Suggestions to improve balance

[Roland Johansen]

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.

You're probably right.

I don't want to mess around to much with food in the civics though. I think that is a bad idea. Food is so strong and important that changing it in civics leads to all kinds of unbalances in my opinion.
If watermills and workshops only get their food bonus with the state property civic, then they are largely useless when not using this civic. They are not balanced when not using this civic.

 

[Solo4114]

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.

Maybe what makes more sense is to have civics focus more on the goals and ideals of a government that adopts them. For example, State Property's goal is to centralize ownership of property so as to maximize production. By contrast, Free Market is designed to maximize commerce and let the market regulate itself. The effects of these two civics should therefore be designed to lead to these results. State Property can therefore remove the maintenance bonus, and grant +1 production to lumbermills, watermills, workshops, and mines, while losing 1 food on cottaged squares and maybe adding +1 food on farms.

By contrast, Free Market would lead to the 50% reduction in maintenance costs because the state steps out of the market (and thus state ownership of industries) and lets the market regulate itself. The bonus would be an extra commerce on all non-town squares, with +50% cottage growth (because we're trying to stimulate the economy here).

Maybe not these exact bonuses, but something along these lines, I think, could work.

 

[Zombie69]

If watermills and workshops only get their food bonus with the state property civic, then they are largely useless when not using this civic. They are not balanced when not using this civic.

I disagree. Are farms useless without their food bonus from biology? I don't think they are!

 

[Solo4114]

See, that's why I think you need to incentivize some of the less popular approaches to gameplay. Like, for all the number crunchers out there, identify WHERE a particular approach fails, then try to strengthen that area instead of just nerfing the popular stuff.

 

[Zombie69]

State Property can therefore remove the maintenance bonus, and grant +1 production to lumbermills, watermills, workshops, and mines, while losing 1 food on cottaged squares and maybe adding +1 food on farms.

I don't think any civic should give -1 to food, especially not to cottages/etc. since many cities are made up entirely of them and instantly giving -20 food to a city will starve it to death. Whether that's realistic or not is debatable, but the fact is that nobody will ever want to switch to this civic under these circumstances. Also, like Roland said, the AI is very bad at managing changes in food, so let's give it a break. There's no way it could handle something like this.

By contrast, Free Market would lead to the 50% reduction in maintenance costs because the state steps out of the market (and thus state ownership of industries) and lets the market regulate itself. The bonus would be an extra commerce on all non-town squares, with +50% cottage growth (because we're trying to stimulate the economy here).

I think you're giving way too many bonuses, and making the civics too specialized. Specialization is good, but there should be limits. You're not balancing the game, you're unbalancing it!

Indeed, i think we've strayed away from the initial topic. Making state property and free market closer in effect to real life is all nice and good, but that's not the point of this thread is it? I think we should stick to changes that improve balance and not start changing things for reasons of realism.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I disagree. Are farms useless without their food bonus from biology? I don't think they are!

I mean that you shouldn't link such a strong bonus as food to civics. Food is the most important resource because it is so difficult to get. Of course farms are valuable before biology because they're the only tile that gives food on flatlands.

I don't think that you will build many workshops when they cost one food to build. If a city is balanced in food, then you'd need one farm per two workshops, which would mean that a workshop actually gives only 2 extra hammers in the late game instead of 3. That's only 1 hammer more than a town. That's really bad, it's much better to cash rush in that situation. (all with late game bonuses)

 

[Solo4114]

I don't think any civic should give -1 to food, especially not to cottages/etc. since many cities are made up entirely of them and instantly giving -20 food to a city will starve it to death. Whether that's realistic or not is debatable, but the fact is that nobody will ever want to switch to this civic under these circumstances. Also, like Roland said, the AI is very bad at managing changes in food, so let's give it a break. There's no way it could handle something like this.



I think you're giving way too many bonuses, and making the civics too specialized. Specialization is good, but there should be limits. You're not balancing the game, you're unbalancing it!

Indeed, i think we've strayed away from the initial topic. Making state property and free market closer in effect to real life is all nice and good, but that's not the point of this thread is it? I think we should stick to changes that improve balance and not start changing things for reasons of realism.

Geez, 'scuse me for contributing.

It sounds to me like you guys basically want the following in your balancing efforts:

(1) the balance must be done to eliminate "best" solutions.
(2) the balance must not hamstring the AI.
(3) the balance must fit with the rest of the game as opposed to simply being designed to solve one isolated problem.

