Small rebalancing mod + house rules

[Catwalk]

CURRENT VERSION

Spoiler :

House rules​

• May not rush production of anything but units
• May only rush production of units once per unit
• Caravans may only be sent to cities that demand the commodity
• Caravans may not be used to contribute to wonders (units may still be disbanded)
• May not use taxmen/scientists without a marketplace/library
• May not use more than 2 taxmen/scientists without a bank/university
• May not use more than 4 taxmen/scientists without a stock exchange/research lab
• Only gold and barbarians allowed from huts. Must reload until either occurs.
• When founding a city, you must disband x settlers where x is equal to the number of cities already founded on the island (excluding your initial city). Engineers and pioneers can be used in place of settlers, but you get no discount even though they cost more. Captured cities do not factor into this.
• May not change production project after buying and may never change to a(nother) wonder
• Will play with Cheat active. Every turn, each unit outside of a city radius loses x HP (based on terrain) (done manually by editing the unit). Veteran units lose 1 HP less. A unit may "share" HP with another unit, giving each unit the average of their combined HP. How many HP are regained for resting also depends on terrain (also done manually)
• May only pop huts that are within city radius. When popping huts, must reload until cash is received. This is to encourage exploration and add another factor in settlement decision, while at the same time reducing the luck factor.

Mods

Global​

• Riot factor raised to 255 (14)
• Base unrest threshold lowered to 6 (7)
• Settlers eat 2/5 food
• Production box changed from 10 shields per row to 6 per row
• Food box changed from 10 bushels per row to 20
• Monarchy gets no free units
• No penalty for production change
• Road speed bonus changed to x2 (from x3)
• 100% risk of coastal vessels sinking
• Citizens eat 1 food per turn
  

Terrain​

• Movement costs roughly tripled (also affects road construction)
• All normal land tiles give 1 base trade (can be raised to 2 with a road)
• No shields for grassland
• Specials improved, now even more lucrative
• Terrain improvement generally takes 50% longer
• -50% defense in Swamp terrain
• Supply ratings of terrain: 0 for Desert/Mountain/Glacier/Swamp - 1 for Hills/Tundra/Jungle - 2 for Forest/Ocean - 3 for Plains/Grassland - specials give various bonuses

Buildings​

• Aqueduct needed past size 6
• Upkeep raised for buildings which provide a local benefit (temple, granary, aquaduct, factory, etc)
• Construction cost raised for buildings which provide a national benefit (library, marketplace, etc)

Units​

• All units set to 2hp/1fp for easier comparison
• Costs lowered a little across the board
• Raised offense values across the board
• All ships until Destroyer made coastal

ORIGINAL POST

I've been tinkering with a Civ2 mod since forever, and started countless times. I've recently rererediscovered Civ2, and would really like to get a finished product this time.

The idea is to tweak numbers to achieve the following objectives:
1) More incentive to conquer as a means of growth
2) More incentive to develop cities
3) Less incentive to sprawl everywhere
4) More diversity in terrain value
5) More diversity in city type
6) A lot less micro management
7) More diversity in government choice

House rules as follows (if it's possible and practical to implement some of these technically, I'd be grateful for tips):
- No rushing of production
- Caravans may only be sent to own cities (!)
- Caravans may not be used to contribute to wonders (units may still be disbanded)

Rebalancing to be done along these lines:
a. Upkeep raised for most buildings
b. Production cost lowered for most buildings
c. Cost of settlers raised considerably
d. Shields set to 0 on Plains and Grassland, 1 on Forest, 0(2) on Hills, 1(3) on Mountains
e. Unit numbers tossed around a lot (but basic structure same as now)

More to come, please comment if you find it even remotely interesting!

 

[Blasph23]

Regarding the caravans, I don't think it's possible to only use them for own cities. Same goes for wonder helping and rushing. It would probably require some code diving and making some kind of a patch. Other than that it sounds interesting.

