Suggestions to improve balance

[Roland Johansen]

Over the past few weeks and months, I've seen a number of discussions on this forum about the balance of certain features of this game. Some of us think that there are some features that are unbalanced while others think the game is perfectly balanced.

I belong to the group of people who think that there exist some features in the game that are a bit unbalanced. I would like to discuss these features and come up with some (modding) solutions to make this game as balanced as it can be. Of course, everyone has a different opinion about what would be a perfect balance. But maybe, we can come to an agreement what would be the perfect solution.

The imbalance that is considered most often in this post is the imbalance of one strategy compared to another. Very often, I (and many others with me) consider one strategy dominating compared to another while in a strategy game, you'd like to see many viable alternatives.
The better various competitive strategies have been balanced, the better the strategy is in a strategy game. Of course, you should not balance by removing every difference between various strategies and creating a bland game.

Forest chopping.

This is probably the most discussed feature of this game when people are talking about balance. A city with 8 forest tiles around it at epic speed (the most played speed setting) has 8 * 45 = 360 production ready for the plucking. That's enough for 8-9 axeman or 4-5 workers or almost 3 settlers or most of the ancient wonders of the world (depending on resource bonuses). A small city usually has a production below 6 hammers per turn and would thus need 60 turns of 6 production to get a similar production level. Is that too much? I would say yes, because such a production boost to a small city makes a rush for the Bronze Working technology at the start of the game the most dominating strategy. This is of course not helped by the fact that Bronze Working also enables copper, axemen and the slavery civic. It also makes the choice about 'to chop or not to chop" an easy one. You need to use the forest tile for 45 turns to get an equal amount of production. If you would have build a cottage on the forest tile, it would make 3 gold per turn after those 45 turns instead of 1 hammer. And of course 45 hammers now is better than 45 hammers in the future.
There is one reason to leave the forests and that is the health bonus. But I've not had a game where the health issues were a problem greater than the happiness issues. It's far more difficult to get happiness resources at the start of the game than it is to get health resources at the start of the game.

My suggestion: Halve the production bonuses of forest chopping (15 instead of 30 on normal, 22 instead of 45 on epic, etc.). Maybe, that is not even enough.
Just for fun and consistency, I would also add a smaller production bonus to the chopping of jungles (10 on normal, 15 on epic, etc.). Jungles are a bad terrain type that cannot be removed until the much more expensive technology of iron working, so I don't think this is unbalanced.

The Financial trait.

When people talk about the most powerful trait, there is often not a lot of discussion. Most people seem to agree that the financial trait is the most powerful. At the start of the game, the power of hamlets, cottages along rivers and coast tiles are increased by 50% (3 instead of 2) and later in the game, the increase is still substantial when watermills and windmills will get 2 commerce for non-financial civs but 3 for financial civs. It's difficult to estimate the increase in commerce for a financial civilization compared to a non-financial one. I would guess it would be about 30% in the early game (some time after cottages have been build) and drop to about 20% in the late game. Especially, the increase in the early game is very powerful as the abundance of commerce allows one to expand further before city upkeep becomes a problem.
Commerce is probably the most important resource of the game, probably even more important than production, so an increase of 20-30% is really powerful and too powerful in my opinion.

My suggestion: Only increase the commerce of tiles which have 3 or more commerce by 1. This would remove the bonus from coastal tiles and would limit it almost to developed cottages only. It would mean that the trait would need some time to come to power and wouldn't be so powerful in the early game. I think, it will still be the most powerful trait in the middle to late game when cottages have developed a little, but it might not be the most powerful early game trait.

Cash Rushing and the Town improvement.

There has been some discussion about the power of cash rushing in a few threads. Most people don't exactly know how it works so I'll first describe it in more detail.
Cash rushing allows you to buy production at a rate of 1 hammer for 3 gold. The hammer is a base hammer and gets adjusted by the production bonuses of the city. This means that in the late game (when cash rushing becomes available with the Universal Suffrage civic), with a 100% production bonus from forge, factory and power plant, you get 2 hammers for 3 gold.
The Kremlin Wonder gives a 100% bonus to the production gained from cash rushing. So in a city with a 100% production bonus, you can then get 4 hammers for 3 gold.
In a city which has a 200% production bonus (your unit factory city with Heroic Epic for instance), you can then get 6 hammers for 3 gold.
Why would this be unbalanced?
Basically because it is much easier to get commerce (and thus gold) then it is to get production. This means that a town is far more interesting than any other tile improvement. A short calculation to support this statement:
A town under Universal Suffrage and Free Speech increases the tile output by 7 commerce and 1 hammer. A mine, lumbermill or workshop (under state property) increases the output of a tile by 3 hammers. The 7 commerce can be converted into 14 gold (with bank, grocer and marketplace). The 14 gold can be converted into 14/3= 4 2/3 hammers. Making the output of a town equal to 5 2/3 hammers while the output of the mine/lumbermill/workshop is 3 hammers. If you have the Kremlin then the output of the town is 1 + 2*14/3= 10 1/3 hammer, which dwarfs the output of the mine/lumbermill/workshop.
Also, the commerce output of a village is quite close to the production output of a mine/lumbermill/workshop when the commerce is converted to production (without the Kremlin bonus). So you don't have to wait until towns before cash rushing is powerful.
Cash rushing is also very powerful because it is so enormously flexible. You can use the production from cash rushing in any city that needs it, even cities with a very low production output. If you have rushed enough, then you can use the commerce from the towns to increase your science output or espionage actions or to buy stuff from the AI.
Don't think that this depends on lowering your science output. You're building towns instead of mines/lumbermills/workshops so there is extra commerce from these towns which can be used for cash rushing while keeping the science output the same as when you would have build mines/lumbermill/workshops instead of towns.

