Stalker0's State of the Mod - 1/11/2022

Most of the discussion here is minor quibbles, which is good. The exception is of course spies. Some points to lay out:

1.) The old system was really bland. Much like the old happiness system, there was simply nothing to it, no nuance, no real player interaction or choice.
2.) I understand the new system has additional micromanagement, but there's no way to introduce complexity into a boring system without additional player input.
3.) The spy code is very delicate and touchy. The old code was utterly awful. We re-wrote it multiple times to get it functional, but it remains finicky. As such, I don't want to make any changes to it that require DLL work.
4.) Any tweaks to the spy system can and should be made through the spy quests. That's a simple enough method to tweak the value of the missions.
5.) Everyone keeps speaking of tech steal as if it no longer exists - it still exists, but it is era-gated to the Modern+ Era. Have y'all not seen it? If not, let me know.

G
 
I turned off the spy system solely because of the disrupt production feature. Made making wonders nearly impossible (and incredibly frustrating, since the AI could chain the disrupt production quest). Counter espionage feels useless at preventing this.

City state election rigging is fine, coups are okay too but could use some tuning—you can save scum which ones are successful.

As for spy quests in general, I think the entire system would feel better if most spy actions were acted as advantages for the spying civ, rather than disadvantages for the civ being spied on. City surveillance is fine, quests could be added to reveal military units, give offensive CS against the civ (and a separate one to give defensive CS against the civ), increase distress thresholds (or just directly increase unhappiness). Not advocating for getting rid of tech stealing or offensive spy actions, but I think the system should try to give a few more passive options to reduce micromanagement.
 
I turned off the spy system solely because of the disrupt production feature. Made making wonders nearly impossible (and incredibly frustrating, since the AI could chain the disrupt production quest). Counter espionage feels useless at preventing this.

City state election rigging is fine, coups are okay too but could use some tuning—you can save scum which ones are successful.

As for spy quests in general, I think the entire system would feel better if most spy actions were acted as advantages for the spying civ, rather than disadvantages for the civ being spied on. City surveillance is fine, quests could be added to reveal military units, give offensive CS against the civ (and a separate one to give defensive CS against the civ), increase distress thresholds (or just directly increase unhappiness). Not advocating for getting rid of tech stealing or offensive spy actions, but I think the system should try to give a few more passive options to reduce micromanagement.

I think that spy system need at least a tuning, because number of turns needed for quests is very different. In my last games almost all AI and my cities sit at max security levels, bur disrupt production for spy of rank 3 takes only 9 turns, disrupt city defense even less 5-6 turns, while other options as kidnap specialists and pillage farm, mine and lumber mill takes 32-48 turns.
Yes disrupt production is very annoying it takes only 9 turns, so if you are a leader and have in game 10-12 rivals (also it said that if you produce a WW time needed cut in 2) so you get sabotaged every other turn.
 
Most of the discussion here is minor quibbles, which is good. The exception is of course spies. Some points to lay out:

1.) The old system was really bland. Much like the old happiness system, there was simply nothing to it, no nuance, no real player interaction or choice.
2.) I understand the new system has additional micromanagement, but there's no way to introduce complexity into a boring system without additional player input.
3.) The spy code is very delicate and touchy. The old code was utterly awful. We re-wrote it multiple times to get it functional, but it remains finicky. As such, I don't want to make any changes to it that require DLL work.
4.) Any tweaks to the spy system can and should be made through the spy quests. That's a simple enough method to tweak the value of the missions.
5.) Everyone keeps speaking of tech steal as if it no longer exists - it still exists, but it is era-gated to the Modern+ Era. Have y'all not seen it? If not, let me know.

G

1) Its true that the old system was simple....but it also just worked. It did exactly what it needed to do. All complexity should be justified, are the new options providing value for the extra work and complexity required?
2) Sure, but I think the feedback is that the micromanagement is too much right now, so the balance is off. I mean, we could simply double the duration of most of the missions (like stealing gold and research....NOT the rebellion ones or weaken city defenses) and adjust their yields appropriately. Bam, you have halved the amount of micromanagement required currently.
5) I think this points to the feedback that research stealing is not yet competitive enough. Having tech stealing in modern doesn't help me when the AI has 8-10 techs on me in Medieval, I need spying to help me close the gap, and research steals are not enough currently. By the time modern comes around its a bit too late to try and close that tech gap through a new steal mission, unless we ramp up the tech steal more aggressively than it is currently.
 
In my current game disrupt production in Byzantium city with most security took 9 turns, after succeeding if I leave my spy there it 5 tuns. Seems way too low, especially if compare to other options, wanted to kidnap specialists or forgot how that was called - pillage 1 of each improvement and less food (before it was poison the wells) for number of tuns - those options were 32-48 turns.
 