There was a scenario once, called Crises - New World Order. It has some interesting tweaks in the line you mentioned, namely greatly increased cost of building upkeep, costs of war and settlers/engineers. It's a bit more oriented toward peaceful gameplay but this can likely be reversed if you want a conquest-friendly game. Also altered terrain bonuses to address difference between industrial and rural tiles. On the other hand, that scenario put a rather strong emphasis on foreign trade. Still, some novelty in gameplay would be desirable I think.

On a side note, I'm working on my own conversion in spare time and I'm planning to put a strong emphasis on obsolescence of older units and vasty increase their inferiority to newer units.

I think the game could benefit from that, so even at the highest difficulty level, an enemy musketeer (even veteran/fortified/walled) would not stand a chance against your tank. The technological gap is simply too large for any even fight to take place.

Aside from all that, what do you mean by more diversity in government choice?

EDIT: Just checked something out, you probably know that already but: the amount of shields contributed toward wonder with a caravan/freight directly depends on the caravan/freight cost. So one-row-of-shields-costing caravan gives 10 shields toward wonder. Might be interesting to consider using various trade units for different purposes.

 

[Catwalk]

There was a scenario once, called Crises - New World Order. It has some interesting tweaks in the line you mentioned, namely greatly increased cost of building upkeep, costs of war and settlers/engineers. It's a bit more oriented toward peaceful gameplay but this can likely be reversed if you want a conquest-friendly game.

Civ2 is so insanely peace oriented already that even significant tweaks will probably still leave it quite peace oriented. Which is fine, I really just want a better balance between development and conquest.

Also altered terrain bonuses to address difference between industrial and rural tiles. On the other hand, that scenario put a rather strong emphasis on foreign trade. Still, some novelty in gameplay would be desirable I think.

Terrain stuff like that would be cool, but I'm wary about anything even remotely technical. I'm just a numbers guy, don't know the least bit about real modding. If foreign trade could be rebalanced instead that'd definitely be preferrable, but I don't know how to achieve that.

On a side note, I'm working on my own conversion in spare time and I'm planning to put a strong emphasis on obsolescence of older units and vasty increase their inferiority to newer units.

I think the game could benefit from that, so even at the highest difficulty level, an enemy musketeer (even veteran/fortified/walled) would not stand a chance against your tank. The technological gap is simply too large for any even fight to take place.

I think I can agree with going a little bit in that direction. If it's overdone (especially if it's mainly for sake of realism), it might make technological dominance far too powerful.

Aside from all that, what do you mean by more diversity in government choice?

I mean stuff like making Despotism more viable early on and Republic a little less powerful. Not too sure what to do with modern government forms. Many of these changes can only be done effectively in Freeciv, though. Along with a few other ideas I have, so I might turn to that. I could reduce free upkeep for Monarchy to 1, raise settler food cost for Republic and upwards and make 3+ terrain output less common/important early on. If citizen food upkeep is lowered to 1, you can grow far more easily in Despotism. And by lowering production across the board, free upkeep becomes more valuable. Also thinking about setting base trade on all terrain to 1, reducing the relative bonus of Republic and Democracy (from +100% trade to +50% trade).

EDIT: Just checked something out, you probably know that already but: the amount of shields contributed toward wonder with a caravan/freight directly depends on the caravan/freight cost. So one-row-of-shields-costing caravan gives 10 shields toward wonder. Might be interesting to consider using various trade units for different purposes.

I'm not sure how to take advantage of that. Regardless of caravan cost, it'll contribute its full cost to the wonder, making it 100% efficient at shield transfer.

I'm also thinking about a way to ease up on the ban on rushing production, maybe by allowing settlers and engineers to be rushed. That way high food cities will be a bit more useful.

 

[Blasph23]

I don't believe there's any way to change government variables. They're hardcoded into the game unfortunatelly.

As for the technological dominance, IMO - the more advanced you get, the more powerful you become on all fields. Increasing units' and buildings' costs will also force a civ to develop strong economy thus preventing early teching towards an uber unit to destroy everyone else. But that's just how I see things. I've had too many situations where my stealth fighters were destroyed after attacking an enemy's musketeer or partisans. Or tanks getting vaped by a cavalary charge. My only goal in this is to prevent ridiculous events like those.