My suggestions: Lower the bonus from Free Speech to 1 commerce instead of 2 commerce (next to the 100% culture boost).
Increase the cash rushing factor from 3 to 7.
Reduce the production bonus from cash rushing given by the Kremlin from 100% to 25%. Make the Kremlin go obsolete with Satellites instead of Fiber Optics. This way, it's not that attractive to not research Fiber Optics to keep the Kremlin active. Satellites is a more crucial technology.
Results: A town under Universal Suffrage and Free Speech increases the output of a tile by 6 commerce and 1 hammer. The 6 commerce can be converted into 12 gold. The 12 gold can be converted into 12/7 = 1.71 hammers. So the town has an output of 2.71 hammers when used for cash rushing which is slightly less than the hammer output of a mine/lumbermill/workshop. That is good since cash rushing is a far more flexible method of building than normal construction and thus should be more expensive to balance it.
For completeness: the equivalent hammer output of town is
3 for a financial civilization.
3.14 for a non-financial civilization using the Kremlin
3.5 for a financial civilization using the Kremlin
Since towns are not very easy to get and the Kremlin is a World Wonder, I don't think that the fact that these numbers are not below 3 is unbalancing.

State Property.

From the economic civics, this one is considered the most powerful by many. It's free maintenance combined with no city distance upkeep makes it very powerful. If that was all it did, it would be comparable to the free market civic when your empire is not that big. However, it also improves the food output of the watermill and the workshop.

My suggestion: Move the increase in output of the watermill and the workshop to the railroad improvement. This way, it will be at about the same moment in the game that these bonuses to the watermill and the workshop can be reached, but they are not dependent on the state property civic. This is also good for the AI as it will get this bonus more often (few AI's use state property while it is so good). It will also balance the strength of the watermill and workshop a bit better with the strength of the cottage improvement. Without state property, the workshop is almost useless and the watermill is not very good. With these changes, you will be more likely to use every one of the different tile improvements depending on what your city is lacking or how you're specializing a certain city.


Personally, I think that the game could use an artillery type unit between the catapult and the cannon to improve balance. At present, you will be using catapults to bombard units far stronger than the catapult.
Another balance issue is that the air interception isn't very lethal. An interception should not just lead to some healing time but to the loss of the airplane. It's almost impossible to become master of the skies for you or the AI with the present interception rates. The only way to stop bombers completely is by capturing the city in which they're stationed.
Also, when you sent a fighter on a bombing campaign, then it can intercept the fighter that is sent up to intercept it. However, the chances of this happening are very small.
I have not considered any modding possibilities to achieve these possible imbalances.


If you think that you have a good suggestion to improve balance or if you think that my suggestion will lead to a loss of balance, then please post here and explain yourself. Lets try and make this game as balanced as it can possibly be!


I have added a paragraph to make the goals of this first post a bit more clear.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Reserved for any other imbalances and modding suggestions that might arise from any discussion.


Alternatives that I personally considered good and were mentioned in the discussion.

-Reduce forest chopping to 10 at normal speed (15 at epic, etc.)

-Change financial so that it gives + 1 trade routes per city instead of it's present bonuses.

Things to be changed:

-Something to improve the environmentalist civic. I'm thinking about something like: a happiness bonus of 5-health penalties from buildings, a health bonus of 5-health penalties from buildings. The civic would thus improve the balance of an economy and be good for those economies who lack some happiness and health resources. However, buildings like factories, coal plants and airports are bad for this civic and the recycling center is great.

-Something to improve the strength of the specialists + Representation + Pacifism approach in order to make it a viable alternative to the cottage spam + Free Speech + Universal Suffrage in the late game. I'm presently thinking about adding a maximum number of GPP's needed to create a GP. Presently the costs for each successive Great Person increase (about quadratically).

 

[Zombie69]

Good recap.

