Rebalancing Proposal

[wobuffet]

The new tile prices do seem a little too cheap for my tastes too. For the record, I buy maybe 10–15 tiles per game.

I agree very much with this:

As I said, I'm even settling in those all-too-frequent luxuries-on-either-end spots, even if they're on the AI's border, because I can buy them all instantly and pretty much not even feel it.

Maybe in Civ IV with cultural borders always in tension, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but in Civ V a tile is pretty much married to whoever first owns it.

 

[Thalassicus]

That's a pretty funny example. Yes, I guess you are a... perfectionist! It would never cross my mind to call the atoll's location bad luck. To me, it's just where it is. (The river isn't good luck, either.) But I do start seeing the connection to some of your other decisions!

Right! Perfectionism is also why I edit my posts fifty million times, and spends hundreds of hours trying to make Civ perfect with this mod.

Pre-v130 I bought 0-6 tiles per game, depending on the circumstances, playing with 4-8 city civs.

Ah! I think this is where we confused one another. Find your place in the list (0-6 tiles) and my place (~20 tiles):

We looked at the same chart, and I saw a cost increase while you saw a decrease. I got confused when you said the game is easier, because for me it's harder... and when I said it's harder, you were confused because it looked easier. I didn't realize you buy few tiles until we were already ~10 posts into this discussion, and you didn't realize I buy lots of tiles.

But nobody buys tiles in the late game.

Each playstyle seemed obvious - to ourselves - so we didn't bother mentioning how many tiles we buy.

Think of it from my 20-tile perspective. People said things are too easy and prices should rise. So I figured... okay! I made things harder by raising prices 70%. Voila! Or so I thought.

So now the right question to ask is how can we improve both our playstyles?

• For you it's fun when tile costs start high and don't increase much, because you purchase just a few important tiles at the start of the game.
• For me it's fun when costs match income, because I purchase tiles throughout the game.

 

[wobuffet]

Wouldn't the easy answer here be to bump up the first few tiles' costs to just above the old (v129) costs, and nudge the multiplier a hair down so that the cumulative costs are equal pre- and post-change by, say, tile 25?

 

[Txurce]

So the right question to ask now is: how can we improve both our playstyles?

Lowering your costs and raising ours to pre-v130 levels, so everyone's happy with the price of buying the tiles they find... necessary?

Wouldn't the easy answer here be to bump up the first few tiles' costs to just above the old (v129) costs, and nudge the multiplier a hair down so that the cumulative costs are equal pre- and post-change by, say, tile 25?

Something along these lines would work for me.

 

[Seek]

I've just been dabbling, but the v131.7 costs feel much better to me so far - especially knowing that the prices will rise more dramatically than vanilla/pre-v130 amounts. I tend to only buy production tiles since culture shies away from them early and those are what I need early, so prices are often more than what shows up in the graph.

 

[Thalassicus]

I chatted with my brother about this to get an outside viewpoint, and I think I realized something!

When I play games there's no point stressing over things we can't control. I'll give a Skyrim example. I focus on the few good Shouts and ignore the other 80% of useless ones. I don't think about it much at all. I just pick one of the good ones, put it out of my mind, and focus on the combat. What you said is exactly right for me with Skyrim and other games. It just is what it is:

It would never cross my mind to call the atoll's location bad luck. To me, it's just where it is. (The river isn't good luck, either.)

Now when I mod a game...

I look at the Civ code and think to myself, if some random number had been 138 instead of 139, the whole game would turn out different. There's a huge amount of this I discuss as good/bad luck. Some freak chance happens and everything's much harder for us - or easier.

In this situation I have the ability to change it, so I try to give us more control over our own fate. Does this make sense?

 

[EmperorFool]

The new prices in that graph look a lot better. It just seemed ridiculous to buy 5 tiles right off the bat without feeling the pinch. It also didn't help that in v130/1 I had so much damn gold anyway, the Vanilla prices wouldn't have hurt either.

