Tidal Balance - Rising Tide balance mod

Sorry folks, just realised I made a bit of an error with the last version - I set the internal trade value lower for testing and forgot to change it back. I also forgot to set a couple of hidden 'helper' techs to properly disabled. Anyway I just put up a hotfixed version 0.21 with those fixed. Save games should still be compatible!

Yes that is what illogical about it, the other stuff works like the patrol boat. I'll check that scanner (I chose random on my maps), so I'll select something else so the game won't pick scanner. I have noticed some weird stuff since the Oct 29 patch and wonder if some changes have been made by Firaxus to the XML, moving some settings to the .dll or something.
Are you seeing the icons for the resources on the tech web at physics, genetics and engineering? I've had no problems post-patch (that I wasn't already having pre-patch) and I don't think anything like that has been moved...
 
My explorer excavated the knowledge of a far away tech called "AI tech for AI bonus" or something like that. I looked around the edges of the tech web and couldn't find it, would've been fun to play with the same bonuses of Apollo AI...

The trade values were really low (4/4 was the best), but i still used them instead of international trade routes.
 
Thanks for the quick hotfix! I did think internal trade route rates were a little low...

Currently enjoying a game on the Arid biome at the moment, and certainly appreciate the +5 science and +5 culture gained from the smaller alien cities. However, having established a city next to the giant three-hex main alien city I see that there aren't any yields from those hexes. Is this intentional? I suppose three hexes of +5 science/culture would be rather OP, but perhaps an alternative solution could be found?
 
My explorer excavated the knowledge of a far away tech called "AI tech for AI bonus" or something like that. I looked around the edges of the tech web and couldn't find it, would've been fun to play with the same bonuses of Apollo AI...

The trade values were really low (4/4 was the best), but i still used them instead of international trade routes.

Yeah I added a couple of fake techs for the AI to give them extra explorer charges on soyuz and apollo (in the hope that they might be better at competing for expedition sites) - jury is still out on whether it actually helped though...

Anyway that issue should be fixed in the 0.21 hotfix (although possibly only for games started with the hotfix).

As for the trade routes, it looks like it may only accept integer values, since setting it to 1.9 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay lower than 2. Not much room for tweaking there. I think I'm okay with setting it at 2 - they're still really strong but not as gamebreakingly so. And with the boosted international routes and less energy around, it may even be worthwhile to run an international route once in a while. They really need to just fix up the whole algorithm though, honestly.

Thanks for the quick hotfix! I did think internal trade route rates were a little low...

Currently enjoying a game on the Arid biome at the moment, and certainly appreciate the +5 science and +5 culture gained from the smaller alien cities. However, having established a city next to the giant three-hex main alien city I see that there aren't any yields from those hexes. Is this intentional? I suppose three hexes of +5 science/culture would be rather OP, but perhaps an alternative solution could be found?

It's honestly just because the game treats the small ones as just fancy tile improvements, but the big ones are this weird new class of feature called 'hero landmarks' and I haven't figured out how to give them yields.
 
I see. I guess this is why the giant alien fungus (on the fungal biome) doesn't give any yields either, despite the food bonus from the smaller fungi.

Ideally the player would be able to settle in these alien cities, but I agree that this might be a tad beyond the call of a balance patch!
 
First things first, fantastic mod. I love the effort put into making the buildings feel worth building, and am pleased beyond words about the inclusion of the Starships unlocks being included (was so frustrating that they locked it in the first place). One bug that I have to report (that might not be a product of this mod?) is that in the first game I played with it, I had cities occasionally not work their own tile, making them grow a lot slower as a result. Other than that, fantastic mod!
 
I see. I guess this is why the giant alien fungus (on the fungal biome) doesn't give any yields either, despite the food bonus from the smaller fungi.

Ideally the player would be able to settle in these alien cities, but I agree that this might be a tad beyond the call of a balance patch!

