Suggestions to improve balance

[malekithe]

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

As I'm sure anyone would, but that's not the trade-off involved in forest chopping. Forest chopping involves 30 hammers now vs. the opportunity to have and work a forest tile. The argument is, at 30 hammers per forest, this trade-off is imbalanced. It is very rare to see a forested tile late in the game that could not have been put to better use if it had been chopped at some point.

Again, no one is suggesting that forests are more powerful than food resources. They are, however, much more common and, when present in abundance, greatly speed the early portion of the game. I find that when it comes to forests, in the games I play, the question is not whether to chop the forest but when to chop it.

 

[Roland Johansen]

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.

Welcome to civfanatics

In my rough calculations, financial increases the income side of an economy by about 25% while organized decreases the cost side of an economy by about 25%. If you are running a healthy economy, then the cost side should be a lot smaller then the income side. If the cost side of an economy is about 30% of the income side (when you are able to use 70% science without loss of money), then the strength of the organized trait is about 30% of the strength of the financial trait.

I would like to see any calculation that shows that organized is somewhere close in strength to the financial trait.

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.

I quite like that idea and I've seen it being mentioned earlier in other threads. However, I don't know how to mod this at present.

As I'm sure anyone would, but that's not the trade-off involved in forest chopping. Forest chopping involves 30 hammers now vs. the opportunity to have and work a forest tile. The argument is, at 30 hammers per forest, this trade-off is imbalanced. It is very rare to see a forested tile late in the game that could not have been put to better use if it had been chopped at some point.

Again, no one is suggesting that forests are more powerful than food resources. They are, however, much more common and, when present in abundance, greatly speed the early portion of the game. I find that when it comes to forests, in the games I play, the question is not whether to chop the forest but when to chop it.

I agree. The lack of balance is mostly compared to alternative strategies. Mostly, the early game choice is something like, should I be able to chop 6 forests for 6*45=270 hammers (epic speed) or create one pasture on top of that cow resource. The pasture gives you +1 food and +2 hammers per turn. That's not a lot compared to the chopping results. And after that you've developed forest chopping, there is not a lot of reason to leave some forests standing. The only reason being that you are short on health resources.

The lack of viable alternatives is what I think is unbalanced.

 

[Roland Johansen]

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

 

[Mutineer]

As I'm sure anyone would, but that's not the trade-off involved in forest chopping. Forest chopping involves 30 hammers now vs. the opportunity to have and work a forest tile. The argument is, at 30 hammers per forest, this trade-off is imbalanced. It is very rare to see a forested tile late in the game that could not have been put to better use if it had been chopped at some point.

Again, no one is suggesting that forests are more powerful than food resources. They are, however, much more common and, when present in abundance, greatly speed the early portion of the game. I find that when it comes to forests, in the games I play, the question is not whether to chop the forest but when to chop it.

It is more then ballanced if you play on Monarch + level.
You will find that health is your main problem, especially starting form Empiror.
In addition you forgetting that this 30 shields are not free, they cost worker time and it is not unsugnificant cost.

When I stop chopping and shifted to selected tie improvements I suddenly found out that I do not need a lot of workers.
In addition, time workers spend improving special resource overcome forest chot in 6+ turns. in 6+ TURNS effect of tie improvemetn overproduce chop.

Yes, I do chop sometimes, when wander need to be finished right now or when I do not have worker tech yet. But I allways miss this darn health benefit.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It is more then ballanced if you play on Monarch + level.
You will find that health is your main problem, especially starting form Empiror.
In addition you forgetting that this 30 shields are not free, they cost worker time and it is not unsugnificant cost.

When I stop chopping and shifted to selected tie improvements I suddenly found out that I do not need a lot of workers.
In addition, time workers spend improving special resource overcome forest chot in 6+ turns. in 6+ TURNS effect of tie improvemetn overproduce chop.

Yes, I do chop sometimes, when wander need to be finished right now or when I do not have worker tech yet. But I allways miss this darn health benefit.

I play at immortal-deity level and I mostly find the happiness problems a lot bigger than the healthiness problems. But I don't think this should become a discussion about who plays at the highest level. That's stupid.

