Suggestions to improve balance

[ahab_in_rehab]

Atreus makes a good point, the financial trait is only overpowered for as long as cottage spamming remains the predominant strategy, if cottages were not automatically the improvement of choice in non-specialist cities then these problems would not arise. So we could either look at the other improvements in order to see what could we change about them in order to make their use more desirable or we could take the opposite tack and slightly reduce the effectiveness of cottages. I think only slight changes are necessary otherwise the scales could tip too far and upset the balance were looking for. I think reducing the effectiveness of cottages would be a better option than changing the other improvements as you only have to make one change rather than the 3 or 4 required if watermills,workshops are changed individually to make them more attractive options. How about simply reducing the commerce from the cottage improvement by one. A cottage would therefore not add anything to a tile's value until it grew into a hamlet. They would still represent an excellent long term strategy but in the short term spamming cottages over a substantial portion of your cities is going to result in serious problems...

 

[ahab_in_rehab]

There are two ways to see things:

1. Financial trait alone is overpowered, so let's reduce it a bit to balance and everything is OK. Perhaps a proposal could be found for that case (I think I showed clearly that the proposal made isn't enough) and all would be well. Counterargument: if you don't choose a Financial civ this proposal has just made the game EASIER for you - you just reduced the weapons of your opponents. Zombie has made it repeatedly clear that he ONLY plays financial civs, so this proposal is definitely suitable and fair for him - but I doubt it's good for everybody (for example, it would be bad for me that I don't play Fin civs).

2. Financial trait is overpowered BECAUSE the cottage strategy is so predominant. If the cottage strategy was less predominant, then Financial trait wouldn't be overpowered - so you target on balancing the cottages instead and achieve the same result but at the same time create two possible gameplay strategies (seems better to me). IMO, this covers a wider range so it's more general.

EDIT: PS. One doesn't exclude the other - IMO, you may need to do both to achieve a well balanced game.

Whoops that was the quote I was referring to, thought that was the last post! Sorry

 

[Zombie69]

Expansive seems to be one of the traits that is less useful. In most standard games health isn't usually an issuse for most cities (unless built on massive floodplains or jungle). An idea for the expansive trait to make it more useful for all cities would be to change it to +1 food per city. This would be far more diverse than the health bonus. This trait would become a help for all cities (less useful the larger the food growth already is). Unfortuantely this could become unbalancing though but it would definitly be more useful than the +2 health.

I like your idea a lot, but i'm afraid it would be overpowered at game start when trying to get the first 2 workers and 1 settler, and for all size 1 cities.

Also with the agressive trait to make it last all game it should apply to all land units not just melee and infantry. This would make the bonus actually useful for modern tanks not just early footsoliders (mech inf is underused and a little weak from what i've seen). Furthermore this would really help Civs with cavalry UUs, mainly Mongolia whos Keshiks don't get an agressive bonus!

I think agressive is already be very well balanced, and your change would make it much too strong. I think if you're playing an agressive leader and have modern tanks, you're doing something wrong. You should have won the game long before that point.

For Creative to last the whole game you could make it give +2 culture and +10% culture in all cities. So creative actually has a late game purpose and not just used for early game border expansion.

I like the idea and proposed something similar (maybe even identical) about 6 months ago. Then creative would actually become a useful trait for a cultural victory. As it stands right now, for a cultural victory you should avoid creative at all cost, which doesn't make any sense at all. Right now, financial, spiritual, philosophical and industrious are all far better choices, and possibly a few more traits as well.

Organised, industrious, spirtual and philospophical, with the other traits getting buffed/nerfed, seems fairly balanced. (industrious could be a little tweaked on early wonder production seems they build these way too easy) Thats just some basic ideas for balancing the traits.

I personally think industrious is much too weak, but that's only because i now play immortal and up. At noble, industrious is too strong. I think the best way to make it level independant and more balanced on all difficulty levels would be to make it affect production in general rather than only wonder production. I'm not sure about the specifics though. Maybe make it give a 10% bonus to production? Coupled with cheap forges, it could give interesting results.

 

[Zombie69]

The AI is also quite improved by setting the IPower values correctly.

I would be very interested in hearing what that does, and how you changed it. The one thing i wish for more than balance in this game is a better AI.