I mean, we could simply double the duration of most of the missions (like stealing gold and research....NOT the rebellion ones or weaken city defenses) and adjust their yields appropriately. Bam, you have halved the amount of micromanagement required currently.
The duration for these spy missions are already pretty long (like 30 turns on Standard), I don't think making them longer is necessary.

I might be in the minority here, but I don't mind micromanagement with espionage. I think some micromanagement would spice things up actually, eg. deal 10 damage to all units in/around a city, weakening defenses should be faster/more appealing (like reducing the RCS of a city directly), boost the amount of influence diplomats give to a city state, and I think the spies should not be centered around yield dumps of gold/science, but more like the kidnap specialists and sabotage production missions (within reason of course, spies shouldn't be able to send a player straight to the stone age). I don't know how outlandish some of these ideas are, but I think we should try to make espionage quests more utility-based/dynamic and less resource-based/static.

It is called espionage after all, not an economic project or a scientific endeavor.
 
Hi, I usually play on Emperor/Immortal, standard speed, with no mods except 4 uc and Enlightenment era.

One of my main issues with naval combat is naval promotions. The upper level promotions, especially for naval melee units, are really fun and interesting as they typically allow the unit to do things it otherwise wouldn't be able to do (gain gold from combat, heal outside friendly territory etc...). However, because these great promotions are hidden behind 2 or 3 less interesting promotions, it makes early naval combat less dynamic and mid-to-late game naval combat dramatically stronger. My suggestion would be to put just a few of the cool tier 2 and 3 promotions behind the tier 1 promotions to allow for early naval units to be more interesting.

Another issue I have is with the pace of the game, namely that the classical and medieval eras seem to go by extremely quickly. If techs in these eras could cost 10-15% more I think that would make the game much more interesting. The action that goes on in these eras really seems to determine whether you'll be in the running to get a VC in the late game, so it seems odd that this stage of the game is so quick.

This may be a slightly controversial take, but I think fewer players should be able to found religions, and religion should affect diplomacy more. Currently 4 out of 6 civs on a standard map can found religions. One of these religions may die out, but in most of my games it typically turns out that the two strongest civs each have one of the two weakest civs following their religion, and then the two middle civs are the only ones following their own. This means that using religion to form alliances with genuinely powerful civs is almost never an option. I would suggest just having 3 religions for a 6 civ game, and increasing diplomatic bonuses/penalties for following a religion. I would also increase the importance of religious pressure. Currently religious pressure seems pretty meaningless, even though it requires investment and strategy just like using missionaries. Part of the drawback of selecting a building as your first belief is that it delays building of missionaries, so the religious pressure you get from them should at least partially compensate, but currently it barely does anything. Of course, if religious pressure were buffed, I would slightly nerf some of the strongest religious buildings.

Currently, going to war always rarely seems worth it unless you have some combination of city-state quests, weak neighbors, or nearby cities that will be hard for the AI to defend. I feel like this disproportionately hurts peaceful civs and benefits warmongers. I would increase the benefits of fighting wars not focused on conquest by increasing the yields garnered from pillaging tiles. I would do this by giving 3-5 turns worth of the tile's yield to the pillager's nearest city, in addition to the small amount of gold and HP boost. Especially in the early game, pillaging tiles gives very low yields. To balance this out with warmongers, I would reduce the gold earned from conquering a city.

I'll also mention the balance between siege units and ranged units. They are just too similar in capability and should be further differentiated. Siege units should be even stronger against cities but even weaker against units. Honestly, even though it was annoying to deal with in the base game, requiring siege units to set up does make a lot of sense. With how they are balanced right now, especially with how weak archers and compbows can be at certain stages of the game, it almost always feels better to just build siege units even if I don't think I'll trying to take cities. If I need a medic, I'll just build a skirmisher. I really liked Pdan's suggestion for splitting the archer and compbow into three units, as I think that will partly solve this problem, at least when it comes to compbows and catapults.
 
@Diomedes_
Great write-up! I'd also like fewer founders, but the way things are right now, founding (or staling) religion is just too important, so reducing that number would require a lot more balance tweaks. I agree that wars are too focused on city capture, but I'm not sure how to deal with that in a way that doesn't hamper AI performance.
 
Currently 4 out of 6 civs on a standard map can found religions.
I believe the number of of religions in a game scales with map size. I think it should scale solely by number of players. I believe a standard game actually has 8 players and 5 religions, which is 63% of players, down from 67% in your example. Perhaps it should only be half, rounding down? I don't know.
Siege units should be even stronger against cities but even weaker against units.
I would point out that siege units have a -33% penalty vs land units, while archer units have a 20% penalty vs naval units. I don't know if you could really push this much farther without turning the ranged combat into a flat rock paper scissors.
 
