and get double local luxuries from the Bazaar.

 

[Busdriver]

I haven't had that much time lately to play, so my judgements here may not be perfect, but I'll give it a try anyway:

Policies:
The Good: Overall I agree that policies are well balanced. In another thread, there are many complaints about the engineer from Tradition. While I don't think having an early GE available in Tradition is a bad idea, I can definitely see how it might come too early. Moving the GE to the Tradition finisher may be a good idea. I also think that the liberty GP should be moved to Freedom and replaced with something more wide empire-y, such as 1 in all cities. I disagree about the happiness from Commerce being too much. I would say cities average about 2 luxuries per city (feel free to dispute this, I haven't counted or anything), which is on par with other happiness policies, such as the 2-3 happiness from buildings in Piety and Rationalism. 3 happiness might be too much for police state.

The Bad: With tree finishers added, I don't think there is a single policy that will never be worth getting. Still, I think that Order in general could be improved. The Order tree has the worst access to happiness of any tree, at only 1 per city. Even Liberty and Tradition only need size 10 cities to beat this. Communism is also very underwhelming now. It would seem with the science boost to factories, the devs wanted to make order good for science victories, but I would probably prefer to go freedom and run scientists to get me through the late game techs. I think the boost to military CSs is out of place in Order, since I typically am more likely to invest in CSs with a small empire. I also still think that culture granting policies should be reduced, especially from Freedom, but that is a discussion for a different thread.

Wonders:
The Good: I think wonders are very well balanced right now; no wonder seems OP to the point of being nearly necessary to play a particular strategy, but they are almost all very nice to have under the right circumstances.

The Bad: GL got overnerfed, I think. In another thread someone suggested adding a scientist slot or 2 to GL, which I think would be a good idea. Hanging Gardens may also have been overnerfed, but I haven't tried it since it was lowered to only 5 . I have never been a fan of the Kremlin and Himeji Castle, but that reflects more on the fact that they are unnecessary against the combat AI then any sort of balance issue.

Buildings: Once again, buildings are generally well balanced, and I can't really say I find any buildings worthless. The bonuses to defensive structures in the early SPs make much more worthwhile, and give the Pioneer fort a very nice boost.

 

[Txurce]

In the renaissance I typically have about 400 income. A Great Merchant in the Modern era gives 2400, which is less than 6 turns of Renaissance income.

I tend to feel that the GM gold boost feels huge, but that could be because I'm not used to getting it. However, I would not use your own 400gpt as a general guideline - I don't think I hit 400g in the Modern era!

 

[Seek]

GL got overnerfed, I think.

Perhaps it should be renamed the Good Library. The HG seems kinda weak now, too - or at least less fun.

@Txuce - Thal was referring to income, not profit. An easy mistake, and one I've made before.

 

[Txurce]

Perhaps it should be renamed the Good Library. The HG seems kinda weak now, too - or at least less fun.

@Txuce - Thal was referring to income, not profit. An easy mistake, and one I've made before.

Oh yeah...

The HG is less fun, although it's still helpful. In that same turn 150 game, my capital is size 14 and growing with 50 hammers while on science focus with 4 specialists.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming, this will all be used to consider balance changes.

The HG traded -5 for +25%; I wouldn't really call that a nerf. I feel it's less exploitable to have two good effects instead of one super-effect.

 

[SlightlyMad]

Is it actually +25% or does it just give you a free garden? I wouldn't call it that good of an effect when it just duplicates something you could produce or buy already.

 

[Busdriver]

I never felt the old hanging gardens were a no-brainer to get at 10. Beelining it required going into Mathematics much earlier than I normally would, and in the process bypassing many other useful techs. I understand the reasoning behind nerfing it, since 10 is a lot of free food, but I feel like replacing 5 with a free gardens is a bit much. I would say either replace the gardens with an effect that isn't replicable by just building a gardens (maybe +2-3 like the old HG) or make it 6-8.

 

[sav]

Something I found with TBC was that my games would normally end around turn 330 or so, yet on vanilla, they usually go down to the wire, around turn 450-480, which is much better.

Because of this, and since the last patch was awesome, and that the 'Victory Progress' option seems to be missing from TBC mod, I've gone back to playing vanilla.

Sort these two things out, and I'll probaby start playing TBC again

 

[sav]

edit - whoops, double post...

 

[Txurce]

Because of this, and since the last patch was awesome, and that the 'Victory Progress' option seems to be missing from TBC mod, I've gone back to playing vanilla.

The Victory Progress button is probably an oversight.

Do the TBC and vanilla games end with similar circumstances? That is, do you or the AI generally win with the same victory condition in both Vanilla and TBC?