At epic level, it takes 1 turn to enter a forest square and 4 to chop it. The chop gives 45 hammers, so that is 45/5=9 hammers per turn. You can do this until you are out of forests.
The chopping strengthens itself. You can chop other workers or settlers so that your economy becomes even stronger. More workers to improve the land, more settlers to settle close to the resources. If your enemy doesn't chop and you do, then you can probably do a succesful rush attack against him/her. If you don't do a rush attack, then you'll be able to settle the nice spots close to the resources before your enemy can.
And of course, you can also win the race to the World Wonders by chopping.

All of these advantages lead to a game where the chopping strategy is very powerful compared to other strategies. People prioritize the bronze working technology compared to the worker technologies almost every time. If we have the choice between chopping a forest tile and using it, we almost always choose to chop the tile (only not when we are very low on health resources). I think that a lower yield of the forest chop would lead to more balance between chopping the various alternatives.

 

[Bezhukov]

No, but just chopping the initial second worker and early settler (thus avoiding several turns of no growth) is overpowered. A more elegant solution would be to treat chopping like slavery - have it temporarily decrease health, with effects wearing off gradually like slavery unhappiness. This would only slow down mass chopping, and probably not have much effect on the key early worker/settler chop though.

I used to think that State Property was overdetermined, but came to figure out that it only reduces expenses, it doesn't boost revenue, so that on some maps free market is still optimal. I still don't like its ahistorical nature and believe it is also still somewhat unbalanced. I don't find workshops to be useless even without it. For midgame cities, I'll farm spam to get up to pop, then convert farms to workshops to eliminate food surplus and get infra quickly built, then convert workshops to cottages if enough turns remain to make this worthwhile. With RP and Electricity, watermills are also excellent all-around improvements, especially if there are not enough turns remaining to reach a town.

The only thing I find unbalancing with cash-rushing is the ease with which one can buy late-game wonders, especially with Kremlin. Sats are not more crucial than Fiber Optics, as the latter is required for Internet.

 

[Mutineer]

I prioritise bronse working to, but not because of chop.
Bronze working just imposible to pass as It contain everyhting.

Higth production + Slavery + chop
Axes and cooper resource needed for attack or defence.

Shift slavery to massontry for example and Axes to pottery (well, to bake Clay you need to chop trees), and you will think long and hurd do you want bronse working or not.

 

[ownedbyakorat]

I find the workshop to be almost completely useless. A single production point for the effort and opportunity cost is almost a step backward if you take the time to build one. Ditto for watermills. Lumbermills are less useless but still are nothing to write home about, and are pretty darn weak for the late stage they come into the game.

 

[ownedbyakorat]

Oh, with regards to the clearly over-strength items:

Forest chopping - I'd be happier if this were removed entirely (with high-difficulty AI bonuses scaled back somewhat to compensate). It's not realistic and simply encourages clear-cutting. The health bonus is irrelevant - by the time you need it you have good substitutes.

Financial is seriously overstrength, especially compared to Organized - I don't see why you'd ever want Organized over Financial - it needs to be reconsidered in total.

On some more too-weak traits:

Aggressive isn't strong enough; all units and not just infantry-type units should get the bonus.

Organized seems to have no purpose other than to be a poor cousin to Financial, or a added bonus for the civ that has both.

Philosophical... maybe I'm just not good at making GP farms, but it seems that you don't get much for your trait.

 

[cabert]

very intersting thread, many good discussions here

my 2 cents :
state property is not that overpowered in my opinion, and the AI doesn't use it on purpose. It's very strange though that mercantilism makes you lose good trade routes, and state property doesn't!
I would make state property loose foreign trade routes and one trade route, while giving back in mercantilism the foreign trade routes.

chopping : i would give 10 hammers for a chop before metal casting, and the full 30 back after that. Not so much a balance question, but without metal casting what do you use those big stacks of wood for?
After that it's used to heat up the forges, so i understand it better.
It would make the early axe rush /settler spam harder, which is good.

financial is indeed overpowered, because it applies to money and science and culture, gets all the modifiers, every time. It just isn't right! Financial should apply to money, and only to money. I would make it a +50% on gold (like a free bank). Would require some testing to tweak (maybe +25% would be enough), but it would be more in the level of philosophical, applying with the other gold bonuses, and not before.

Same for free speech : make it a +10% gold bonus, and +100% culture. It's just too strong for towns.

 

[cabert]

ho, i forgot one
GP strat are indeed strong at the beginning but very weak in the end. A cap at 1200 GPP for a GP is good. Makes sense to me.
Another way would be to count the GP in every city, and not for the entire civ, but this would be a very deep change.

