RAND 1.76 Balancing and Suggestions

[Danei]

Reposting this (with some formatting changes) from the bugs and feedback thread:

Unhappiness from barracks under certain civics strongly encourages players to demolish, given how easy barracks is to build later if one wants to, which is sort of exploit-y, as was previously mentioned, because the AI can't do it.

What I personally would do is make barracks (and other military experience buildings) simply have no effect under pacifism instead of causing unhappiness,

and instead of +1 unhappy for barracks under bourgeois, +1 unhappy from war weariness (or increased war weariness itself).

 

[Asterix Rage]

The best way to balance the game is definitly to improve again and again the AI. That is a big deal...
To do so, AND has to be finalized. I mean bug free and the rules fixed, then I hope Afforess or other modmoders will think about an "evenbetter AI"

This is a exemple :

View attachment 272131

A stupid AI bahaviour. This city (Hun) spend all of its ressources to built numerous ships for nothing. Never the ships will be able to reach the sea.
At least Hun could built work boats first to break the ice. But it doesn't

This is a big balance issue since AI still makes very stupid things and I don't.

 

[.5elf]

May not be possible (also may seem minor and not worth doing) is there a way to change the personalized landmarks to not have the colorized border (chat-bubble) around them and solely display as text on screen? This is a little niggling thing to me that causes me to turn the option off.

 

[os79]

Remember I told you about some buildings having commerce bonuses PLUS maintenance costs that destroy gold part of commerce? Well, I found new one, Castle. I'm for now lowering maintenance to 5% for these buildings that give commerce and have maintenance too. If it still cost me negative gold, I will do away with maintenance entirely for these buildings, we will see.

 

[Afforess]

Remember I told you about some buildings having commerce bonuses PLUS maintenance costs that destroy gold part of commerce? Well, I found new one, Castle. I'm for now lowering maintenance to 5% for these buildings that give commerce and have maintenance too. If it still cost me negative gold, I will do away with maintenance entirely for these buildings, we will see.

I remember - but I looked the ones you listed up. Paved roads doesn't give commerce commerce, it gives trade routes, which is listed like commerce in the Actual Effects. Same with Castle.

 

[os79]

But the question remains... still want to give them maintenance cost of ten percent?

 

[Danei]

But the question remains... still want to give them maintenance cost of ten percent?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why is that a problem?

It seems to me that if the maintenance cost exceeds the benefit in science/culture/espionage/tax that you'd be getting from the additional trade route, you just shouldn't build the building in that city at that time.

 

[os79]

Not science, espionage, or culture. Only gold aspect.

That's what I do when I am queue building gold producing buildings. I delay until research queue building time.

My point is simply that it is a bit too high the price.

However, I'm currently playing the game with 5% maintenance costs for these buildings we discussed. If it seem more sensible, then I will report back for Afforess to decide for himself. If he still want it at 10% cost, then it is cool because I already know he has a solid feel for balance .

 

[os79]

As promised, I played with 5% maintenance costs for Castle and Paved Roads buildings. The balance is better. Still get negative gold but not as harsh. Now I feel more comfortable constructing them for science.

Now the ball is in Afforess' court. Adapt down maintenance costs to 5% for all buildings that had 10% cost for trade routes or leave them as is at 10%.

 

[Afforess]

Thanks for giving me lots of suggestions everyone - I've been gone from CFC, but not the internets, you can still find me if you try.

Anyway, I'm gearing up for a 1.76 final release. I'd love it if some kind volunteer could collate a list of all the bugs people have found in 1.75 with links to the individual posts, that would make my life much easier.

Hopefully everyone's having a good holiday this year!

 

[NBAfan]

Merry Christmas! Glad to see you are still around.

 

[os79]

#1 Suggest you just read 5-10 last pages of Bug Reports and Feedback thread (skimming is good enough). You should catch any remaining bugs.

#2 Consider reducing Maintenance costs to 5% for Castle, Paved Roads, Telephone Networks. And remove maintenance penance for Welfare Office.

#3 Recommend you work on fine-tuning AUA in RevDCM 2.9 SVN so you can have 2.9 already ready in RAND 1.76.

#4 Re-read this thread, I guess.

I guess that is it from my perspective.

