State of the Union

[Gazebo]

Hey all,

Back in town. Nice long break. Anyways, there are a lot of threads on balance mucking about, many of which lack specific solutions to issues. So, in the interest of making my job easier, I'd appreciate if the more ambitious of you could agree upon a 'priority list' of things that need to be addressed. This is not the place to debate changes, but rather a place for consensus. If there are no pending 'consensus changes,' that's actually a good thing - means we're fairly well balance.

Anyways, give me your best shot.

Cheers,
Gazebo

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Hello, welcome back!

For me at the moment the biggest priority is balancing early religion, specifically preventing the snowball of the first (or second) religion that starts expanding.

Most of my immortal games end up with one religion snowballing early on and then it just becomes impossible due to huge passive religious pressure, lack of inquisitors by the AI and lack of beliefs/policies/buildings that would increase religious resistance. That is almost a gamebreaker (the game becomes too easy if my religion is the one that snowballs and almost too hard if it's the AI's religion). But if I understood the recent discussions there's already a change incoming (how quickly religions overturn pantheon cities), so I guess we can wait and see if that helps. Other than that, I don't see any huge issues that can consistently spoil my games.

Edit: Not sure if there's a consensus, but from a recent thread I got the impression that most of us agree that early religious snowball is a big problem that needs adressing.

 

[Gazebo]

Hello, welcome back!

For me at the moment the biggest priority is balancing early religion, specifically preventing the snowball of the first (or second) religion that starts expanding.

Most of my immortal games end up with one religion snowballing early on and then it just becomes impossible due to huge passive religious pressure, lack of inquisitors by the AI and lack of beliefs/policies/buildings that would increase religious resistance. That is almost a gamebreaker (the game becomes too easy if my religion is the one that snowballs and almost too hard if it's the AI's religion). But if I understood the recent discussions there's already a change incoming (how quickly religions overturn pantheon cities), so I guess we can wait and see if that helps. Other than that, I don't see any huge issues that can consistently spoil my games.

Edit: Not sure if there's a consensus, but from a recent thread I got the impression that most of us agree that early religious snowball is a big problem that needs adressing.

That's good to know. I do know that ilteroi tweaked pantheon resistance to religious pressure (meaning that the 'first to the table' will no longer wipe the board so easily, and that missionaries will be essential in some ways to spreading your faith). That alone may solve this issue.

 

[tu_79]

1. Religion spreads too fast. Ilteroi suggestion seems to please everyone.
2. Cultural victory too easy on easier difficulties, to the point it prevents other victory types. Several suggestions (remove tourism from events, reduce tourism based on difficulty, tourism penalty for controlled capitals, penalty for tourism in captured cities without hotels (scale with difficulty)).
3. Suggested a buff or map size scaling for God-King.
4. Suggested a nerf for Festivals.
5. Suggested a change for Clericalism (+% to diplomat actions instead of +15 influence to every CS)

I think that's all that has some support.

 

[merill]

2) "Cultural victory too easy" is an issue, we have many complaint for this. I have implemented (and tested) the "no-tourism from annexed capital cities without hotel" function, you just need to activate it. But it's not enough, it just reduce "mandatory culture victory by conquest".


edit:

8- My idea "I think it would make sense to make the player's military strength be counted as ~1.5 what you really have on deity and 1.25 on immortal for most/all non-combat related functions. (Because if you're playing on deity your units are undoubtedly going to be utilized at LEAST 1.5x at well as the AI's, so they should be able to plan around that.)" has gotten some decent support for reasons listed in the newest thread on runaways and coalitions. No subtractors yet, but it's not been too long. I think I made some decent points, but I'm biased on that. xD

+1. The increased unit supply they get is impossible to overcome. Someone succeed at protecting a CS at immortal? Also, it may help the diplomacy ai (unless the it's already weighted).