As for the conquest, it's not exactly my pair of shoes, as I definitelly prefer a peaceful, wealthy power democracy and superior technology to sheer military force.
Also I think there's no way to prevent or limit rushing - it's another one of those hardcoded elements that cannot be changed.
Best you could do is probably change the penalty for switching production type, from the usual 50% to something like 99% or 100%.

 

[Catwalk]

Moved the updates to the original post.

 

[Catwalk]

The mod is approaching completion, and I'm finding it bundles of fun to play with. All current updates are added in the above post, along with a zipped rules file. If you give it a spin, please tell me what you think about it. Still a lot of fine tuning to do here and there, in particular for unit strengths.

 

[Blasph23]

I take it that it's playable with any of the stock world maps etc? No additional scenarios required? This looks interesting, but since the human player already knows what new limitations/possibilities are there, what I'm curious about is how the AI will fare. I will definitelly give this a try soon.

Also, the inability of using caravans to support wonder build is a severe blow, especially on the highest difficulty level, where AI gets some serious bonus in the amount of required shields. Maybe make it that only half of the shield window can be filled by vans and only in the turn when the wonder is started?

Other than that, there are some seriously limiting house rules out there, I'm not sure if those won't be more like annoying obstacles rather than gameplay enhancers.

 

[Catwalk]

I take it that it's playable with any of the stock world maps etc? No additional scenarios required? This looks interesting, but since the human player already knows what new limitations/possibilities are there, what I'm curious about is how the AI will fare. I will definitelly give this a try soon.

Yes, it's intended to play on a normal map. You could even run "normal" scenarios (using standard rules.txt, such as the WW2 scenario) with it. I've been trying to design it so it doesn't handicap the AI. Earlier I had much lower shield values for all terrain, but the AI didn't know how to handle that at all. So now I'm back to higher values.

Also, the inability of using caravans to support wonder build is a severe blow, especially on the highest difficulty level, where AI gets some serious bonus in the amount of required shields. Maybe make it that only half of the shield window can be filled by vans and only in the turn when the wonder is started?

This is offset by lower wonder cost. Wonders are now even more cost efficient, and it's even more important to get to the required tech asap and then start constructing it right away. I do want wonders to be more difficult to get, caravans pretty much mean you can get any wonder with sufficient planning.

Other than that, there are some seriously limiting house rules out there, I'm not sure if those won't be more like annoying obstacles rather than gameplay enhancers.

I'm hoping that these won't be annoying obstacles, I already removed a few rules that were indeed quite annoying to play with. While there are quite a few rules to remember, I think they're quite easy to play with once you get the hang of it. But I'm still modifying this and fine tuning. Latest addition is a change to the rule about requiring multiple settlers to be used for creating cities the more cities you have. Instead of simply becoming more expensive, this mechanism will be tracked separately on each island. So on each island, you need to use x settlers to create a new city where x is the amount of cities you've founded there already. This severely hampers ICS strategies while massively encouraging you to explore and settle distant lands.

Thank you for your interest! I'll try to put up an updated version soon.

EDIT: Moved the update to the original post, and did a few more revisions. Culled a few less important rules. Considering reinstating the ban on trading and gifting techs simply because it's so easy to abuse the flawed AI with it. And it makes it entirely uninteresting to steal techs with diplomats when you can get everything you need by just asking nicely.

 

[Catwalk]

Added a supply concept: Every unit functions like a helicopter, taking damage for each turn ended outside of a city. Has to be done manually through the Cheat menu every turn.

 

[Catwalk]

Revised the hut popping rule, requiring huts to be within city radius and only allowing cash outcomes.

 

[Catwalk]

I just bought Civ4 for $15 (with WL and BTS) and realized with equal parts disappointment and excitement that it already does pretty much everything I want to do with this mod. So I'm probably running off to the Civ4 section

 

[Blasph23]

Well it's your choice, I'm staying with Civ2