I'd recommend that (4) nerfing be the last line of defense, since it can too easily lead to "vanilla" gameplay (bland, no real difference in strategies, etc.). On the other hand, since this is a purely academic exercise right now, and even if a mod does come out of this it's still just a mod, I suppose the nerf issue doesn't matter. Some folks will be happy with it, others won't. They can download as they choose.

I think the big issues that you'll run into are #2 and #3 on that list, though. A lot of balance ideas won't fit with the AI's approach to the game. Others will work in an isolated sense, but won't fit with the rest of the game. And nerfing for the sake of balance will leave everything feeling "samey".

That's why I think specialization is the better route. Ask yourself why cottage spam is so attractive. Simple: because it's so adaptable. You can use it as a peaceful builder, a tech racer, a dominator, or a warmonger. Same with Financial as a trait. They are extremely versatile and useful throughout the entire game.

If you want to balance these things, you'll probably have to nerf them to make them more specialized, and also boost other aspects of the game to help make their specialized aspect more attractive to players.

If everything is simply a powerful general strategy, then the game just becomes generic. It doesn't matter what leader you pick, or what civics you pick, it's all just six to one, half a dozen to the other.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Geez, 'scuse me for contributing.

It sounds to me like you guys basically want the following in your balancing efforts:

(1) the balance must be done to eliminate "best" solutions.
(2) the balance must not hamstring the AI.
(3) the balance must fit with the rest of the game as opposed to simply being designed to solve one isolated problem.

I'd recommend that (4) nerfing be the last line of defense, since it can too easily lead to "vanilla" gameplay (bland, no real difference in strategies, etc.). On the other hand, since this is a purely academic exercise right now, and even if a mod does come out of this it's still just a mod, I suppose the nerf issue doesn't matter. Some folks will be happy with it, others won't. They can download as they choose.

I think the big issues that you'll run into are #2 and #3 on that list, though. A lot of balance ideas won't fit with the AI's approach to the game. Others will work in an isolated sense, but won't fit with the rest of the game. And nerfing for the sake of balance will leave everything feeling "samey".

That's why I think specialization is the better route. Ask yourself why cottage spam is so attractive. Simple: because it's so adaptable. You can use it as a peaceful builder, a tech racer, a dominator, or a warmonger. Same with Financial as a trait. They are extremely versatile and useful throughout the entire game.

If you want to balance these things, you'll probably have to nerf them to make them more specialized, and also boost other aspects of the game to help make their specialized aspect more attractive to players.

If everything is simply a powerful general strategy, then the game just becomes generic. It doesn't matter what leader you pick, or what civics you pick, it's all just six to one, half a dozen to the other.

No, that would be a bad mod. If the balancing would result in a bland game, then it was done wrong. For instance, a game without civics and with only one type of unit would be very balanced but very bland.

But I think that balancing will improve the game. It will make different tactics comparable in strength. You can't just go on the forum, copy a tactic that you read and know that it is the strongest tactic. There shouldn't be a strongest tactic.

Note that I don't completely agree with point 1) the balance must be done to eliminate "best" solutions. In every single situation there may be a best solution. In the sense that: I look at a city and want to improve a tile and decide that a cottage will be the best improvement. However, if a cottage is the best improvement every time, then I wouldn't think the game was balanced. I want to look at another city and then decide that a wrokshop is the best improvement. It may be easy sometimes to choose for one or the other, but sometimes it should be hard and the choice shouldn't result in the same terrain improvement every time. And I might reconsider my choice 50 turns later and change the improvement of the tile.

Is it clear what I would like to achieve or do I remain vague?

 

[atreas]

First of all, I like most of the ideas presented - well, perhaps except state property (I fear this might make the huge maps unplayable, and I like them). If you manage to change also somehow the base costs for these maps, I don't care at all. I especially like the chopping (I have tried it and feels much more reasonable) and "anti-BW" proposals, plus the anti-financial proposals. Although I personally was thinking how to give Financial instead +1 commerce for all tiles with 2 commerce except the tiles with towns. But probably you are right - you cut from them the sea and resource tiles, which is a good thing to balance the start of the game.