 

[Houman]

I would be very interested in hearing what that does, and how you changed it. The one thing i wish for more than balance in this game is a better AI.

The every unit has an ipower, whihc determines the importance of an unit. iasset is the score you would get if you eliminate an unit. The higher to set the ipower and iasset the more important and powerful this unit will become for AI. If you have too many Units with high ipowerm AI get scared and won't attack you. if AI has too many units with high ipower units, it will get over courages and demands tributs.

I have applied these changes to environmentalist civic to make it more attractive:

<BuildingHappinessChanges>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_FACTORY</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>-1</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_AIRPORT</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>-1</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_COAL_PLANT</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>-1</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_NUCLEAR_PLANT</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>-1</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_SOLAR_PLANT</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>2</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_HYDRO_PLANT</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>1</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_THREEGORGESDAM</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>1</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
				<BuildingHappinessChange>
					<BuildingType>BUILDING_RECYCLING_CENTER</BuildingType>
					<iHappinessChange>3</iHappinessChange>
				</BuildingHappinessChange>
			</BuildingHappinessChanges>

Beside the 6 extra health and medium upkeep, this might be quite interesting.

I went through this thread but couldn't find any solutions for expansionist and creative civics. Any suggestions?

Thanks
Houman

 

[Roland Johansen]

I tried to count data from some of my games, to see what difference we have (I usually prefer to play Pangea maps). As expected, the numbers are quite higher (about 60-65% for 3+ commerce tiles, about 70-75% for 2+ commerce tiles). Still, in this there is "included" the difference in playing style, the difference in playing decisions (since these games were played without the new rules for Kremlin and Free Speech) and, most importantly, I was playing a non-Fin civ - that means, it wasn't so much of a priority to cover immediately all coastal tiles. In such a setting Fin would get ~11 * 1.6 while modified Fin would get ~ 9 * 1.6 (too much, even compared to Organized).

Another thing that troubles me is that in all this analysis we examined only Organized: even in this case, the fact that the difference between the two is smaller doesn't say that there is no difference (in fact, an ever increasing difference). Still, there are other traits too, and none of them has something to show for the end phase of game - that means, even in your Continents scenario the reduced Fin is still a good 15% per turn better than all the other traits, and Washington is still an overpowered leader. Maybe less powerful than before, but is it enough, compared to all others? I personally don't think that you can really achieve balance unless you completely eliminate the Fin advantage at some moment.

Thank you for checking out your own game. That is very useful as I would otherwise be thinking alone in my own dreamworld which could lead to a misinterpretation of the balance.

However, I may assume that you too would build slightly less cottages when their strength has been reduced, the strength of the other improvements increased and you can't rely on cash rushing for production anymore. Your city of size 15 would have about 9 tiles of 3 + commerce, while I'm talking about 6 of those tiles. It's not hard to imagine that the difference is caused by the difference in rules and the amount of land tiles (for cottage use) present on a pangea map compared to a continents map.

At present, I'm thinking that the organized trait and the reduced financial trait under the new suggested rules for cottages and rush buying might be reasonably balanced. Especially since the small advantage in numbers at the start of the game for organized is a relatively large advantage. An organized civilization starts the game with 1.5-2.5 upkeep less per city. This advantage for the organized trait over the financial trait grows slowly with city size to about 3 until sufficient cottages have been able to grow to 3+ commerce which takes a while. The difference grows smaller after cottages have been around some 30-50 turns (30 turns minimum on normal speed to grow a cottage into a village and not every cottage has been build at the moment that cottage building has been invented). But I think that you need the happiness resources given by plantations or the happiness given by hereditary rule to grow the cities large enough to use enough cottage tiles for the reduced financial trait to surpass the organized trait. It also takes some 30-40 turns for these new cottages to grow into villages. Late in the game with size 15+ cities and some gold/science improving buildings, the reduced financial trait really shines and has left the organized trait behind in the dust. However, the relative advantage in gold/science is not as big as at the start of the game. At the start of the game, the organized trait reduced upkeep in cities by 2 while the cities barely provide any commerce (size 3- and no cottages). This has a dramatic effect on science output and the organized leaders should really advance far faster in technology than the financial civilizations at this time. In the late game, the advantage in gold/science is something like 5 gold/science on 64 gold/science (my numbers) which will still have an effect on the science race, but it is relatively smaller. The advantage for the reduced financial trait is however present during a larger part of the game.
It is very difficult to prove that this might be balanced, but at present I think it is.