I've just thought of something else to add to the list : collateral damage. The problem right now with collateral damage is that contrary to normal damage, it's not affected by the relative strengths of the units involved. Because of this, a bunch of strength 4 catapults can decimate anything. For example, send out catapults against a stack of tanks. The attack itself will probably do nothing at all, but the collateral damage will quickly take off half the tanks' health. This means that as long as you have suicide catapults handy, you can attack anyone who's 10 times more advanced than you are and still have good odds of taking most or all of his cities. And i'm not talking about the legendary spearman vs tank here, i'm talking about this aspect being so overpowered that you know in advance you're going to win, using extremely tech-******ed units. You can take cities full of infantry with nothing but catapults and some macemen to finish off the remnants.

I think collateral damage should be based on the relative strengths of the units involved, just like normal combat is. I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be the case. I also don't see any reason why a catapult aiming at an infantry unit should not be able to scratch it, but still be able to cripple all the other units around it.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Collateral damage is based on the various strengths of the participating units! The later artillery type units also make more collateral hits.

I do think that the unit that is attacked should get at least one of the collateral hits of the artillery type unit before combat between the artillery type units and the defender ensues.

I don't know if that is easily modable.

Actually, I want a real stack combat where units fight together, but that is not (easily) modable. That is a totally different combat model.

 

[Solo4114]

Maybe because they're lobbing dirty great boulders at groups of massed footsoldiers?

I have less of a problem with collateral damage, given the units that are doing it. Plus, if catapults are really giving your tanks that much trouble, why not intercept them with some gunships or fighters (which do collateral damage themselves and DON'T suicide in the attack).

In all seriousness, though, I do agree with you that it's still a bit too easy -- given that it comes down to pure number crunching -- for tech ******ed units to defeat highly advanced ones. I proposed the idea of the era comparison (IE: if you're using macemen -- however legendary and experienced -- against riflemen, the riflemen should be almost guaranteed to win). This would solve pretty much all the modern vs. [old] comparisons.

Only problem is I don't think this can be modded unless you, for example, edit the values of all the units. And with certain eras, this wouldn't work. For example, a Medieval unit like the knight is two eras ahead of a Warrior. But the game doesn't distinguish between a warrior and a maceman aside from "Warrior has X strength, maceman has Y". They're both melee units, though, so you can't go making the Knight +50% vs. melee without totally screwing up balance for the medieval era units. I'm kind of at a loss for how to actually mod this in pre-gunpowder eras. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear 'em.


As far as chop/cash rushing, I don't see these as unbalanced per se, since everyone CAN use them and it's more luck of the draw and how you prioritize tile improvements that seems to affect it.

As far as things like Financial being overpowered, I'd say the solution isn't to nerf it, but rather to improve other traits. The thing is, I think the other traits are already pretty damn good, depending on how you strategize. Financial has become popular primarily because of the obvious benefits, but also I think because it plays to the strengths of people who post here -- who tend to be a bit more "number crunchy" than most folks.

For example, a leader with Spiritual and Creative could be just as powerful IF that leader plays his cards right and has good positioning. Spiritual allows that leader to shift civics at will -- an EXTREMELY useful tactic especially later in the game. Creative gives the obvious edge in culture victories, but also allows for rapid border expansion early on when Open Borders isn't a possibility. If you adopt an expansionist approach to the game, this can be especially useful in the early land grab or (on a Terra map) when settling the New World.

 

[Zombie69]

Hmm, sorry about that. I read a rather compelling article that suggested the contrary. But it seems you're right, based on the "Combat Explained" article, collateral damage is indeed done according to relative strengths. Besides, i also had catapults at strength 4 in the post above instead of strength 5. Just disregard what i said!

To add something constructive to your thread for a change, here's a roundup of what i think of the proposed changes :

- Chop : i would be even more drastic and give 10 hammers for forests and 5 for jungles. I think that at 15 hammers per forest, beelining to bronze working right away would still remain the best strategy almost everytime, which limits options, hence strategic gameplay. Also, how about unlocking slavery at a different tech? Any idea what a good tech would be?

- Financial : totally agree, in fact i think i was the first one to propose this change, a long time ago. It was part of a package to balance all the traits. With more experience now, i don't believe in some of the things i proposed back then (e.g. i used to think that spiritual was too weak, i was wrong). However, there is always one trait that clearly dominates all the polls and i still think that this change would bring it near perfectly in line with the other ones.

- Cash rushing and towns : agreed. My only concern is that maybe you've made the Kremlin too weak to even be worth building. Maybe make it 50% instead of 25%? Everything else seems perfect to me. You've brought non-Kremlin rushing to the level i believe it should have been in the first place. Hammers should remain a viable alternative in the end game (and not only for spaceship parts either), otherwise there's no point in having them in the game in the first place.

- State property : agreed. Kill two birds with one stone. Make state property less powerful and make watermills and workshops more powerful. Perfect.

 

[emills]

RJ:
Inacting these modification will definately make the AI upper level bonuses bigger. My comments starting from the end to your beginning, discounting the air/siege stuff with which I agree.