Mostly I'm hoping that someone else might take the idea and run with it, and make a more fully-fledged marvel improvement mod, with more interesting ideas than I can come up with.

First things first, fantastic mod. I love the effort put into making the buildings feel worth building, and am pleased beyond words about the inclusion of the Starships unlocks being included (was so frustrating that they locked it in the first place). One bug that I have to report (that might not be a product of this mod?) is that in the first game I played with it, I had cities occasionally not work their own tile, making them grow a lot slower as a result. Other than that, fantastic mod!

Hmmm that's weird. I've never seen that myself. How did it manifest itself? Was it just the city tile had no yield icons under it in the city screen? And are you certain that the yield actually wasn't being calculated (not just that a graphic was maybe missing?) Did you have any other mods running? My first assumption would be a graphical glitch, since I seem to get those all the time, with or without mods.
 
Hmmm that's weird. I've never seen that myself. How did it manifest itself? Was it just the city tile had no yield icons under it in the city screen? And are you certain that the yield actually wasn't being calculated (not just that a graphic was maybe missing?) Did you have any other mods running? My first assumption would be a graphical glitch, since I seem to get those all the time, with or without mods.

That's what I first thought it was, seeing as I was running it in a window size instead of fullscreen, and I've already noticed that results in some graphics glitches in the tech web, but that wasn't the case. In the city in question, the city tile had a yield of 3 food, 2 production, and it's single citizen was working an improved Algae tile that yielded 3 food, 1 production. So in total, it should have been yielding 6 food, 3 production before buildings were added, but instead it was only yielding 3 - meaning very slow growth, because 2 of that food was being tied up to maintain the 1 citizen. In all (2) of the other cities I had, I added up the food yields including the city tile, and it was being calculated correctly, so it's not a consistent issue, at least. I didn't have any other mods running, but then I also haven't played too many games since the Spoils of War patch came out, being too busy playing around with learning how to mod stuff, so this might be an issue from the patch. I'll try more test games (modded and mod-free) and see if the issue repeats itself, and let you know the results.
 
You have a conflict in 2 files
FlavourUpdates.xml barge yield algae 1 food
3BasicResourceImprovements.xml barge yield algae 2 food

The game shows 1 food, the one of the files probably needs the section to be changed to 2 food for the barge
or edited out to use one or the other Barge yield in only one .xml file changed to 2 food.

<Improvement_ResourceType_Yields>
<!-- Gives algae +1 food from work barges (and removes the +1 energy) -->
<Row>
<ImprovementType>IMPROVEMENT_WORK_BARGE</ImprovementType>
<ResourceType>RESOURCE_ALGAE</ResourceType>
<YieldType>YIELD_FOOD</YieldType>
<Yield>2</Yield> (<Yield>1</Yield> in FlavourUpdates.xml )
</Row>

BTW the tech to discover the Firaxus, Titanium and Petrol is now working in my game.
Delete and reload the game seems to fix a lot of things.
 
You have a conflict in 2 files
FlavourUpdates.xml barge yield algae 1 food
3BasicResourceImprovements.xml barge yield algae 2 food

The game shows 1 food, the one of the files probably needs the section to be changed to 2 food for the barge
or edited out to use one or the other Barge yield in only one .xml file changed to 2 food.

<Improvement_ResourceType_Yields>
<!-- Gives algae +1 food from work barges (and removes the +1 energy) -->
<Row>
<ImprovementType>IMPROVEMENT_WORK_BARGE</ImprovementType>
<ResourceType>RESOURCE_ALGAE</ResourceType>
<YieldType>YIELD_FOOD</YieldType>
<Yield>2</Yield> (<Yield>1</Yield> in FlavourUpdates.xml )
</Row>

BTW the tech to discover the Firaxus, Titanium and Petrol is now working in my game.
Delete and reload the game seems to fix a lot of things.

You sure that's not from another mod? I definitely have never had a 3BasicResourceImprovements.xml file and I've never upped the work barge to 2 food.
 