The organized trait has far better buildings that have been reduced in cost, namely the lighthouse and courthouse compared to the bank for the financial trait.

About balance compared to other traits. Some traits are very difficult to compare. I'll try a short comparison with the spiritual trait which allows you to switch civics without anarchy.
In a normal game without the spiritual trait, I'll change civics about 10 times. Maybe more if war weariness would force me, but that has not happened yet. With the spiritual trait, I would switch more to get every small advantage that I could get out of the different civics. You can even change state religion when someone asks you and switch back a few turns later.
Lets say that you switch 12 times in a game. Then the spiritual trait would give you 12 turns of commerce, food and production extra. A normal speed game is 460 turns, but often is finished long before that, lets say after 360 turns (1950 AD). 12/360= 3.333333%. If we value food, production and commerce equally then this is equal to a 10% increase in commerce.

In the early game, the organized trait increases commerce by more than 10% and in the late game by less then 10%.
The spiritual trait offers extra advantages by switching civics whenever you want to get everything out of the different civics and can be useful in diplomacy. The organized trait gives a better early game advantage and the early game is more important as it influences the whole game.
The buildings that can be build cheaper by the organized trait are slightly better than the buildings that can be build cheaper by the spiritual trait.

I think, these two are fairly balanced. There are some traits that might need some adjusting though. Although most traits can't be easily compared (using mathematics).

edit: a lot of interesting new posts to reply to, but it has to wait till later. First, I'm trying to find out how air interception works (what the various xml-entries do).

 

[atreas]

I went through this thread but couldn't find any solutions for expansionist and creative civics. Any suggestions?

Apart from the suggestion about creative given by PaulK, another idea that I've seen somewhere and seemed reasonable to me is to give the creative civs some gold refund based on the culture level of the city - for example, for each 20% of culture give them 1 gold per city. This way they would practically get half of the Org bonus and it would help them at the later stages of the game - when the +2 Culture has no value but the cities already have a substantial culture level.

I remember once I thought how to implement such a change. My first impression was that it could be done if I added a new building (say it Museum, perhaps) which could be created for every city a Creative civ builds or conquers, but it would not be available for any of the other traits. Of course, in a full mod you have much more possibilities than this simplistic one.

 

[uberfish]

My suggestion for Expansive is add +1 happy in addition to the +2 health so Expansive civs would be guaranteed to get a boost on their early population cap either way.

Industrious - change the bonus to a 25% discount on all buildings. (I fear any sort of discount on units would make Napoleon very overpowered)

Creative - +1 culture per turn +100% to culture multiplier in all cities.

Are these powerful? Yes, but I think traits should be more powerful overall to make civs more distinctive, not less. You should be able to look at a civ and make a good guess at what its traits are by how the empire is laid out, with Expansive having big cities, Organized lots of them, Financial spreading all over coast and building windmills, Creative having huge borders, etc.

 

[aviator99_uk]

Atreus makes a good point, the financial trait is only overpowered for as long as cottage spamming remains the predominant strategy, if cottages were not automatically the improvement of choice in non-specialist cities then these problems would not arise.

<snip>

A cottage would therefore not add anything to a tile's value until it grew into a hamlet. They would still represent an excellent long term strategy but in the short term spamming cottages over a substantial portion of your cities is going to result in serious problems...

Personally I agree with this fundamental principle. Its NOT the financial trait that seems overpowered , its the cottage strategy which makes things unbalanced . So far I have *not* seen any suggestion that tinkering with the financial trait will make the cottage strategy less omnipresent, and omnipotent.

My vote goes to *leave* financial alone and let it become the 'cottage strategy' viable for that civ. Tinker with cottages so that they are not the only viable strategy for *all* civs.

 

[Nightravn]

The change the Naf as made in his Ultimate Strategy Mod for creative is to add a free artist to any city of size 12 or more. It has been suggested that tends to mess with people GP points so I suggested it be just a free specialist giving the person the ability to choose which type of specialist they want. Is this to powerful a change.