State property:
By making the production bonuses independant of the civic, you will practically make the space race unwinable starting around monarch. The AI's production bonuses make up for the lack of AI ability to make a true production city. The AI usually are in representation or hereditary rule for happiness reasons, so giving the AI a "free" production bonus on top of what railroads already give, will be monster. With the rush buy changes you suggest, the human player will be severely hampered in even going to war to solve the issue.

I would suggest a correction to the environmentalism civic (which will go with the chop rushing issues). Firstly change the civic cost to medium or low, so that it is financially more attractive. Also make the civic available sooner. While I do keep forests since I often get health issues, by the time environmentalism comse around to let my cities grow to monster size, it is practically impossible to get them to the limit due to the (seemingly) exponential food requirement. Maybe instead give a city growth advantages based on trees or just the environmentalism civic itself, which will let players enjoy the health and happiness bonus of the civic. A growth bonus will match some of the effect of State Property's workshop food bonus. Environmentalism is supposed to be the best civic in the catagory, just need to make it so it is.

Financial trait, cottages, rush buying and the kremlin are some of the most intertwined issues with the game.

Kremlin: I like your way to limit its effect buy moving its obsolete tech to satellites, however you do not suggest a bonus at satellites that should be available to everyone. Maybe make the obsoleting tech robotics instead and then give a bonus on rush buying to any civ with the robotics tech. (robotics in factories make it better yada yada).

Cash rushing: As stated above, cash rushing is one of the few ways that the human can compete with the AI bonuses. your hammer to commerce data is clear and awakening. The biggest limiter to rush buying that is already in the game is that you cannot rush buy spaceship parts. A severe limit to rush buying will make war, one of the few human counters to the AI space race, all the more difficult. If your modifications were implemented, I would consider reducing the cost to upgrade human already built units. This will help everyone, not just the financial civs.

financial and Cottages: IMO cottages are not broken. Everyone gets them and the financial civ bonuses are not that excessive compared to the other traits and their benefits (no anarchy, free land, low cost civics, more great people etc). The game was designed around cottages, and if it wasn't, at least the designers know the effect and give everyone the hint during the game startup.

What hurts and seems broken is that the only counter to the cottage spam effectively ends at the industrial era (just over halfway of a complete (space race) game). The representation/specialist/farm style is just as powerful scientifically and financially as the cottage spam for the first half of the game. One of the things that kills the rep/spec is the civic cost compared to the ultimate cottage spam civics. The civic cost will make big lots of big cities worse for the rep/spec empirer, limiting its ability to grow. The other death of the rep/spec strategy is emancipation. A full bore big rep/spec city will have enough buildings to maintain its specialists, however small cities will be a big drain longer before they are profitable in the system without the caste system.

I think the biggest issue is the rush buying/kremlin problems that a financial civ can exploit easier, although all civs can expolit it.

Forest chopping:
I have been trying out combination representation/specialist/cottages spam strategies and I get into health issues all the time. Especially after calendar. Going for the pyramids is so costly to a non industrial civ during chopping. If a city does not have access to a water source next to it, it will get health issues. One way to counter is by leaving forests. I would say the best way to limit chopping effects is to put every civ on the same ball field and do not allow production bonuses affect the number of hammers from a forest chop. No bonus to an aggressive civ builing a barracks or financial civ building a light house. No bonus to any civ with access to stone or marble (90 hammers at epic!). If environmentism civic is improved as a suggest above and the bonuses to chopping reduced, you will see less forest chopping, or at least more thought first.

anyways, my two cents.

 

[fortytwo]

The only problem I have with chop-rushing is that jungle is worse than worthless. Though it may be out of sync with reality, there should be better incentive to build a city in jungle besides the bananas. Especially since it takes Iron Working to remove. Either remove the necessity of ANY tech to remove it, lower the turns to remove it, or give a good hammer bonus. How about a $ bonus after chopping jungle?

Also, once you chop a forrest, that tile loses its hammer bonus until a Civic (hammer for cottage, etc) or a workshop builds it back. So you can cripple the production of a city by removing all its trees, that balances the benefit of chopping, IMO.


I caution anybody trying to balace the game to suggest weakening aspects, I think the game can benefit from expanding other aspects, such as Leader personality bonuses. Instead of reducing Financial, why not boost the other traits? The problem with Financial, more than its over-bonus, is that no matter what your strategy, you want gold. So it doesn't encourage one to adjust their strategy to suit the Financial bonus.

Also, instead of weakening a bonus, you could also increase the costs, like for instance putting State Property way out on some tech limb that takes a great deal of research to make it "worth" going after. Of course, that is a bad example b/c a player that needs State Property probably doesn't give a damn about other techs at that point b/c they are terrorizing the globe with Cavalry.

(I hate to bring up another game, because it is sucky game, but the Baldur's Gate series, and the latter Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars RPGs that came out of the same producers were sucky because every bonus was a +1 or a -1, and it just dulled out the excitement of any sort of upgrade, advancement, or new weapon. My only point is that you can "balance" a game to the point that nothing changes from beginning to end, and strategy becomes inconsequential.)