I believe the number of of religions in a game scales with map size. I think it should scale solely by number of players. I believe a standard game actually has 8 players and 5 religions, which is 63% of players, down from 67% in your example. Perhaps it should only be half, rounding down? I don't know.

I would point out that siege units have a -33% penalty vs land units, while archer units have a 20% penalty vs naval units. I don't know if you could really push this much farther without turning the ranged combat into a flat rock paper scissors.
Good catch, I meant small map (to me that's standard, as its what I always play on lol). I believe the formula is half the number of players + 1, so 4 for a small map, 5 for standard, etc... I would advocate for just a straight half the number of players.

I think it can and should be pushed further, as currently ranged and siege units are not differentiated enough IMO. What's the point of having two separate unit classes if their relationship isn't a little rock-paper-scissors-y?
 
I believe the number of of religions in a game scales with map size. I think it should scale solely by number of players. I believe a standard game actually has 8 players and 5 religions, which is 63% of players, down from 67% in your example. Perhaps it should only be half, rounding down? I don't know.

Using the communitas map, this is exactly how I currently play: 13 civs with 6 religions on standard map (which would otherwise default to 5, even with low sea level because of map size). Whatever system is used should take into account number of civs and not map size, and I've changed this since whenever religion was introduced into Civ 5 (was that Gods and Kings? I think so but I've slept since then lol).

For those who want to change the number, it is in the following file:

Community Balance Overhaul\Balance Changes\Worlds\WorldSizes.sql

Open this (I use Notepad ++) and the lines are here:

UPDATE Worlds
SET MaxActiveReligions = '6' [ -- Edited from 5 (Dizz)]
WHERE Type = 'WORLDSIZE_STANDARD' AND EXISTS (SELECT * FROM COMMUNITY WHERE Type='COMMUNITY_CORE_BALANCE' AND Value= 1 );

You can adjust for the others sizes as well, it's very easy to do. The only thing you do is change the number after MaxActiveReligions.
 
I turned off the spy system solely because of the disrupt production feature. Made making wonders nearly impossible (and incredibly frustrating, since the AI could chain the disrupt production quest). Counter espionage feels useless at preventing this.

Human Exploit: queue a different building/unit to be produced before the wonder you're interested. Wait for all AI turns to end (any distrupt action will take effect on your 0-hammer random building/unit you just started) and during CS/barbarian turn enter the city panel and cancel the queue. At the start of your turn the hammers will be added to the wonder. Do that every damn turn until an enemy spy action triggers, then you're safe for 4-5 turns approx. Have 'fun'.
 
It's an SQL entry, so yes. Currently tied to map size ID. Eg Standard, Huge, Small
 
Human Exploit: queue a different building/unit to be produced before the wonder you're interested. Wait for all AI turns to end (any distrupt action will take effect on your 0-hammer random building/unit you just started) and during CS/barbarian turn enter the city panel and cancel the queue. At the start of your turn the hammers will be added to the wonder. Do that every damn turn until an enemy spy action triggers, then you're safe for 4-5 turns approx. Have 'fun'.
The other way is to change the disrupt production spy mission to require a higher level spy. I've pushed it to a level two spy option and changed some of the modifiers to make it on par with the rest of the level 2 spy missions. The file to change this is \Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\(2) Community Balance Overhaul\Balance Changes\EspionagePrimaryEspionageEvents.xml
 
I think most civs are balanced except Egypt, Ethiopia, and India. By mid game one of these 3 civs inevitably get insane tourism (India on top of that get even more insane religious pressure).

also please make it easier to bribe civs for world Congress vote. I plop a diplomat in their capital wasting a spy action just to learn that their response to a bribe is “impossible”
 
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Human Exploit: queue a different building/unit to be produced before the wonder you're interested. Wait for all AI turns to end (any distrupt action will take effect on your 0-hammer random building/unit you just started) and during CS/barbarian turn enter the city panel and cancel the queue. At the start of your turn the hammers will be added to the wonder. Do that every damn turn until an enemy spy action triggers, then you're safe for 4-5 turns approx. Have 'fun'.
Sounds like a bug to me ;)
 
Sounds like a bug to me ;)
How are we regarding new features and older code introducing (and bringing to the foreground) bugs?

Is the first priority clearing GitHub bug queue?

Are people checking to make sure the load order of VP and additional mods is correct before beginning troubleshooting?
 
How are we regarding new features and older code introducing (and bringing to the foreground) bugs?

Is the first priority clearing GitHub bug queue?
Idk, but the basing on tasks priority, whether it's a feature or a bug makes sense.
Are people checking to make sure the load order of VP and additional mods is correct before beginning troubleshooting?
I don't think so
 
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