 

[ElliotS]

1- I think pantheons could use balancing more than any other aspect of religion, or the game in general, hence the fairly active thread. Read it and make up your own mind.
2- Festivals might need a slight nerf. I'll be sad to see it go, but I'd be doing a disservice to the community if I don't agree that it's moderately OP. Too good in too many situations. Not sure if the nerf should be -1 culture per lux, the first lux doesn't count or something else though.
3- God-king is a hot-topic of discussion. I just dropped another long rant on it in the appropriate thread.
4- If you're touching up pantheons also look at the celt pantheon thread. I don't know how you can work on patheons and not touch Boudicca. (Something something I'll touch Boudicca any time.)
5- Clericalism buff has widespread support. Exact details on the how have yet to be sorted out, but I think that's your job.
6- Resilience also has decent support for changes, but not enough discussion for me to claim it's unanimous.
7- Everyone seems to agree that Cultural victories need to be looked at, specifically in regards to difficulty. It's the only VC where the goalpost moves closer as difficulty lowers aside from the AI being worse at competing.
8- My idea "I think it would make sense to make the player's military strength be counted as ~1.5 what you really have on deity and 1.25 on immortal for most/all non-combat related functions. (Because if you're playing on deity your units are undoubtedly going to be utilized at LEAST 1.5x at well as the AI's, so they should be able to plan around that.)" has gotten some decent support for reasons listed in the newest thread on runaways and coalitions. No subtractors yet, but it's not been too long. I think I made some decent points, but I'm biased on that. xD
9- That thread also has some other thought worthy discussion, but I'm sure you've read it.

So the TL-DR for my priority list is:
1- Pantheons.
2- AI coalitions and pacts.
3- Culture VC changes.
4- Other religious aspects.
5- Everything else.

But as far as ease of implementation 4 would likely be second on the list, and could probably be tweaked in the next patch as well.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't think l festivals has true consensus, there was still active debate on it.

Culture victory...too easy I'm junction with conquest is I think the main argument, not that culture is too easy in general. That's an important difference

 

[ElliotS]

I don't think l festivals has true consensus, there was still active debate on it.

Culture victory...too easy I'm junction with conquest is I think the main argument, not that culture is too easy in general. That's an important difference

There are a lot of people that say the problem isn't conquest, but rather with culture victories in general. There's no real consensus.

There is still some active debate, but personal opinion, math and excellent testing by Forsti all seem to indicate that it's a bit too powerful. I've also yet to see anyone go against the latest series of posting pointing this out, so I'll consider the detractors convinced unless they decide to speak up.

G is the final word on everything though.

 

[Bromar1]

My vote goes for ideologies. There has been discussion about most tier 3 and some of the tier 2 tenets. Those could use some changes.

 

[Gazebo]

Thank you for the feedback everyone.

My vote goes for ideologies. There has been discussion about most tier 3 and some of the tier 2 tenets. Those could use some changes.

That's not really a 'consensus.' I'm not asking for suggestions, I'm asking for consensus elements.

G

 

[CrazyG]

I have yet to see anyone really argue against the following

-Culture wins are too easy
-The wonders pantheon is too weak
-small boost to Clericalism
-small nerf to pacifism
-Of the celts 10 pantheons, at most 5 are worth choosing, so some changes are warranted


I think Gazebo was hoping this would be a shorter thread without debate, we just post what everyone agrees on so he has to read less

Edit-tried to be less blockheaded. I think all of the above have true consensus

 

[tu_79]

2) "Cultural victory too easy" is an issue, we have many complaint for this. I have implemented (and tested) the "no-tourism from annexed capital without hotel" function, you just need to activate it. But it's not enough, it just reduce "mandatory culture victory by conquest".

I though we were talking about 'No (or fewer) tourism from annexed CITIES without hotels", the other option regarding capitals was "Tourism influence lowers with number of controled cities, capitals count as several cities". The first one makes cultural victory more difficult for big aggressive civs, while the latter makes CV more difficult for civs in the domination path. As CrazyG said, it's important to know what is exactly causing the issue with CV. Maybe it's historical events (with every city conquest counting as an event), but I doubt it. When I did some scientific victories in Prince I didn't have this problem, and there's a lot of events from GP. (Or were HE changed after that?)
Anyway, it's good to know that the small tweak you tried is not enough.

 

[merill]

I though we were talking about 'No (or fewer) tourism from annexed CITIES without hotels", the other option regarding capitals was "Tourism influence lowers with number of controled cities, capitals count as several cities". The first one makes cultural victory more difficult for big aggressive civs, while the latter makes CV more difficult for civs in the domination path. As CrazyG said, it's important to know what is exactly causing the issue with CV. Maybe it's historical events (with every city conquest counting as an event), but I doubt it. When I did some scientific victories in Prince I didn't have this problem, and there's a lot of events from GP. (Or were HE changed after that?)
Anyway, it's good to know that the small tweak you tried is not enough.