You sure that's not from another mod? I definitely have never had a 3BasicResourceImprovements.xml file and I've never upped the work barge to 2 food.

OOPS
Yes you are right, 3BasicResourceImprovements.xml is from New Horizons which got crossed with with your barge change when I did a broad text search in the MOD folder for "barge" (which had +2 food change in that mod). I'll have to avoid those errors in the future.

The barge is only 1 food improvement on the algae, is this what is intended?

The farm adds 1 food on the algae as well which gives no advantage to the barge. Is there something I'm missing on the barge?

EDIT I forgot the BARGE does not destroy the algae like the farm would, so yes, +1 food to whatever the algae is giving; if the farm is built it would only give +1 to the basic terrain tile.
 
Stuff I'm looking at right now, if anyone has any thoughts:

1) Biowells upped to 3 maintenance, with a +1 energy at Designer Lifeforms. They're such a strong improvement, and I think they could do with a little more downside, and a slightly better advantage for Harmony. Designer Lifeforms mainly because I feel sad for the poor Rocktopus.

2) Culture. You get policies like crazy in the early game, but they come veeeery slowly later on, and their values diminishes significantly. I've flattened the cost curve slightly - at the moment I've set the base cost to 30 (was 20) and the exponent to 1.9 (was 2). The cost for the next policy intercepts at policy #5, the cumulative policy cost intercepts at policy #7, and the cumulative cost to get 20 policies is 7685 down from 10280 (assuming a single city).

3) Affinity. This is a bit of a bugbear of mine at the moment. It still just doesn't feel quite right in its current incarnation. The patch has also altered things a little, as it's very easy to get a bunch of affinity from the techs gained through spoils of war.

So what I'm trialling at the moment:
- Affinity from tech is slashed. Down to (branch/leaf) 2/8, 3/9, 4/12, 5/15, and 6/18 for each of the tiers. This reduces affinity available from tech by approx 1/4 (798 from original 1134). It also further flattens the ratio of affinity per beaker between tier 1 and 5 techs from 16.5 (original) or 8.2 (released version) to 6.9. So the affinity from tech is skewed substantially more towards the outer ring techs, and there is not a huge amount in the earlier techs. In total, there is enough affinity in the tech web to just scrape to level 15.

HOWEVER, each of the virtue tree kickers (i.e. for 5/10/15 policies in a single tree) now give an affinity level (of your choice). I really do think the cultural approach needs substantially greater rewards in the mid-late game, and this additionally helps reduce the tech-is-everything focus of the current game. Between the two, it may also promote teching towards techs that are useful for the empire rather than just racing to the finish line.

This is also compatible with other virtue tree mods (e.g. New Horizons), as it just adds the affinity levels to the kickers regardless.

Is this a step too far? My feeling is the power of tech and the power of culture both need balancing, and this is a way to do both without really introducing new systems. And there is already a little bit of affinity in the virtue trees. This also gives another avenue where the AI can have an affinity advantage over the player (since they'll tend to get more policies than you on higher levels), reduces the ability to steal affinity (via espionage or spoils of war), and helps out those who have fewer cities (by choice or misfortune) to be a little more relevant. And it indirectly buffs the culture side of the knowledge tree.

4) Affinity continued. Part of the problem is of course that the player gets expeditions and quests that the AI doesn't, and there's a fair amount of affinity there. What to do about this?

I wouldn't change the quest rewards - they're fun and they actually reward choices that have something to do with the relevant affinity.

Expeditions - The released version of this mod gives the AI one or two extra explorer modules (on soyuz and apollo respectively), and it might be wishful thinking, but my feeling is that this has made the AI a bit better at grabbing their local sites?
Reducing affinity gain from the randomly-chosen affinity rewards is one approach (e.g. from 12-14 to 6-8). Unfortunately, the game really doesn't seem to like loading changes to the quest system so it might take a bit of mucking around to get there.
Should the 'free-affinity-of-your-choice' ones be changed? My gut says no, although their prevalence could perhaps be reduced.