In a nutshell, I'd like to see Civ players play into the bonuses of their leaders, their units, their terrain, and their opponents. On Monarch it is almost impossible to ignore these factors, but not impossible enough, IMO.


I also want to add that complaints about the game falling out of sync with 'reality,' the old spearman-vs.-tank argument is not interesting to me. These arguments are distractions from truly balancing the game.

 

[Jarrod32]

I really like your ideas...just a couple (minor) comments.

First, on the State Property civic. The power of this civic could be tempered a bit by giving it a higher civic upkeep cost. Or...instead of eliminating distance upkeep costs, it could simply half the distance upkeep costs.

On your suggestion of air intercepts being lethal...I don't have a problem with it as such, but that would seem to swing the balance the other way...in favor of the interceptors. To counter that, either lower the intercept chance (if it is going to be lethal, it shouldn't happen to half of your missions) and/or give bombers a lethal bombardment capability, particularly to naval units.

 

[Zombie69]

As far as chop/cash rushing, I don't see these as unbalanced per se, since everyone CAN use them and it's more luck of the draw and how you prioritize tile improvements that seems to affect it.

Sure, everyone can use them. But right now, everyone must use them. Surely, the other improvements in the game weren't meant to all be completely diregarded in favor of one single improvement that beats them all? This reduces choices, therefore it reduces strategy. That's not a good thing for a title that claims to be a strategy game.

As far as things like Financial being overpowered, I'd say the solution isn't to nerf it, but rather to improve other traits. The thing is, I think the other traits are already pretty damn good, depending on how you strategize. Financial has become popular primarily because of the obvious benefits, but also I think because it plays to the strengths of people who post here -- who tend to be a bit more "number crunchy" than most folks.

You don't need to crunch any number to best take advantage of the financial trait. You just have to mindlessly build cottages everywhere, disregarding everything else in the game. It gets pretty boring after a while but it's so powerful that it's practically the only alternative. Also, it's not true that it fits only to one style. It works equally well for warmongering (providing money to pay for the troops and cities), builder-type space victories (providing a tech lead), and cultural victories (perfect when making the crucial switch to 100% culture near the end).

Improve other traits rather than nerfing financial? I think it's much easier, and much less intrusive, to change one trait than to change all 7 other traits.

For example, a leader with Spiritual and Creative could be just as powerful IF that leader plays his cards right and has good positioning. Spiritual allows that leader to shift civics at will -- an EXTREMELY useful tactic especially later in the game. Creative gives the obvious edge in culture victories, but also allows for rapid border expansion early on when Open Borders isn't a possibility. If you adopt an expansionist approach to the game, this can be especially useful in the early land grab or (on a Terra map) when settling the New World.

Actually, any expert in culture victory would tell you that creative is mainly pointless for a cultural victory. In fact, it's most useful for domination and conquest. I won't deny that spiritual is very good when micromanaged to the max, but the numbers show that it still can't be compared to financial.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Maybe because they're lobbing dirty great boulders at groups of massed footsoldiers?

I have less of a problem with collateral damage, given the units that are doing it. Plus, if catapults are really giving your tanks that much trouble, why not intercept them with some gunships or fighters (which do collateral damage themselves and DON'T suicide in the attack).

In all seriousness, though, I do agree with you that it's still a bit too easy -- given that it comes down to pure number crunching -- for tech ******ed units to defeat highly advanced ones. I proposed the idea of the era comparison (IE: if you're using macemen -- however legendary and experienced -- against riflemen, the riflemen should be almost guaranteed to win). This would solve pretty much all the modern vs. [old] comparisons.

Only problem is I don't think this can be modded unless you, for example, edit the values of all the units. And with certain eras, this wouldn't work. For example, a Medieval unit like the knight is two eras ahead of a Warrior. But the game doesn't distinguish between a warrior and a maceman aside from "Warrior has X strength, maceman has Y". They're both melee units, though, so you can't go making the Knight +50% vs. melee without totally screwing up balance for the medieval era units. I'm kind of at a loss for how to actually mod this in pre-gunpowder eras. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear 'em.

In theory, this is not that difficult to mod. You just need more classes of units. To give you an idea. Make a class named ancient melee and a class medieval mounted and give medieval mounted a 200% bonus to ancient melee units and you won't have a problem defeating warriors with knights (it isn't a big problem now, is it?).

You just need a lot more classes of units. Note that this is a lot of work to balance and mod and a bit beyond the scope of this thread.

As far as chop/cash rushing, I don't see these as unbalanced per se, since everyone CAN use them and it's more luck of the draw and how you prioritize tile improvements that seems to affect it.

Probably, you misunderstood me a bit. I didn't mean unbalanced compared to other players. Everyone can use chopping of course. I mean unbalanced compared to other strategies.

