Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

[JujuLautre]

About the theatre for Broadway stuff, I know it's not anywhere related to balance or anything; but I just feel stupid that you can build Broadway without a theatre (or at least the tech)

I won't pronounce myself on the jungle stuff - although I understand what you would like too. However, I thought about something else that could need balancing, and that is Bronze Working.

The fact is that the tech is too often one of the first tech to get. And too often for my taste, it's too often mandatory. Why? Because you have a BFC full of forests and want to lay down other stuffs in it. And BW is very expensive, especially when you don't have mining.

Axemen have been changed. But may I propose other changes ? Did not test any of them though:
- move slavery to masonry (slavery, mids, goes well together does it not ? )
- move tree chopping to either mining or to nothing at all, but reduce it at first (I dunno, 10, 5 or just 1 hammer) and raise that with BW to match the current implementation (careful with mathematics)

 

[Dragonxander PR]

I've read of concerns regarding Scientific Method. It's a prerequisite tech for important ones (i.e. communism, biology...), yet its effect is overall negative on the short run. For instance, losing the power of monasteries & The Great Library is just a too big blow for a tech that's supposed to represent more advances in science/research! How about giving it a 10% bonus in all cities? That would be attractive for those not wanting Free Religion as a civic, & for those who want to win either by space, late domination, late conquest or perhaps time. I do know that the late game research might get too accelerated by that bonus, but in later era starts that bonus would be balancing.

 

[PieceOfMind]

What do people think of this for the axeman and its UUs?

Axeman: 35, 4, +50% vs. melee, +25% vs. swordsman
Phalanx: 35, 4:strenth:, +50% vs. melee, +25% vs. swordsman, +100% defense vs. chariots
Vulture: 35, 5, +25% vs. melee,+25% vs. swordsman
Dog solider: 30, 3, +100% vs. melee, +25% vs. sworsman

 

[PieceOfMind]

About the theatre for Broadway stuff, I know it's not anywhere related to balance or anything; but I just feel stupid that you can build Broadway without a theatre (or at least the tech)

I won't pronounce myself on the jungle stuff - although I understand what you would like too. However, I thought about something else that could need balancing, and that is Bronze Working.

The fact is that the tech is too often one of the first tech to get. And too often for my taste, it's too often mandatory. Why? Because you have a BFC full of forests and want to lay down other stuffs in it. And BW is very expensive, especially when you don't have mining.

Axemen have been changed. But may I propose other changes ? Did not test any of them though:
- move slavery to masonry (slavery, mids, goes well together does it not ? )
- move tree chopping to either mining or to nothing at all, but reduce it at first (I dunno, 10, 5 or just 1 hammer) and raise that with BW to match the current implementation (careful with mathematics)

Surely moving slavery away from BW and then removing the chop from BW would make BW pretty useless? I appreciate these are suggestions but I need to be clear about what exactly needs to be done to nerf BW a bit, and not overdo it.

I think forest chopping at BW is not too bad, but slavery could very well come with another tech.

At the moment, I'm thinking move slavery to Masonry which sounds fairly sensible, but at the same time increase the cost of Masonry ever so slightly. At the moment its base cost is 80. I'd suggest at least 100, but even 120 may be acceptable with the slavery moving to it.

What do people think?

By the way, 100 would make it the same cost as Animal Husbandry. 120 would make it the same cost as Bronze Working. Meditation costs 80. Just so you have an idea what the cost is.

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

Edit: woo, crosspost. I don't agree that moving both slavery and chopping off of BW makes it useless, but moving slavery to Masonry might be a problem. It would make it a much more useful tech if you're going for Pyramids anyway. Increasing the cost of Masonry would make Judaism more expensive, and it would make walls suck more.

Axemen are too important in the early game, even with the nerf, because they come with a tech that's a mandatory beeline for almost all civs/strats and because spears are still not useful. It's the fact that they coincide with BW, not whether their strength is one point higher or lower and not whether they're just a little bit more or less useful against certain other units. Getting archers and/or chariots and then going for something like Monarchy before BW should be a valid choice, whereas right now you'd be a fool to do so in my opinion.

Regarding jungles, one problem with allowing lumbermills is that you'd end up with cities that have no production except jungle tiles. Which real world empire is that supposed to simulate? It's gamey and unrealistic. My opinion is that jungle tiles should simply be bad tiles aside from resources, like desert. Nobody's clamoring for free hammers when you magically terraform desert to grassland in 1000 BC, so why should jungle work that way? Jungle should chop to plains, as has been said, but chop times should be significantly longer than time to chop forests, which of course should be longer than time to chop forests now.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I've read of concerns regarding Scientific Method. It's a prerequisite tech for important ones (i.e. communism, biology...), yet its effect is overall negative on the short run. For instance, losing the power of monasteries & The Great Library is just a too big blow for a tech that's supposed to represent more advances in science/research! How about giving it a 10% bonus in all cities? That would be attractive for those not wanting Free Religion as a civic, & for those who want to win either by space, late domination, late conquest or perhaps time. I do know that the late game research might get too accelerated by that bonus, but in later era starts that bonus would be balancing.