5) Espionage. The general feeling with this seems to be that it's a bit too slow and useless to really be worth bothering with, unless you really go hard down an espionage path (particularly as ARC), at which point it is crazy overpowered. It's also not much fun. You sit your spies in a random city and forget about them until they give you some yield or they don't and then you start again.
I'd like it to be a worthwhile investment and still feel really strong, but without the somewhat over-the-top effects currently gained by stacking espionage bonuses. I'd like it to be worth building the spy agency even for those who don't go heavily down that route. And I'd like it to be worth investing in those anti-espionage buildings/policies.

How to go about this one? It's a bit tricky. Most of the over-power problem seems to be with stacking time-reduction bonuses. A fair bit of the under-power problem seems to be that doing anything without those bonuses just takes so damn long.

  • Reduce the mission times but cut down the bonuses to mission speed. Instead give more bonuses to other aspects of espionage - in particular risk and intrigue generation. Unfortunately success chance seems to be a little hard to increase.
  • Reduce the power of science theft vs the other operations, perhaps?
  • Reduce travel time from 5 turns to 3? Allows more of a shift of focus without feeling TOO penalised. Further reductions could be added by policy.
  • Increase intrigue generation. It seems to be almost impossible to raise intrigue levels much at the moment. I'm inclined to bump this by 50%. I'm also semi-inclined to add a new mission like 'develop sleeper cells' that does nothing except raise intrigue (at a considerably higher rate than the other missions).
  • Improve the national security projects. I can get a 3% bonus to city strength if I leave all my spies at home? Be still my beating heart! I'm honestly thinking of a massive boost more along the lines of 5% for each spy (except the health one). Stacking 4 spies at the headquarters to get a 20% increase in success chance for the 5th one is still gonna be veeery situational, but could be worthwhile when you really need that one mission to pay off.
  • Perhaps give the AI players an additional spy at game start on soyuz/apollo? Make things a little more interesting?
  • Harmony gets screwed over a bit in the spy game, should one spy be added (or moved) to a Harmony building quest reward? I feel like it's not worth changing, but I'm open to opinions.

Anyway, any thoughts are welcome.
 
So I'm not sure this would be something you want done in this mod, but I have an idea so I may as well see it. From my perspective, victories are the biggest flaw in the vanilla game and desperately need an overhaul. I know people have changed it so they happen later, but I don't think that's enough. I propose making them more questlike with more goals that each fit the affinity ideals. For example, I'll give you my idea for the supremacy questline.

Step 1) make 3 expeditions to gather information about this new world
Step 2) launch 3 military satellites to show your dominance of the skies
Step 3) have a standing army of 15 units to show your military strength
Step 4) make 3 firaxite mines to harvest this powerful resource
Step 5) amass 10000 energy (because supremacy likes energy)
Step 6) make 5 nodes (supremacy tile improvement)
Step 7) conquer 3 cities to show your supremacy over other civilizations
Step 8) launch lasercom satellite (you've shown your supremacy on this planet, now to show it to earth)
Step 9) build 3 hypercores (since it's the supremacy super building)
Step 10) emancipation gate

Now each step once completed gives a bonus and unlocks the next step. You could even have a reward be a unique affinity national wonder, that could be interesting. This method of victory would make affinities much more immersive and victories game long things and have more role playing involved. Of course what I've said above may not be balanced, but I think something along here lines could be really cool. Of course, I'm not well versed in code so this could be really difficult for all I know, but I figured I'd suggest it to see what people say. Also, unlocking the next step could be connected to affinity levels, so it also encourages gaining affinity game long instead of in bursts.
 
W/ regards to affinity, methinks it might help if the trigger rate for the affinity quests was higher. There were around 8 or so in the basegame for each affinity, then add in the questline style stuff from rising tide... there are plenty of sources for affinity to make it fit in really nicely with how a civ plays instead of just research, but as it is, the rate of those quests firing is so low that you need the tech web, and the tech web is heavily front loaded.
 