As far as things like Financial being overpowered, I'd say the solution isn't to nerf it, but rather to improve other traits. The thing is, I think the other traits are already pretty damn good, depending on how you strategize. Financial has become popular primarily because of the obvious benefits, but also I think because it plays to the strengths of people who post here -- who tend to be a bit more "number crunchy" than most folks.

For example, a leader with Spiritual and Creative could be just as powerful IF that leader plays his cards right and has good positioning. Spiritual allows that leader to shift civics at will -- an EXTREMELY useful tactic especially later in the game. Creative gives the obvious edge in culture victories, but also allows for rapid border expansion early on when Open Borders isn't a possibility. If you adopt an expansionist approach to the game, this can be especially useful in the early land grab or (on a Terra map) when settling the New World.

I agree that the financial trait has the most obvious bonuses and thus might be overrated a bit. However after some number crunching , I really think that financial gives better bonuses. It's rather difficult to compare some traits though.
It is possible to compare financial to organized. Using a bit of number crunching, I think that financial increases the income side of your economy with about 25% on average while organinzed reduces the cost part of your economy with about 25% on average. However, the income side of your economy should be far bigger than the cost part of your economy. I think that financial is clearly better than organized. The only moment that organized is a little better is right at the start of the game, before cottages have been build. But that is only a very short period of time.

 

[Zombie69]

I would say the best way to limit chopping effects is to put every civ on the same ball field and do not allow production bonuses affect the number of hammers from a forest chop. No bonus to an aggressive civ builing a barracks or financial civ building a light house. No bonus to any civ with access to stone or marble (90 hammers at epic!). If environmentism civic is improved as a suggest above and the bonuses to chopping reduced, you will see less forest chopping, or at least more thought first.

The only thing this would accomplish is adding micromanagement to the process. Currently, it's just as good to chop a forest for 30 hammers during construction of an axeman as it is to chop it for 60 hammers during construction of pyramids with stone. The number of turns gained are the same. With your proposed change, people would need to make sure to time the chops with the production of units and buildings that have no bonuses, to maximize their usefulness. Other than that, chopping would remain just as powerful. I don't think adding this extra micromanagement (and something counter-intuitive like forests being more useful for certain production types than others) would solve anything.

As for the main point of your post, that the AI at higher levels would become harder to beat if the game were balanced properly. I say perfect! If you can't beat the AI because your exploits don't work anymore, it will force you to play more strategically. If that doesn't work, just lower the difficulty level. I would find it much more satisfying between an AI that can play decent at monarch than using exploits to beat an AI at Deity to compensate for its dumb bonuses. And if it's really important to you how the level is called or how high it is on the list, just decrease the bonuses provided at each level. Either way, it will be a more satisfying gaming experience.

 

[Roland Johansen]

- Chop : i would be even more drastic and give 10 hammers for forests and 5 for jungles. I think that at 15 hammers per forest, beelining to bronze working right away would still remain the best strategy almost everytime, which limits options, hence strategic gameplay. Also, how about unlocking slavery at a different tech? Any idea what a good tech would be?

Maybe, you're right about limiting the production bonuses of chopping even more. It's difficult to argue between your numbers and mine, they're not that far apart.
If you'd like to move the slavery civic, then I'd move it to animal husbandry. It makes going for the horse based units, a bit more interesting. It also increases the value of the 'worker'-technologies that lead to animal husbandry. Now bronze working is mostly a superior choice to the 'worker'-techs.

- Financial : totally agree, in fact i think i was the first one to propose this change, a long time ago. It was part of a package to balance all the traits. With more experience now, i don't believe in some of the things i proposed back then (e.g. i used to think that spiritual was too weak, i was wrong). However, there is always one trait that clearly dominates all the polls and i still think that this change would bring it near perfectly in line with the other ones.

Yes, I remember that you posted about this a long time ago. I guess that I must have thought: he's right!

- Cash rushing and towns : agreed. My only concern is that maybe you've made the Kremlin too weak to even be worth building. Maybe make it 50% instead of 25%? Everything else seems perfect to me. You've brought non-Kremlin rushing to the level i believe it should have been in the first place. Hammers should remain a viable alternative in the end game (and not only for spaceship parts either), otherwise there's no point in having them in the game in the first place.

Remember that the Kremlin bonus is multiplicative with all of the other bonuses of cash rushing. However a 50% bonus wouldn't do a lot of harm as it becomes obsolete a bit sooner with the changes that I suggested.

- State property : agreed. Kill two birds with one stone. Make state property less powerful and make watermills and workshops more powerful. Perfect.

Thanks.

RJ:
Inacting these modification will definately make the AI upper level bonuses bigger. My comments starting from the end to your beginning, discounting the air/siege stuff with which I agree.

You seem to object (in the rest of your post) to the idea that some of these changes make the AI more of a challenge. I don't see that as a bad thing. If the AI doesn't need the bonuses that it gets at the higher difficulty levels to be a competitive opponent, then that makes the game better. If the AI needs huge bonuses to be competitive, then the basic AI without the bonuses is not very competitieve and that hurts the game in my opinion.