One thing that I don't like in these proposals, although you say that you had the opposite intention, is that they seem to remain always "in the spirit of cottages". Unless there is a method that enables a really competitive game strategy, the result will be IMO one of the same kind - again you would spam cottages, but now your cottages will be producing a bit less so the game would be more difficult; but still, it would be the same game. To understand why even the deduction you proposed, Roland, is nothing to frighten cottages, I can tell you that in tests I've done WITHOUT the late +3 commerce from techs/civics, the cottage strategy was always a clear winner. So you can imagine, of course, that your proposed change hasn't much of an effect.

The only way I see for having an alternative strategy is to give somehow a boost to the only possible alternative strategy (specialists) AND ALSO stop this unfairness with Emancipation (it practically obliges everybody to be with cottages, due to unhappiness). So, my idea is something like: give also to some civic or to some tech a small increase in the specialists output (just like Printing Press/Free Speech do for the cottages) and also remove the happiness effect of Emancipation and give it to the tech (Democracy). After all, only the commerce increased with Printing Press - the science was unchanged? That way (of course, with the appropriate change in Kremlin and rush-buy) we might be able to have two possible strategies; otherwise there will always be only one (for SP games).

 

[Roland Johansen]

The first goal of limiting the strength of rush buying was to ensure that the hammer producing improvements were a match for the towns. This was done so that you couldn't just rush buy all the libraries, universities, observatories science labs and banks, groceries and marketplaces to make your civilization a commercial powerhouse. It was better to have towns to rush build these improvements then to have mines and lumbermills and workshops. Mines, lumbermills and workshops were a bit useless in the original game after rush buying was enabled with universal suffrage. That is not true anymore with the suggested modifications in the first post. And the most important change is the increase in cost of rush buying, not the decrease in commercial yield of the towns.

Another modification could make the specialists a bit more powerful so that a specialist based economy would remain a viable alternative to the cottage based economy. The goal of such a change is different than the changes in my first post. But it creates some balance between the various approaches to the game and that is the real goal of this thread.
The best way that I can think of right now would be by improving the yield of the specialists when certain buildings are build in the city. For instance: increase the yield of scientist by +1 when a university is present in the city.

I'm not sure however if the main goal of representation is to make a civilization of farms and specialists only. You are comparing the strength of one citizen working a town with the strength of one citizen working a farm (after biology) + 1 specialist. The problem with such a civilization is that you find the health and happiness restrictions pretty fast. So even a civilization using representation should use cottages and only a limited number of specialists.

Another change to make the specialist/representation approach viable would be to cap the cost of the great persons. At present because the quadratically increasing costs of GPP needed to build a Great Person, you will only gain a very limited number of great persons and someone focusing on great persons will not get many more as someone who just tries to get some by using 1 city that produces them en masse. But such a cap on GPP's needed to create a Great Person should be well thought out. It shouldn't be too low. If the cap was 1200 GPP's on normal speed, then 4 scientists used under the pacifism civic would create a great scientist every 50 turns, 33 1/3 turn for philosophical leaders.
Would that balance out against the +1 hammer per town and rush buying power of universal suffrage? Very difficult comparison.
Although, maybe not that difficult. You could find out how much commerce a great scientist generates (it's documented in a strategy article, I believe) and add that to the 50 turns of science produced by the great scientists and see how that balances out against 50 turns of town production. The versatility of great persons might balance out against the versatility of rush buying.

Hmm, what do you think? Can a cap on GPP needed to generate a Great Person work? Think outside of the box. Because the original game didn't do it, it isn't necessarily wrong.

 

[malekithe]

The only way I see for having an alternative strategy is to give somehow a boost to the only possible alternative strategy (specialists)/

I haven't thought through it completely yet, but what if unhappy citizens could still be used as specialists? That way, the only limit to a specialist based economy would be the amount of food you can generate. Plus, emancipation wouldn't have as large an affect on the specialist-based empire. Then you can envsion late game science cities being full of farms, having a population of 40, and employing 20 scientists.

Representation might have to be modified slightly to take into account the increased number of specialists possible (maybe only 2 bonus beakers). There might also need to be some adjustment to the cost (or value) of Great People.

Additionally, this might go a little ways towards increasing the worth of some of the other traits. Philosophical would be helped out by specialists being worthwhile for more of the game. Organized would be useful for managing the high civic costs associated with the higher populations. Spiritual civs would be better able to employ the priests they have the potential for. The value of certain wonders (parthenon, the one that gives +2 Culture per specialist, any (national)wonder that allows for more specialists) would increase, benefitting industrial civs. Expansive civs would be able to employ more specialists, as now the only limiting factor on them would be health/food supply. Creative civs would be able to employ the artists they get from their discount theaters (small bonus, but not much else I could think of). I don't think Aggressive civs would benefit much, except maybe it would allow them to focus on less "fragile" tile improvements and they could get their conquered cities up to speed faster (everyone could).