And I see your viewpoint about good/bad luck and not wanting to stress over the details. Everyone has a different thing that is fun for them in this game. I'm a builder at heart and city-location maximizer. I love pondering the best city locations and trying to make them happen. In the case you pictured I would take what the map gave me and try my best to make a good city there. If I couldn't afford to buy the Monument or Sheep tile, I probably would have either waited to save up some money before settling there. That's part of the fun for me.

So I think with the new prices or with wobuffet's suggestion we're in a good place.

Side note on luck: I consider the luck of the map roll separately from the luck of combat. The map to me is so fun to explore that I just love seeing the variety and craziness that often develops. While an ice tile separating the coast may mess with my plans, I don't look at it as bad luck but rather a challenge to overcome. Compare this with the combat where in Civ4 I wouldn't bat an eye to pop into WorldBuilder to recreate the GG Maceman I lost attacking a city at 98% odds. Regular units, who cares that's combat, but losing a GG that stupidly makes the game less fun.

 

[Thalassicus]

That's one reason I really like Civ 5 a lot more than previous version in the series. It's more deterministic and less random. The 2% odds of losing a super-unit are gone... as are the 2% odds of getting a worthless great prophet in the modern era in a city with 98% chance for a Great Engineer. In Civ 5 if things go badly in combat it's usually our fault.

 

[Txurce]

I chatted with my brother about this to get an outside viewpoint, and I think I realized something!

Now when I mod a game...

I look at the Civ code and think to myself, if some random number had been 138 instead of 139, the whole game would turn out different. There's a huge amount of this I discuss as good/bad luck. Some freak chance happens and everything's much harder for us - or easier.

In this situation I have the ability to change it, so I try to give us more control over our own fate. Does this make sense?

Yes, it makes sense, and I really appreciate the effort you made to find common ground. My own preferences run right in line with the following (as you know from my icebreaking opinions):

The map to me is so fun to explore that I just love seeing the variety and craziness that often develops. While an ice tile separating the coast may mess with my plans, I don't look at it as bad luck but rather a challenge to overcome.

Like everyone else commenting, I'm happy to proceed either with something along the lines of wobuffet's suggestion, or what you have now, basd on the positive-enough response to it from Seek and EmperorFool. I won't be able to try the beta for a bit longer.

 

[Zaldron]

I just picked up 8500g last night after a long war, and immediately bought research labs for all of my cities except the hammer monsters. That strikes me as unbalanced, but there's not that can be done about it if we beat just about any civ except the minority that are broke. Now, do I think it would make a difference if I'd gained 45K g instead? Again, only aesthetically. Either way I've acquired a big enough pile to win the game going away (as opposed to winning in a closer, more exciting fashion).

The erratic AI peace delegations are, if not broken, then in need of a major recoding.

In my case it *did* actually help me: I was able to upgrade about 12-15 double heal musketmen (ex-immortals) to infantry AND annex two 30 pop cities and buy every culture and science building in them, but it set me back about 25K.

 

[Zaldron]

Thal, I read your revised answer above about wasted potential. I agree completely with EmperorFool that tile-buying seemed priced just right, meaning I really thought about it and did it only when it made sense. It was neither so cheap I did it on auto-pilot, nor something I ignored as never being worthwhile. I could only wish that the rest of the game could be balanced that well!

Edit: again, the current version is so radically cheap that I have altered my basic settling strategy because of it. If that's not a chihuahua tail wagging a mastiff, I don't know what is.

I actually thought tiles were too expensive in say v128 but agree they're no-brainer cheap in v131. Something like 20% less than 128 would seem about right to me.

 

[Txurce]

I do agree with Txurce here, and as I mentioned in my last post I think this should be toned down (to maybe 25+10x) *and* slow cultural expansion by a significant amount for reasons outlined above and in the OP.

I just re-read the thread from the OP to here, and can't find mention of this. I did notice, though, that Thal seems to have addressed it in v131.11. Is slowing cultural expansion still necessary, given the miscellaneous other reductions to culture?

 

[Thalassicus]

I felt it was much too fast after the culture scaling in v131.1, and slowed it down. The formula is a little vague so I've had to guess at the numbers. I haven't played far enough in 131.11 yet to see if it's now in a good range. For anyone who plays that version or later, please report if you feel it's too fast or slow.