For expansionist I like the added + Happy as just a health bonus is not that useful with common resource like wheat, cows, fish and such around. Would +2 happy be too much?

As for Aggressive and Zombie's comment that it is not necessary in the late game because you should have finished it by then, well some people actually like to play the game in the later stages of the time line so that should not be a reason why we should or should not balance any trait. You also have to keep in mind that the AI have these trait also and even if you do not play the aggressive trait the AI will and I haven't seen any of them even conquer the world never mind before a certain time period and part of this balancing is to make the AI more viable.

The Financial trait is overly powerful if you have a coastal area. It allows for such rapid advancement in the early stages of the game that will catapult you to a huge lead. I also think that some addition changes to cottages themselves could be in order. I am not sure of subtracting one from them is the answer as that makes them useless at the beginning and is not a good idea. Maybe if we took the commerce growth away from towns and gave it a production bonus at that point instead.

For Industrialism the change we made in the Realism Mod is to have it give + 1 production for and tile that gives 3 or more production kinda like the Financial.

 

[Zombie69]

As for Aggressive and Zombie's comment that it is not necessary in the late game because you should have finished it by then, well some people actually like to play the game in the later stages of the time line so that should not be a reason why we should or should not balance any trait. You also have to keep in mind that the AI have these trait also and even if you do not play the aggressive trait the AI will and I haven't seen any of them even conquer the world never mind before a certain time period and part of this balancing is to make the AI more viable.

Actually, this would make the AI less viable. Why? Because the AI sucks at war. Anything that encourages war will therefore make it lose even more. If you want to improve the AI, you'll have to change the way it thinks about war, how it decides to go to war, how it moves its units, etc. Making aggressive more powerful doesn't accomplish this and only hurts the AI because it doesn't know how to take advantage of it while you can.

As for people who "like to play late games", well too bad for them. When you balance something, you do so expecting people to use it and abuse it. Making aggressive more powerful for people who don't know how to use it well (or for some reason don't want to use it well), only makes it much too powerful for people who use it correctly. Anyone who knows anything about balancing stuff knows that things must be balanced when they're abused to the max, and this is the true test of balance.

 

[Nightravn]

Actually, this would make the AI less viable. Why? Because the AI sucks at war. Anything that encourages war will therefore make it lose even more. If you want to improve the AI, you'll have to change the way it thinks about war, how it decides to go to war, how it moves its units, etc. Making aggressive more powerful doesn't accomplish this and only hurts the AI because it doesn't know how to take advantage of it while you can.

As for people who "like to play late games", well too bad for them. When you balance something, you do so expecting people to use it and abuse it. Making aggressive more powerful for people who don't know how to use it well (or for some reason don't want to use it well), only makes it much too powerful for people who use it correctly. Anyone who knows anything about balancing stuff knows that things must be balanced when they're abused to the max, and this is the true test of balance.

Granted that the AI sucks at war verse a Human player but it does pretty well against Each other. If you the Human player are going for a Culture Win the AI should have viable traits that would allow it to use it an aggressive trait to expand to a point where it could either stop you or expand it borders to give it an advantage in the tech race to win the space race before your cultural win. That is where AI viability comes in.

And just because someone likes the later stages of the game that doesn't mean their play is sub-optimal for the simple reason that you can start a game at any stage. So if you want to play an aggressive trait AND start at the 1800's you should have just as a viable trait to use as the other CIV's do.

Just because YOU think that a Aggressive CIV should win the game before they get Cavalry or Tanks doesn't mean that is going to be the case. If you play huge maps with lots of CIVs that is usually not the case anyways. Beside How is giving the promotion to other units "much to powerful" for people who "know" how to use the trait correctly as you purpose? If they play optimally then they should have won the game and have no need for the added benefit but those who do not have the MAD skillz to play correctly will need all the help they can get so it will help balance it for them.

And you are correct that one must take into consideration all extremes when you are trying to balance anything but that is only part of the equation it also needs to be balanced when it is not being Abused to the extreme.

 

[atreas]

@ Nightravn: Very interesting points about the Aggressive trait, but still I don't see the reason to risk a possible "unbalanced" late game when you can avoid it. For example, what do you think about giving Aggressive trait some other kind of late advantage - to give just some thoughts, a reduced resistance from conquered cities or a reduced war weariness after Nationalism (the second looks and sounds much better to me). This way you would make the Aggressive trait better in the later phase of the game, without risking unbalancing the late battles.