IMO a 10% bonus to Sci Meth is too big a change. I'm not sure much attention is needed on this tech at all, but if you think so, the change will probably need to be smaller before many will consider it.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Axemen are too important in the early game, even with the nerf, because they come with a tech that's a mandatory beeline for almost all civs/strats and because spears are still not useful. It's the fact that they coincide with BW, not whether their strength is one point higher or lower and not whether they're just a little bit more or less useful against certain other units. Getting archers and/or chariots and then going for something like Monarchy before BW should be a valid choice, whereas right now you'd be a fool to do so in my opinion.

Regarding jungles, one problem with allowing lumbermills is that you'd end up with cities that have no production except jungle tiles. Which real world empire is that supposed to simulate? It's gamey and unrealistic. My opinion is that jungle tiles should simply be bad tiles aside from resources, like desert. Nobody's clamoring for free hammers when you magically terraform desert to grassland in 1000 BC, so why should jungle work that way? Jungle should chop to plains, as has been said, but chop times should be significantly longer than time to chop forests, which of course should be longer than time to chop forests now.

Chopping jungles to plains would probably be the biggest change yet. At the moment, a jungle heavy start is hard enough to get up from early on, but it has the advantage of many grassland tiles in the mid game onward. Making them plains is just going to hurt those starts further.

I've removed the lumbermill idea, but I would still argue the 10 from the chop is fairly reasonable.

 

[JujuLautre]

Surely moving slavery away from BW and then removing the chop from BW would make BW pretty useless? I appreciate these are suggestions but I need to be clear about what exactly needs to be done to nerf BW a bit, and not overdo it.

Sorry I wasn't clear. The goal was not to implement everything at once, just some thoughts about how to make BW less of a "tech ASAP !!!" choice

 

[PieceOfMind]

I think some of you will be fairly pleased to see the change I just finished.

I've just modified the DLL to create a separate meltdown function. Previously, a nuke hitting your city and a nuclear meltdown were both the same event, done by CvPlot::nukeExplosion().

Here is how the nuke meltdown now differs from the nuke explosion:

Nuke explosions and nuclear meltdowns are now separate events. A nuclear bomb hitting your city is much worse than a nuclear meltdown of a reactor.
Changes to nuclear meltdowns:
Bomb shelters no longer affect a meltdown event.
MELTDOWN_UNIT_DAMAGE_BASE to 10 from 30. (This change means only 10% of units will die on average, instead of 30%, assuming they are full health to start with.)
MELTDOWN_NON_COMBAT_DEATH_THRESHOLD to 20 from 60 (20% chance of non combat units to die. I wouldn't recommend storing great people in a nuke plant city!)
MELTDOWN_BUILDING_DESTRUCTION_PROB to 10 from 40 (now only 10% of buildings that aren't immune to nuke damage will be destroyed - four times less.) The 10% of buildings destroyed is I suppose meant to represent the buildings that are so close to the meltdown site that they cannot be used again for centuries.
MELTDOWN_POPULATION_DEATH_BASE to 20 from 30.
MELTDOWN_POPULATION_DEATH_RAND_1 and MELTDOWN_POPULATION_DEATH_RAND_2 to 10 from 20. (Now only 20 to 40% of your population will die, as opposed to 30 to 70%)
Nuclear meltdown chance restored to 1 in 2000

 

[PieceOfMind]

Next idea:

I'm trying to think of ways to reduce the power of the Liberalism beeline.

What if I made Construction a prerequisite for Education? It seems weird to be able to build universities and Oxford uni before more permanent stone structures could be built.

Alternatively, adding Guilds as a necessary tech before getting Education could work. This would substantially weaken the Liberalism beeline and it doesn't sound too absurd.

EDIT
Another possibility is making Paper require machinery. That's pretty reasonable as well IMO.

 

[PieceOfMind]

What do people think of this for the axeman and its UUs?

Axeman: 35, 4, +50% vs. melee, +25% vs. swordsman
Phalanx: 35, 4:strenth:, +50% vs. melee, +25% vs. swordsman, +100% defense vs. chariots
Vulture: 35, 5, +25% vs. melee,+25% vs. swordsman
Dog solider: 30, 3, +100% vs. melee, +25% vs. sworsman

I've also been considering this option:

Axeman: 35, 5, +25% vs. melee, +25% vs. swordsman
Phalanx: 35, 5, +25% vs. melee, +25% vs. swordsman, +100% defense vs. chariots
Vulture: 35, 6,+25% vs. swordsman
Dog solider: 35, 4, +75% vs. melee, +25% vs. sworsman

With these changes, an axe will no longer beat a pike in the field, and it will be weaker against spears, which is probably necessary.