Seem like it will be the easiest iteration of all .

 

[B0n3es]

1. reccomend you work on this: "When capturing cities, you get all the territory that the city 'provides' to its original owner. So when you're at war with someone and capture all his cities, you will get ALL his territory, up to the last plot " it's a shame they removed that part of fixed borders, if re-enable this feature the achievements again be exciting...

 

[Spobe]

For completeness, I'm going to repost my idea for restructuring the way corporations work.

Instead of entirely different corporations somehow competing against each other (a cereal company competing against a jewelry company? seriously?), my suggestion is as follows:

1: Make all corporations available for all civilisations to found.

2: Make it so that only similar corporations compete with each other; i.e. construction companies compete against other construction companies.

3: With parts 1 and 2 in mind, make it so that corporations no longer have static names. Instead, each corporation will bear the name of its founding civilisation, i.e. Civilized Jewelers becomes British Jewelry, Inc. in Britain; Turkish Jewelry Co. for the Ottomans, etc. Or to simplify things a bit and reduce the workload, the corporation suffixes could always be the same (either Inc. or Co.).

This would allow real competition between civilisations and corporations, rather than the outright bogus way it functions now. Because, as we all know, in real life those pesky construction agencies are gaining tremendous footholds against the grain giants, and before we know it, cereal will no longer exist on our world.

 

[Afforess]

For completeness, I'm going to repost my idea for restructuring the way corporations work.

Instead of entirely different corporations somehow competing against each other (a cereal company competing against a jewelry company? seriously?), my suggestion is as follows:

1: Make all corporations available for all civilisations to found.

2: Make it so that only similar corporations compete with each other; i.e. construction companies compete against other construction companies.

3: With parts 1 and 2 in mind, make it so that corporations no longer have static names. Instead, each corporation will bear the name of its founding civilisation, i.e. Civilized Jewelers becomes British Jewelry, Inc. in Britain; Turkish Jewelry Co. for the Ottomans, etc. Or to simplify things a bit and reduce the workload, the corporation suffixes could always be the same (either Inc. or Co.).

This would allow real competition between civilisations and corporations, rather than the outright bogus way it functions now. Because, as we all know, in real life those pesky construction agencies are gaining tremendous footholds against the grain giants, and before we know it, cereal will no longer exist on our world.

Definitely how Firaxis should have done Corps - that would make them competitive AND realistic. It's too bad BTS was rushed (they apparently finished Corps in a hurry, left some dormant features in the code).

Unfortunately, that'd be an entire re-write of Corp's, which is just too much for me at this stage. Perhaps if you'd proposed this 12 months ago...

 

[Spobe]

Definitely how Firaxis should have done Corps - that would make them competitive AND realistic. It's too bad BTS was rushed (they apparently finished Corps in a hurry, left some dormant features in the code).

Unfortunately, that'd be an entire re-write of Corp's, which is just too much for me at this stage. Perhaps if you'd proposed this 12 months ago...

Yeah, I figured it would be a monumental undertaking, to say the least. Though I do have one viable request...

...Would you be interested in including my Soviet Union civilisation in the next release?

 

[os79]

Even more viable is to have Afforess link to your thread for some people who are interested in having that civ included. There are people who don't want that civ for their reasons .

 

[Kwami]

I like the Soviet Union civ. It doesn't have animated leaders, but everything else is quite nice. It'd be nice to have it integrated so that I don't have to install it separately with the modular music thing being all broken and whatnot.

Someone posted a Columbia civ a while back, too, but I never got a chance to play with it. If it's good, maybe 1.76 could include that as well.

 

[Yoshiegg737]

I like the Soviet Union civ. It doesn't have animated leaders, but everything else is quite nice. It'd be nice to have it integrated so that I don't have to install it separately with the modular music thing being all broken and whatnot.

Someone posted a Columbia civ a while back, too, but I never got a chance to play with it. If it's good, maybe 1.76 could include that as well.

Yeah. Adding some new civilizations from that mega civ pack thing into 1.76 will make my life easier than adding them in myself (what a pain)

 

[Alornal]

The only thing with adding civilizations is that it increases loading time. I have AND 1.75b with one personal change (buffed Landskenechts) and it takes a full 15 minutes to simply load up.