 

[atreas]

@Roland Johansen: Nice estimation on Spiritual - I agree it is close to Organized. The problem is how to estimate the other traits, that haven't a "countable effect". I could calculate the results for Philosophical (I just tell you it needs something more in the bigger maps with more cities), but instead I believe it is better just to propose some changes that make each trait desirable (from each one's point of view) but not overpowered. If you can't definitely say "I want that trait", then most probably there is no overpowered trait. You have already given your proposals, so now I gother in one piece my ideas to see if there is something you like.

GENERAL CHANGES
1. Rush buy for units goes to Police State (instead of Universal Suffrage). That way you can't hope to solve all your problems through cottages and US, and you must really keep more production cities around. I think that, with this change, even in Pangea maps we will have comparable +3 commerce tiles as in Continents.
2. Change the GP production rate: either fix it after the 20th GP (that's the 3000 GPP proposed earlier by Zombie) or, if this is not possible, change the base increaments from 100, 200, 300 etc. to 100, 150, 200, etc.
3. All the other changes proposed by you (chopping, Free speech, rushing, Kremlin) - hoping we could discuss a bit more about the issue of chopping jungles (I still have many objections on that, as far as there is this wonderful grassland under the jungle).

TRAIT CHANGES
1. Creative and Aggressive: I have already given my ideas about that. For Creative I think it's best to give them some amount of cash based on culture level. For Aggressive, I would like to see a reduced war weariness after Nationalism.
2. Industrious: +1 hammer for tiles with 3+ hammers. Either eliminate completely the Wonder bonus, or make it something small (like 10%).
3. Expansive: +1 happiness (I would prefer it to be given after Nationalism, too). I want to delay it hoping that it wouldn't make the Romans even more powerful than they already are.
4. Philosophical, Organized, Spiritual: no change
5. Financial: the proposed change of +1 commerce for tiles with 3+ commerce.

 

[Houman]

GENERAL CHANGES
1. Rush buy for units goes to Police State (instead of Universal Suffrage). That way you can't hope to solve all your problems through cottages and US, and you must really keep more production cities around. I think that, with this change, even in Pangea maps we will have comparable +3 commerce tiles as in Continents.
2. Change the GP production rate: either fix it after the 20th GP (that's the 3000 GPP proposed earlier by Zombie) or, if this is not possible, change the base increaments from 100, 200, 300 etc. to 100, 150, 200, etc.
3. All the other changes proposed by you (chopping, Free speech, rushing, Kremlin) - hoping we could discuss a bit more about the issue of chopping jungles (I still have many objections on that, as far as there is this wonderful grassland under the jungle).

TRAIT CHANGES
1. Creative and Aggressive: I have already given my ideas about that. For Creative I think it's best to give them some amount of cash based on culture level. For Aggressive, I would like to see a reduced war weariness after Nationalism.
2. Industrious: +1 hammer for tiles with 3+ hammers. Either eliminate completely the Wonder bonus, or make it something small (like 10%).
3. Expansive: +1 happiness (I would prefer it to be given after Nationalism, too). I want to delay it hoping that it wouldn't make the Romans even more powerful than they already are.
4. Philosophical, Organized, Spiritual: no change
5. Financial: the proposed change of +1 commerce for tiles with 3+ commerce.

Finally has someone put all the ideas together as a summary.

1) Some people had suggested a change to the cottages to make them more balanced? What are these changes?

2) May you elaborate a bit more on this point? GP = Great People? Shall the rate be changed in what a civic?

3) Yeah these changes are clear to me.

Traits:
Aggressive = less war wariness is a good idea. ALthough giving them a 10% Combat bonus on units makes them also quite interesting. DO you think that would make them unbalanced?

Creative = Many ideas are going around and still there is no concrete agreement on it. Some say +2 culture and +10% culture for all cities. Now the proposal of gold for culture level. But what rate would be good?

Expansive = +1 health would solve the problem? Would that be actually enough? Why not stick with +2 health then?

All other Traits are now adjusted fine.

The most important question is, where to change the values for making Creative giving 10% more culture or some amount of cash upon the culture level?