I would suggest a correction to the environmentalism civic

I agree that this civic is weak. I would like to see some more bonusses added to this civic. If you have some detailed ideas, then post them. I think I would like to see some happiness/health bonusses. For instance something like + 3 health, + 5 - (health penalties from buidlings in city) happyness. But I haven't really thought long about it.

Thanks also for your other ideas.

The only problem I have with chop-rushing is that jungle is worse than worthless. Though it may be out of sync with reality, there should be better incentive to build a city in jungle besides the bananas. Especially since it takes Iron Working to remove. Either remove the necessity of ANY tech to remove it, lower the turns to remove it, or give a good hammer bonus. How about a $ bonus after chopping jungle?

Did you miss my suggestion to also give jungles a production bonus when chopped. It seems that we agree on that one.

I hate to bring up another game, because it is sucky game, but the Baldur's Gate series, and the latter Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars RPGs that came out of the same producers were sucky because every bonus was a +1 or a -1, and it just dulled out the excitement of any sort of upgrade, advancement, or new weapon. My only point is that you can "balance" a game to the point that nothing changes from beginning to end, and strategy becomes inconsequential.

You are right, that the balancing shouldn't lead to some sort of a dull game where every strategy is the same. That is not my goal. I want to make the different strategies comparable in strength so that your strategy choices are not easy.

I really like your ideas...just a couple (minor) comments.

First, on the State Property civic. The power of this civic could be tempered a bit by giving it a higher civic upkeep cost. Or...instead of eliminating distance upkeep costs, it could simply half the distance upkeep costs.

On your suggestion of air intercepts being lethal...I don't have a problem with it as such, but that would seem to swing the balance the other way...in favor of the interceptors. To counter that, either lower the intercept chance (if it is going to be lethal, it shouldn't happen to half of your missions) and/or give bombers a lethal bombardment capability, particularly to naval units.

It's good to hear that you like the suggestions that I put in the first post.

Yes, the state property civic could be changed differently. However I like my changes. They also benefit the AI, which is a nice side effect. And it makes the state property civic ideal for large nations, while the free market civic is better for smaller nations.

I agree that not all interceptions should be lethal. I would want to increase the lethality to something like 50%.

 

[Zombie69]

Something i just found in another thread concerning state property :

My suggestion about -1 food for cottages, hamlets, villages and towns was meant to force people to knock down those money making improvements because the city couldn't support them, not to restrict growth. When they are replaced with, say, a workshop, production increases at the expense of commerce.

State Property should be a large, production focused option, but it can be used as a large financial option. When everything in a large empire is converted to workshops, watermils and windmills, it will produce enough research to get by but it isn't abused. It researches slower but in a more realistic sense, it has less expenses, but it has less commerce/trade and also has less surplus. In the end it becomes a large production powerhouse with less income which is what I think it's meant to represent.

While i don't agree that state property should give -1 food to cottages/etc. (this would mean mass starvation and would be ridiculous), i agree with the basic principle. State property should represent massive production based empires, and not empires based on finance and cottages. Therefore i'm starting to think that de-linking state property with watermills and workshops may not be such a good idea after all.

Maybe we could just make state property reduce distance upkeep by 50% instead of completely eliminating it, and be done with it?

 

[Solo4114]

RJ, you're right, I misunderstood you. It makes more sense now. And yes, I do agree that there are still clear "bests" in the game. That said, a lot of stuff people say is "useless" isn't necessarily useless across the board, but rather so specialized as to make it generally unprofitable to use it in all but the most specific circumstances.

As far as the "Overbalancing can lead to a lack of distinction in game strategies", I agree with that as well. If you make everything a +1 on factor X, but a -1 on factor Y (or vice versa) what's the real difference? You net the same, right?

What I'd like to see is more incentives to use the other stuff in the game. IE: workshops. Does ANYONE build workshops when farms and especially cottages are so much more attractive? I almost never do because cottages are so versatile. I think part of the problem is the concept of "commerce" equating to both science and money. Linking these two makes cottages a HUGE advantage in the game.

For example, I'm playing as Liz on a Terra map on Noble right now. I'm kicking ass at the moment, largely due to a tech lead and a HUGE financial lead. Why? Simple. Cottage spam. For example, after a war that eliminated Gengis, I had a fair number of veteran (level 2, mostly) units whom I just left in Karakokrum. By the time I'd discovered rifling, I had a whole mess of cottage-spammed cities. I simply dropped the science and culture sliders to 0% and in the course of about 5 or 6 turns increased my gold from about 1000 to about 4000. I then brought science back up to 80 and put culture at 10 and just upgraded all my veterans. I now have a bunch of City Raider II Riflemen, which is coming in handy in subduing the New World barbarian cities, which only serves to expand my economy, since much of the surrounding land is already reasonably developed when you grab a barb city.