The only trait that would not benefit at all would be financial as it's the only trait directly tied to the number of tiles you're working, and the type of improvement on it. Financial civs would still be building lots of cottages, but the specialist option would be open for the other civs out there.

 

[Mutineer]

I disagree with many statments. Finantial is actially probably a weekest trat there and forest chopping actially less efficient then other methods of expancion.

The most powerfull trat there is Spiritual, follow by Expansionist and may be philosofical.

 

[uncarved block]

Modifying Financial
I had this idea a while back, and thought I'd throw it out for some reaction. What if Financial gave you one extra trade route per city? The bonus would grow over time, but not to the extent cottage spamming does now; while it could be exploited by Wonders and civics, it wouldn't be anywhere near as easy to do as cottaging every square that you can get away with; last but not least, it's closer in real numbers to the benefits of Expansive and Organized, which are based more on numbers of cities than tiles worked.
Simple, yes. How effective, I'll leave up to y'all.

 

[atreas]

The first goal of limiting the strength of rush buying was to ensure that the hammer producing improvements were a match for the towns. This was done so that you couldn't just rush buy all the libraries, universities, observatories science labs and banks, groceries and marketplaces to make your civilization a commercial powerhouse. It was better to have towns to rush build these improvements then to have mines and lumbermills and workshops. Mines, lumbermills and workshops were a bit useless in the original game after rush buying was enabled with universal suffrage. That is not true anymore with the suggested modifications in the first post. And the most important change is the increase in cost of rush buying, not the decrease in commercial yield of the towns.

Probably it wasn't clear. I wasn't referring to the town for the other traits, just for the Towns of Financial trait (with the idea of keeping all your other proposals as is).

Your idea was for Financial to give 1 commerce for every three - my initial idea was to give Financial 1 commerce for every two, but take away 1 commerce from their Towns only (making them equal to the other traits). You take some commerce from Fin at the start, I take it at the end (that's the difference), and I can't decide which is better (because my proposal takes away more commerce than yours). Still, your proposal is very easy to implement.

About the GP cap it's interesting, but haven't thought of it much. I am currently working on some measurements about this and other similar subjects - maybe these will give a good estimation of the effect.

 

[Lord Chambers]

I disagree with many statments. Finantial is actially probably a weekest trat there and forest chopping actially less efficient then other methods of expancion.

The most powerfull trat there is Spiritual, follow by Expansionist and may be philosofical.

Dun dunna nah!

 

[Roland Johansen]

Modifying Financial
I had this idea a while back, and thought I'd throw it out for some reaction. What if Financial gave you one extra trade route per city? The bonus would grow over time, but not to the extent cottage spamming does now; while it could be exploited by Wonders and civics, it wouldn't be anywhere near as easy to do as cottaging every square that you can get away with; last but not least, it's closer in real numbers to the benefits of Expansive and Organized, which are based more on numbers of cities than tiles worked.
Simple, yes. How effective, I'll leave up to y'all.

A domestic trade route gives only 1 commerce per turn extra during most of the game (in non-coastal tiles) and 2 commerce per turn extra during the latter part of the game. In coastal cities with harbors, the domestic trade routes give 2 commerce extra during the early game and 3-5 during the late game. Because there are only a limited number of foreign trade routes available (1 per foreign city of nations with open borders), the extra trade routes would probably be domestic trade routes.

Organized decreases the civic maintenance cost of a city by 1-2 in the early game and 4-6 in the late game (rough numbers). If you add the bonuses of banks and universities on the income side of the equation, then I think that your suggestion would balance the financial trade quite nicely compared to the organized trait.

It would probably balance it a lot better than the proposal that is in my first post because in that case the extra commerce income per city for a financial leader would probably be something like 8-10 (depending on the amount of cottages) in the late game and 3-4 in the early game. That is still a lot more powerful than the organized trait.

Good suggestion

Probably it wasn't clear. I wasn't referring to the town for the other traits, just for the Towns of Financial trait (with the idea of keeping all your other proposals as is).