I agree with you completely that slowing down cultural border expansion will increase the value of Stonehenge and the Kremlin. My thinking is we should be able to support a basic city without much cost, but larger cities or reaching certain tiles requires a much bigger investment than the January version. The approach I'm taking is to leave the first 1-3 tiles about the same, and increase the exponent of later costs.

 

[Txurce]

The approach I'm taking is to leave the first 1-3 tiles about the same, and increase the exponent of later costs.

I like the idea behind the idea, and am glad to understand the basics of how it works, as per above.

 

[Zaldron]

I've just been dabbling, but the v131.7 costs feel much better to me so far - especially knowing that the prices will rise more dramatically than vanilla/pre-v130 amounts. I tend to only buy production tiles since culture shies away from them early and those are what I need early, so prices are often more than what shows up in the graph.

Technically it shies away from hills and forests. Stone and cows should still be picked up by culture early.

 

[Seek]

I just re-read the thread from the OP to here, and can't find mention of this. I did notice, though, that Thal seems to have addressed it in v131.11. Is slowing cultural expansion still necessary, given the miscellaneous other reductions to culture?

Didn't I? Oops! I think it's a good change, and it buffs Tradition as well which is good given the recent nerfs to the tree.

I gotta say I will miss Monarchy's +1 on Wonders (I thought it was fun and useful), and wish there had been more discussion on the matter. Tradition is much weaker without it, and though powerful, I think that giving Monarchy more prerequisites or lowering the production bonus/culture would have been better, as I suggested here:

How about +10% wonder production, 2-4 culture and 1 happiness? Makes it more risky going for wonders and the culture doesn't get as out of hand.

As an alternative, what about adding the wonder happiness to the finisher?

 

[Txurce]

Not having played with the recent betas, I can't comment on whether happiness has been nerfed too much in Tradition. But in the past I thought that it was oddly about as easy for me to get my targeted 2-3 GWs at the start using Liberty as it was using Tradition. (Maybe Thal addressed this by intensifying AI focus on GWs.)

 

[Zaldron]

Didn't I? Oops! I think it's a good change, and it buffs Tradition as well which is good given the recent nerfs to the tree.

I gotta say I will miss Monarchy's +1 on Wonders (I thought it was fun and useful), and wish there had been more discussion on the matter. Tradition is much weaker without it, and though powerful, I think that giving Monarchy more prerequisites or lowering the production bonus/culture would have been better, as I suggested here:
As an alternative, what about adding the wonder happiness to the finisher?

I just have to reiterate as well that the +1 happy never seemed too powerful to me. There just aren't that many wonders in the game (with high opportunity cost) that it doesn't seem too powerful to me. On the higher levels it might only amount to 6-8 happiness throughout much of the game which is only a small amount more than the piety *opener* (which as an aside also feels a bit weak).

 

[Txurce]

I just have to reiterate as well that the +1 happy never seemed too powerful to me. There just aren't that many wonders in the game (with high opportunity cost) that it doesn't seem too powerful to me. On the higher levels it might only amount to 6-8 happiness throughout much of the game which is only a small amount more than the piety *opener* (which as an aside also feels a bit weak).

Out of context, you may be right that those two happiness boosters weren't OP. But there is a strong consensus that the game had become too easy. Happiness reached the point where "excessive happiness" became an unofficial category, leading to the related science buff.

In my opinion, lobbying for miscellaneous boosts here and there is what led, bit by bit, to the overall problems we're addressing now. I don't see the point of raising happiness anywhere at this point until it's determined that overall happiness has dropped too low. Otherwise we risk running around in circles.

 

[Seek]

My suggestions in the OP for taking Tradition's happiness down a notch (-33% in capital and wonder happiness limited by pop) were quite moderate compared to where we are now - going Tradition early feels like a waste next to Liberty now.

@Zaldron - don't forget that it affected National Wonders too, which is a good five or more happiness in the early/mid game.