What I think would need to happen to solve this is to either nerf cottages (which I don't like because nerfs are generally something I'm against except in certain situations) or change cottages to producing money only, rather than money OR science. Even so, money is extremely powerful in the game once you unlock Universal Sufferage. It lets you upgrade old units and buy new buildings with ease.

Even to the extent that nerfing does become necessary, I'd caution against nerfing too strongly. While one approach to victory may be the obvious best approach, making other approaches viable may only require a slight tweak.

 

[Zombie69]

Another idea for state property, from the other thread (this one makes sense i think) :

Cottages should just produce less commerce.

Make state property give -1 commerce to cottages, hamlets, villages and towns. There you have it, a massive empire based on production and not so good in finances.

 

[Roland Johansen]

While i don't agree that state property should give -1 food to cottages/etc. (this would mean mass starvation and would be ridiculous), i agree with the basic principle. State property should represent massive production based empires, and not empires based on finance and cottages. Therefore i'm starting to think that de-linking state property with watermills and workshops may not be such a good idea after all.

Maybe we could just make state property reduce distance upkeep by 50% instead of completely eliminating it, and be done with it?

I like the line of thought of the post that you quoted.
There is actually another reason why I wanted to change the civic in the way that I suggested. That was to help the AI. The AI cannot handle the changes in food production very well. The AI for instance starts replacing full grown towns with farms once biology comes along (or so it seems). I don't like to see any changes to food connected to the civics. The AI's cities will fluctuate in size. A human can think ahead and will know what a change in civics will do to it, but the AI just has a list of values connected to the civics and decides based on those numbers. If you make the effects of the civics difficult, then the AI will not handle it well.

However, you could make the civic give a -1 commerce to towns. That would seriously weaken it. It would maybe even make it an undesirable civic. Maybe not such a good idea.

State run nations tend to have a highly bureaucratic and expensive governmental system. I don't exactly see why state property has no upkeep. I think that you could easily give it a medium upkeep on top of my suggested changes without making it weaker than free market for large nations.

What about the following changes:
food changes move to railroads
+1 production to watermills, mines, lumbermills and workshops
-1 commerce to towns
high upkeep
no city distance upkeep

It would probably make it huge for large nations that want to conquer the world and pretty useless to small nations racing for a space victory.

 

[Zombie69]

I'm not sure about that last sentence. All this extra production would sure come in handy for spaceship parts that can't be rushed!

There's an awful lot of changes in there. It would need a lot of playtesting before we could even attempt to suggest whether or not this could be balanced or (more probably) what tweaks would be required to make it so.

My first thinking is that you've made it even stronger than it was initially, especially since your other changes are already making cottages less desirable, and therefore watermills, mines, lumbermills and workshops more so.

 

[Solo4114]

Something i just found in another thread concerning state property :



While i don't agree that state property should give -1 food to cottages/etc. (this would mean mass starvation and would be ridiculous), i agree with the basic principle. State property should represent massive production based empires, and not empires based on finance and cottages. Therefore i'm starting to think that de-linking state property with watermills and workshops may not be such a good idea after all.

Maybe we could just make state property reduce distance upkeep by 50% instead of completely eliminating it, and be done with it?

Not so ridiculous, actually. Both Mao's Great Leap Forward and Stalin's 5-year plans caused widespread famine. Converting to state property should involve a period of hardship for the nation -- either by requiring that they preemptively conver the tiles, or that they suffer the penalty. I actually like this idea of subtracting 1 food from towns. You might even have it give +1 food to workshops and/or farms (you can call them collectives, comrade. ). If the goal is to create production instead of wealth, then this would make sense (it might also make sense to remove the "wealth" build option, although at only 50% of production, maybe that's not such a big deal).

Although your -50% maintenance is a bit simpler to model.

 

[Roland Johansen]

As far as the "Overbalancing can lead to a lack of distinction in game strategies", I agree with that as well. If you make everything a +1 on factor X, but a -1 on factor Y (or vice versa) what's the real difference? You net the same, right?

What I'd like to see is more incentives to use the other stuff in the game. IE: workshops. Does ANYONE build workshops when farms and especially cottages are so much more attractive? I almost never do because cottages are so versatile.

The main reason for these changes is balance. But in my opinion balance can make a game a lot better. If two different strategies are really well balanced to eachother, then both can lead to succes.

For instance, with all of the modifications mentioned in the first post, workshops increase hammer output by 3 (no food loss) in the late game, while towns increase hammer output by 1 and commerce output by 6. Combined with the increase in cost of rush buying, this means that I surely use workshops to increase my production. Most of my cities in the late game get one or a few workshops if they don't have a few hills in the neighbourhood.
That's kind of result that I want to see of any balance adjustments.

Make state property give -1 commerce to cottages, hamlets, villages and towns. There you have it, a massive empire based on production and not so good in finances.

We have similar ideas again.