 

[Zombie69]

I wouldn't want to see a cap on GPP anywhere below 3000. 1200 is way too low, and would make specialists the new overpowered strat.

As for organized, don't forget that they get cheap courthouses and lighthouses, and that's worth something. I think the initial suggestion for financial would make it on par with organized considering this, but the other suggestions in this thread would make it too weak considering it only gets a bonus on a rather useless building, banks.

 

[cabert]

just 0,02 more € : considering cheaper building, spiritual is my personnal favourite, since i do build a lot of temples!

 

[uberfish]

In my rough calculations, financial increases the income side of an economy by about 25% while organized decreases the cost side of an economy by about 25%. If you are running a healthy economy, then the cost side should be a lot smaller then the income side. If the cost side of an economy is about 30% of the income side (when you are able to use 70% science without loss of money), then the strength of the organized trait is about 30% of the strength of the financial trait.

I would like to see any calculation that shows that organized is somewhere close in strength to the financial trait.

Thanks for the welcome

The size of the bonus from financial really depends on how many 2cpt tiles you are working. You need some farms, mines, resources especially early game, and then in late game the impact of financial diminishes when it's just taking 7cpt towns to 8cpt. I think in practice Financial bonus ends up closer to 15% than 25%. Here are a couple of thread links I dug up on apolyton where I usually post discussing org vs fin:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147527
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148491

Financial should rightly be stronger than organized when the empire is optimized for it, since organized is completely passive and thus flexible. If you need to run a lot of farms/mines for midgame military production or specialists, then financial helps less while the discount from organized is still the same.

You also really have to compare other top tier traits like aggressive - free combat I doesn't sound like all that much but it enables promotions like Medic and Shock straight out of the barracks in ancient age, Amphibious/Formation with 6xp, and March with 10xp. Philosophical is also very powerful although it takes more micromanagement and game knowledge to use, the GPs can research a lot of techs with high trade value early on. Spiritual lets you make radical civic changes between war and peace civics, makes temporary switches to situational civics more efficient, and really helps with diplomacy by being able to switch religions and civics on the fly for minimal penalty.

I'd rank all these 5 - Agg/Fin/Org/Spi/Phi - about equal. It depends on your playstyle of course, but I like playing random civ and I really don't find that financial comes out ahead of the others in the long run. Financial is just the most obvious how to maximize its returns initially. Right now I consider Cre/Exp/Ind a tier below because the Creative and Industrious benefits really fade away from midgame on, and Expansive's usefulness depends too much on luck of the draw as to what resources you have access too early on. I think a better angle would be to focus on making the 'weaker' traits more attractive at high difficulty levels, if that's even needed.

 

[DSChapin]

Very good thread.

Chopping: obviously, a reduction is needed. My own games use 1/3 of the vanilla value (and then half THAT value for chopping jungles).
Of course, Axemen are still themselves an overpowered unit, so BW may still be a popular choice. If you were going to move Slavery elsewhere, Masonry seems the most logical choice, but I agree Animal Husbandry might make for more interesting decisions.

Cash Rushing: Fully agree with RJ's proposal. It's honestly odd that the Kremlin affects cash rushing at all, but that's a change for a deeper mod.

Financial: I'm not a huge fan of the "3 commerce instead of 2" idea - it seems like a band-aid. The "extra trade route" idea is quite interesting, but I don't know that there's an entry for it in the XML. Hmm, I need to test out that "<TradeYieldModifiers>" field when I get home and see what it does - none of the current traits use it! (or "<CommerceModifiers>"...)

State Property: RJ's revised proposal in post #17 looks pretty good.

 

[Elhoim]

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.

Besides it would help with the lack of food problem in the late game...

 

[malekithe]

My main concern with moving the food bonus for workshops and watermills from state property to railroads is it places even more importance on that branch of the tech tree. Not that I can come up with a better place for it (maybe refrigeration, but that may be too late); just something to think about.

 

[Kalleyao]

I think chopping is balanced as well as some people here.

 

[Zombie69]

Most people who vote have no idea what they're talking about. I'd much rather have a discussion with veteran players than put my faith in a poll collecting the opinions of a bunch of anonymous players. After having read some of the articles in here, you have to admit that chopping is overpowered. It's been proven through numerous analyses.

 

[DSChapin]

Also, as the originator of that poll I must point out that only about a third of the people who cast actual votes felt it was balanced - which is a pretty small percentage when you consider that there are always people who will consider anything they benefit from to be "balanced".