 

[aday]

IMO, the best way to reduce the power of the Liberalism beeline would just be to remove the free tech.

You'd still be able to bulb your way up the tree, and you'd still be able to net some big trades Education and Liberalism, and it's still an important tech, but it would no longer be the slingshot to victory that it so often is.

This almost feels like blasphemy to suggest, but I'm liking the idea more and more as I think about it...

 

[Jaroth]

I think some of you will be fairly pleased to see the change I just finished.

I've just modified the DLL to create a separate meltdown function. Previously, a nuke hitting your city and a nuclear meltdown were both the same event, done by CvPlot::nukeExplosion().

Here is how the nuke meltdown now differs from the nuke explosion:

Great work, I can live with this. It looks more reasonable than the default settings.

 

[UWHabs]

IMO, the best way to reduce the power of the Liberalism beeline would just be to remove the free tech.

You'd still be able to bulb your way up the tree, and you'd still be able to net some big trades Education and Liberalism, and it's still an important tech, but it would no longer be the slingshot to victory that it so often is.

This almost feels like blasphemy to suggest, but I'm liking the idea more and more as I think about it...

I think that gets rid of the whole point of having one later tech that gives a free one.

Alternately, if you made it more expensive than the ones around it, that would reduce the desire. If you made it as expensive as Steel, for example, then it becomes a little less valuable to spend time on.

With paper requiring machinery, the interesting side-effect is that some GS bulbs will then switch towards the Compass-Optics line. I think both compass and Optics are priorities over the paper/education line, which will also slow things down.

With the Axemen changes, I think you have to ask yourself what are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to slightly prevent the super-strong axe rush, or do you just want to make them less strong? Or do you want to keep them able to rush, but just make them a bit less powerful overall?

 

[PieceOfMind]

Regarding the axes, I think we mainly need to make them less dominant particularly in their era.

Now that you mention it though, the second change I mentioned above would not make it any worse a rushing unit - only worse against swords and spears (which are typically not encountered during a rush).

I'm gonna need some other suggestions maybe. Basically we need a way for the axeman to be less of the build-only unit that it currently is for so many people. IMO swords should beat archers and be about level with axes. Axes should beat spears. Archers should beat melee units when well positioned (on hills or in cities).

 

[Jaroth]

I was going to comment on the second, proposed change to axemen, but was busy in the office.

Like you said, the second change doesn't make axemen much less of a rushing unit since it remains the same vs. archers. All the change accomplishes is making axemen a bit weaker vs. non-swordsmen, non-axemen melee.

 

[Jaroth]

I don't know, what if we were to possibly take a different approach to reducing axemen rushes?

Instead of reducing axemen strength (which affects the balance between many other units), what if we start thinking in ways like:

1. Giving archers +% vs. axemen

2. or Axemen -% city attack?

The 1st option would be preferrable to the 2nd (I think), since with the 2nd option, axemen defenders would give axemen attackers a real hard time... causing you to rush to axemen anyway for "defenders".

 

[aday]

I think that gets rid of the whole point of having one later tech that gives a free one.

Alternately, if you made it more expensive than the ones around it, that would reduce the desire. If you made it as expensive as Steel, for example, then it becomes a little less valuable to spend time on.

With paper requiring machinery, the interesting side-effect is that some GS bulbs will then switch towards the Compass-Optics line. I think both compass and Optics are priorities over the paper/education line, which will also slow things down.

The thing I don't like about the Liberalism beeline is not that it's too easy, it's that it's too good. It's practically a given in high-level games that you have to make a concentrated effort toward Liberalism and snagging either Nationalism or Steel. It's just like BW -- it's so good, you just have to shoot for it.

So for me, it's not about slowing it down, it's about making it less desireable. Most other techs are geared towards a specific style of play, and I'd like for Liberalism to be the same way, rather than being a mandatory checkpoint along the way to victory.

Plus, I don't see "having one later tech that gives a free one" as being a critical game concept. Just my two cents though, I realize a lot of people don't mind any of this.

I think a cool replacement for the free tech would be an empire-wide +25% GPP boost for the first to reach it. This isn't something you could do just from the XML though, right? Does anyone know if it would be hard to do this? If not, I'm definitely going to try it out in my game.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Jaroth, it's funny you mention it. I was going to suggest in my previous post but I didn't in the end, to give +25% defense to archers against axemen. This is more specific than a general +25% vs. axes.

The thing that made me wary of this change is that arhcers already get a crapload of defense modifiers when defending a city typically, or defending a hill or forest in the field.

The good thing about giving archers +25% defense vs. axemen is that it doesn't change much about the game at all except nerf the early rush.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I will need to hear some more opinions on the Liberalism issue.