You're right, i misspell. From the github source, Defines.BUILDING_CLASS_ENABLE_TOURISM_ANNEXED is the id of the buildingclass and Defines.TOURISM_ANNEXED_MOD is the mod (100= no mod, 0= no tourism) that is used when the buildingclass isn't in the city. I was waiting the next release to share a "difficult culture victory" mod. But if it's standard, it's even better.

 

[ashendashin]

My polls didn't get much of a turnout when you consider the thousands of users, but what I've gathered from both the polls and reading this forum, is that the balance of the game itself is for the most part, great. The balance of power across the AI on the other hand, might do with some work. Maybe it's because the same civs take the best pantheons. Maybe fixing up religion will help. Maybe the randomness of policy trees makes things too difficult for some civs. Maybe we should just deal with it and screw around with maps and specific civs at game setup, leaving the thousands of uncomplaining users to carry on. Could be a number of things that cause this repetition, and there doesn't seem to be a simple answer, so that's all I got.

 

[Txurce]

I have yet to see anyone really argue against the following

-some sort of adjustment to how military score is calculated on Deity (possibly immortal). there is disagreement but those disagreeing have stated they don't play Deity, so IDK why they would care

I think Gazebo was hoping this would be a shorter thread without debate, we just post what everyone agrees on so he has to read less

That you don't know why someone who doesn't presently play Deity would care is irrelevant, not to say arrogant, not to say blockheaded (since it has indeed been explained to you).

If you think Gazebo doesn't want debate in this thread, then don't editorialize.

 

[Deadstarre]

not to say arrogant, not to say blockheaded

but i think... you just said that.

 

[Deadstarre]

My vote goes for ideologies. Those could use some changes.

That's not really a 'consensus.'

I seriously Lol'd here. Considering the amount of changes that get wormed into the project without discussion (nevermind consensus) that are just plain broken (read: very unbalanced), it's hard not to laugh.

the current Chancery is an easy and obvious example. There wasn't much complaint about it beforehand, and definitely nobody asked for putting large sums of gold and culture on it yet here we are. you rush buy them, sell some paper if necessary to immediately pay itself back, and use your gold to rush-buy envoys which give huge influence boosts (what was it, 55 a piece with printing press?). suddenly all your cities are swimming in gold, your happiness problems are gone, on top of whatever city state bonuses you get for being all their friend in the first place, so now you can gift a unit to quickly steamroll those friends into allies... you know how easy it is to have 5 allies on a standard map? a building in the Medieval that is now also giving 10 plus culture per city easily ( and really getting 10 allies isn't hard from here either with the amount of gold and paper you have). so, how quickly will you get through the social policy tree now? nobody even wants to attack you because you have all the CS allies, and declaring war on you means declaring war on all of them. so you literally just broke the game by rushing chanceries as a strategy because you could see how OP they are, but of course the AI had no idea.

BUT! if anyone wants to see it changed, there had better be 'consensus' lol. consensus with people like Funak running around (i see you Funak, cheers)

it took me all of 2 deity game blowouts to realize chanceries needed a fix, so i went ahead and fixed them. if its something you feel strongly about, dont hold your breath for G but just go change the yields in the files - it's absurdly easy. I havn't gotten to ideologies yet but they're on my to-do list because theres clearly problems there. to me it's at the point this CBO needs a CBO of it's own just to balance it, but honestly a simple yield change here and there can really make an enormous difference. im currently in the middle of the best / most competitive game i've played in months.

 

[tu_79]

You should have read the 'What is this mod' thread. Gazebo is the main developer of CBO. He is modding the game as he pleases. Additionally, he takes ideas and listen to players. That's not to say he will do whatever we ask of him, but if many players agree on something ('consensus'), then he'll admit that there could be a better way to do things and modify accordingly.
A recent change has caused an imbalance on culture victories. I think many of us agree on this. I'm sure G will take care, on its own way. But we still throw ideas, just in case.

 

[CrazyG]

If you think Gazebo doesn't want debate in this thread, then don't editorialize.

Fair enough I edited the above.

I think the following have consensus
-Wonders Pantheon needs a buff
-Culture victory is too easy. The thread has gone towards the issue being historical events
-Clericalism needs a buff
-Pacifism needs a nerf
-Celts Pantheons need some work

 

[ElliotS]

-Culture victory is too easy. The thread has gone towards the issue being historical events

There's no consensus on it being historical events though, I don't think that's the issue. I'll detail my thoughts again in that thread.