Thanks
Houman

 

[Zombie69]

Granted that the AI sucks at war verse a Human player but it does pretty well against Each other.

Actually, they suck against each other as well. It's very rare to see an AI being eliminated by another AI. Like i said, making aggressive more powerful would not help the AI, it would only help the human player.

And just because someone likes the later stages of the game that doesn't mean their play is sub-optimal for the simple reason that you can start a game at any stage. So if you want to play an aggressive trait AND start at the 1800's you should have just as a viable trait to use as the other CIV's do.

How many people actually play games from anything but ancient starts? Besides, aggressive isn't the only trait that's out of whack if you start in the 19th century.

Just because YOU think that a Aggressive CIV should win the game before they get Cavalry or Tanks doesn't mean that is going to be the case. If you play huge maps with lots of CIVs that is usually not the case anyways.

Even if the game isn't actually won by that point, it's still won for all intents and purposes. By that time it's just a matter of mopping up whatever's left, and you don't need any help anymore.

Beside How is giving the promotion to other units "much to powerful" for people who "know" how to use the trait correctly as you purpose? If they play optimally then they should have won the game and have no need for the added benefit but those who do not have the MAD skillz to play correctly will need all the help they can get so it will help balance it for them.

It's much too powerful because you'll get horse archers, archers, cavalry, etc. with combat 1. It's so extraordinarily powerful that i would never play anything but aggressive civs. Aggressive is already one of the best traits in the game.

And you are correct that one must take into consideration all extremes when you are trying to balance anything but that is only part of the equation it also needs to be balanced when it is not being Abused to the extreme.

This sentence shows that you don't know how to balance things properly. Balancing should always assume optimum use.

 

[atreas]

1) Some people had suggested a change to the cottages to make them more balanced? What are these changes?

The general idea was to make cottages less attractive, so as to have two alternative strategies - either cottages or specialists. As it is now, it is clear that cottage spam wins by far (in SP games - MP is different). One solution would be to devalue Towns (that's accomplished to an extend with the Free Speech change) and my suggestion just tries to go one step further: make very difficult to have a "full-cottage" economy and rush tons of units for a war. In this way I believe there will be more diversity in city specialization, and that is (IMO) a better and more interesting game.

2) May you elaborate a bit more on this point? GP = Great People? Shall the rate be changed in what a civic?

This is a general change - so it applies to all traits. Great People (GP) are produced by gothering Great People Points (GPP) in the cities, but the required amount of GPP is increasing for every GP you produce. For example, in a Normal speed game it goes like this: 1st 100, 2nd 200, ... 10th 1000, 11th 1200, 12th 1400 ..., 20th 3000, 21st 3300, 22nd 3600. In other words, for the first 10 the increament is 100 GPP, for the next 10 it is 200 GPP, etc.

The result is to make each subsequent GP more "expensive" in GPP. As it is now, only Philosophical civs have (practically) the chance to get more than 20 GPs in most games. With this change we "help" a bit Philosophical in the later phases of the games (especially in the case on big empires with many cities) to retain an edge on GP. With my proposal the sequence would either remain as is now but after the 20th GP the "cost" would be fixed in 3000 GPP, or the sequence would change to 100, 200, 300, ... , 1000, 1150, 1300, ... 2500, 2700, 2900, 3100 ...

Aggressive = less war wariness is a good idea. ALthough giving them a 10% Combat bonus on units makes them also quite interesting. DO you think that would make them unbalanced?

I really don't know if it would be unbalanced, but certainly it would be extremely attractive. Combat 1 isn't so much a strength by itself, but for the fact that it allows most of the other promotions. That means, it's more than the mere 10% addition in strength; if you can avoid giving it, it's better to do so IMO.

Creative = Many ideas are going around and still there is no concrete agreement on it. Some say +2 culture and +10% culture for all cities. Now the proposal of gold for culture level. But what rate would be good?

I proposed 1 gold for every 20% culture because otherwise (for example, with 1 gold every 10% culture) it would be even or better than Organized (based on Roland's calculations about a 15 size city, which normally has at least 60% culture). I don't want to have a trait with BOTH the Org effect AND extra culture at the start of the game. On the other hand, I don't want a trait that's good only for one type of victory (but that is a matter of personal taste).