Your idea was for Financial to give 1 commerce for every three - my initial idea was to give Financial 1 commerce for every two, but take away 1 commerce from their Towns only (making them equal to the other traits). You take some commerce from Fin at the start, I take it at the end (that's the difference), and I can't decide which is better (because my proposal takes away more commerce than yours). Still, your proposal is very easy to implement.

About the GP cap it's interesting, but haven't thought of it much. I am currently working on some measurements about this and other similar subjects - maybe these will give a good estimation of the effect.

I wasn't talking about the financial trait anymore. I think that I understood your suggestion which was not that different from mine. I don't know how to implement yours though and I also think it is a bit counte intuitive to give a bonus for low commercial yields but no bonus for high commercial yields.

I was trying to think of a method to improve the power of specialists and I think that the most fun way to do so would be by improving the number of Great Persons a specialist based economy creates. I hope that you can further analyse the speed with which Great Persons arise so that this cap that I suggested could be proven balanced or unbalanced. It's always better to discuss such a change with other people so that unexpected results can be avoided. I actually don't know how to implement such a change, but that's a problem for another day.

 

[uberfish]

1) Chop rushing

I think chop rushing is fine as it currently stands for buildings, since it's important to give civilizations without industrious/stone/marble a chance to compete in the wonder race at the cost of burning resources. However the ability to chop units makes Axeman rushes, specifically, too strong and I think the amount of hammers contributed towards units could use being toned down a bit.


2) Financial

I think this trait is actually quite well balanced currently, and would be a poor trait if it only applied to 3+ base commerce tiles because coast/lake/oasis wouldn't get the bonuses anymore and thus players would be forced to cottage spam or build Colossus to get any benefits. Indeed, the ability to utilize more coastal spaces profitably is one of the things that makes Financial play differently and that shouldn't be taken away. Organized, a much more bland trait, has been shown to be fairly close in terms of economic impact at high difficulty levels, and has a better discount building (courthouse vs bank.) Aggressive, Philo, Spiritual are also up there, being very strong in their individual ways. I don't think all the traits are equal, but would rather see traits like Creative given a bit of a late game boost than Financial nerfed.


3) State property

Free market is easily more profitable in a medium sized empire that has courthouses and a well positioned Forbidden Palace. By the time state property pulls ahead, you are well on the road to Domination anyway and the civic is just helping you along by mitigating the expense of keeping captured cities. I don't think this is unbalanced. Environmentalism is situational, but when the circumstances are right (small to medium empire lacking for health resources) it easily beats out all other choices.


4) Cottages and cash rushing

Yes, people build cottages a lot, in part because they take less micromanagement than a specialist based economy which remains competitive as Aeson and others have demonstrated. Cash rushing is currently a bit too strong, but the real problems are not with the 2/0/5 towns, but rather the Kremlin, and the civics Universal Suffrage/Free Speech that make them 2/1/7 towns. I would change free speech from a +2 raw commerce boost to a research boost, and reduce the Kremlin's bonus to 50%.

 

[Mutineer]

Dun dunna nah!

What level are you playing? Did you actially win? Can you win from any starting position wtih rundom leader?
Finantial trait is rather week in my mind, because it forced you to Fix you population in unmoving state,
force you to reduce supluss of food in order to make any use out of it.

I my later games I begin to hate when I drow finantial leader, as game become way to settle and easy to loose.
Well, there are ways around it, but really I found myself strongly disliking finantial trat.

Free yourself from Unthinking cottagemania and you will find there are options uncountable to donthinks faster.

 

[PolyBomber]

Just a quick suggestion for forest chopping. It seems that the problem most people have with it is that it provides far too much production in the early game. Why not scale the amount of production given based on age or the researching of a specific technology? So for example forest chopping might give very little produciton, maybe 5 or 10 in the ancient era some more in the medieval era and then approaching the equivalent or maybe even slightly higher amounts in in the modern era. This approach also makes historical sense, as early on forest chopping was mainly done out of a need for arable land. Only much more recently was it done solely for the wood itself.

 

[Mutineer]

About forest chopping. Forest chpping is actially inefficient method of early production.
Improving special ties, primary food ties give production faster, if you know how to use it.
The only people who say forest chopping to strong that there that regenerate map untill they have a lot of forest around starting position.

I would prefer to have 3 food resource, then forest.

Well, 1-2 3 max at start chops can not harm if and only IF you do not know worker tecnology yet, or just your starting position food poor.