Expansive = +1 health would solve the problem? Would that be actually enough? Why not stick with +2 health then?

I gave them +1 happiness, apart from the health bonus they already have. In higher levels, happiness is IMO a much bigger problem than health, and health without happiness means nothing.

The most important question is, where to change the values for making Creative giving 10% more culture or some amount of cash upon the culture level?

I haven't really digged in the XML files to check all the details. I remember I had the idea some of these changes could be provided through a special "trait specific" building that could be automatically created in the cities. But surely modders have better ideas than me on this subject .

 

[DSChapin]

I'd say Creative should just provide a % bonus to culture, and not the flat bonus at all. It doesn't make sense to me that being "Cultural" gives you less incentive to build Cultural buildings, which is going to be the case so long as it provides a flat +2 or +1 per turn.

 

[cabert]

after some thoughts about all this, i found that bonus you get from traits should be comparable to the bonus you get from one particular civic.

In fact, it's already so for philosophical. And a good deal of propositions were very much in this direction. That could be :
- Financial gives +1 trade route (like free market)
- Philosophical gives +100% GPP (like pacifism)
- Industrious gives +25% production for buildings (like organized religion)
- Creative give +100% culture (like free speech)
- Agressive gives +2 XP (like theocracy)
- Organized gives no maintenance from distance to palace (like state property) : problem here, this makes the civic useless, whereas other civics can add up to the trait. May be better to leave organized as it is.
- spiritual gives +1 per religion in a city (like free religion)
- expansive gives +6 health in all cities (like environnementalism)

Ok that's a lot of changes. And not very balanced, either.

Another idea i got is to give a free artist fo creative, a free merchant for fin, a free priest for spiritual, a free engineer for industrious.

Well, not very realistics ideas, but i though i could share anyway.

 

[Houman]

The general idea was to make cottages less attractive, so as to have two alternative strategies - either cottages or specialists. As it is now, it is clear that cottage spam wins by far (in SP games - MP is different). One solution would be to devalue Towns (that's accomplished to an extend with the Free Speech change) and my suggestion just tries to go one step further: make very difficult to have a "full-cottage" economy and rush tons of units for a war. In this way I believe there will be more diversity in city specialization, and that is (IMO) a better and more interesting game.

Excellent. I have already done this.

This is a general change - so it applies to all traits. Great People (GP) are produced by gothering Great People Points (GPP) in the cities, but the required amount of GPP is increasing for every GP you produce. For example, in a Normal speed game it goes like this: 1st 100, 2nd 200, ... 10th 1000, 11th 1200, 12th 1400 ..., 20th 3000, 21st 3300, 22nd 3600. In other words, for the first 10 the increament is 100 GPP, for the next 10 it is 200 GPP, etc.

The result is to make each subsequent GP more "expensive" in GPP. As it is now, only Philosophical civs have (practically) the chance to get more than 20 GPs in most games. With this change we "help" a bit Philosophical in the later phases of the games (especially in the case on big empires with many cities) to retain an edge on GP. With my proposal the sequence would either remain as is now but after the 20th GP the "cost" would be fixed in 3000 GPP, or the sequence would change to 100, 200, 300, ... , 1000, 1150, 1300, ... 2500, 2700, 2900, 3100 ...

I have no idea where i could modify that. I have to ask 12monkey if he has an idea.

I really don't know if it would be unbalanced, but certainly it would be extremely attractive. Combat 1 isn't so much a strength by itself, but for the fact that it allows most of the other promotions. That means, it's more than the mere 10% addition in strength; if you can avoid giving it, it's better to do so IMO.

Already done do.

I proposed 1 gold for every 20% culture because otherwise (for example, with 1 gold every 10% culture) it would be even or better than Organized (based on Roland's calculations about a 15 size city, which normally has at least 60% culture). I don't want to have a trait with BOTH the Org effect AND extra culture at the start of the game. On the other hand, I don't want a trait that's good only for one type of victory (but that is a matter of personal taste).

This is a Python solution. Need to ask Python experts...

I gave them +1 happiness, apart from the health bonus they already have. In higher levels, happiness is IMO a much bigger problem than health, and health without happiness means nothing.

I just had a look into the CIV4TraitInfo, there is no Happiness Bonus, how did you do that?


Many thanks for guidance,
Houman