Some excellent suggestions in this thread regarding the acquisition of affinity point, in particular the shift to incorporate more cultural/affinity based progression rather than the standard technology-led advancement. I think moving affinity quests to a higher baseline, as per GenEngineer's comment is also a good idea.

From my most current Soyuz game using Polycrates balance patch, I was able to garner a lot of affinity at the beginning of the game by prioritising Progenitor Ruins and bee-lining the Purity techs. I also concentrated on the Might virtue tree to make the most of Brasilia's unique war score ability. I was able to use my early military gains to establish a strong foothold before consolidating and eventually winning a domination victory. Although some AI sponsors were able to make significant affinity gains in the mid-to-late game, by that point momentum was on my side and my victory inevitable.

If a more balanced affinity progression was possible then I think Civ:BERT could become a rather competitive game.

As for alternate victory conditions, I also very much like the progressive system described by Starrynite120. By incorporating affinity-specific improvements, buildings and units, the cohesiveness of the society you are building would become more apparent. Also, from a pure role-playing point of view, it would really enhance the whole "future-progression of mankind" vibe at the heart of Beyond Earth.

Good effort, people!
 
Hi.
There is a little bug in your mod or it's WAD.

The Leaf Tech Mechatronics has wrong affinity number (21 rather than 7) for Supremacy.


Spoiler :

File TechAffinities.xml

<Update>
<Set AffinityValue="7"/>
<Where TechType="TECH_MECHATRONICS" AffinityType="AFFINITY_TYPE_PURITY"/>
</Update>

<Update>
<Set AffinityValue="21"/>
<Where TechType="TECH_MECHATRONICS" AffinityType="AFFINITY_TYPE_SUPREMACY"/>
</Update>
 
Is this mod still being worked on?

Yeah, I've just been busy getting married, and I'm not gonna have as much time to work on it in the future, so things might move a little more slowly(hence why I wanted to get the big job of all the buildings out of the way first). I also haven't had a whole lot of feedback regarding what works and what doesn't in current versions, so I'm flying a little blind. Big thanks to those who have given feedback, and anyone else who tried it, I'd love to hear what you think works and what doesn't!

PS, someone on the Steam workshop mentioned that they think this mod makes the AI go broke too much and makes it too easy. I haven't experienced this (and not sure what level this was on), has anyone else found the same?

Some excellent suggestions in this thread regarding the acquisition of affinity point, in particular the shift to incorporate more cultural/affinity based progression rather than the standard technology-led advancement. I think moving affinity quests to a higher baseline, as per GenEngineer's comment is also a good idea.

From my most current Soyuz game using Polycrates balance patch, I was able to garner a lot of affinity at the beginning of the game by prioritising Progenitor Ruins and bee-lining the Purity techs. I also concentrated on the Might virtue tree to make the most of Brasilia's unique war score ability. I was able to use my early military gains to establish a strong foothold before consolidating and eventually winning a domination victory. Although some AI sponsors were able to make significant affinity gains in the mid-to-late game, by that point momentum was on my side and my victory inevitable.

If a more balanced affinity progression was possible then I think Civ:BERT could become a rather competitive game.

Thanks for the thoughts! I've been really happy with my tests of moving a bunch of affinity from tech to virtues, and I think that does help with the general affinity flow. You're definitely right that there is a LOT of potential affinity available in progenitor ruins, and my feeling is that this can really skew things.

Hi.
There is a little bug in your mod or it's WAD.

The Leaf Tech Mechatronics has wrong affinity number (21 rather than 7) for Supremacy.

Thanks! There's also another one I screwed up (transgenics, I think), they've been corrected for the next version.

So I'm not sure this would be something you want done in this mod, but I have an idea so I may as well see it. From my perspective, victories are the biggest flaw in the vanilla game and desperately need an overhaul. I know people have changed it so they happen later, but I don't think that's enough. I propose making them more questlike with more goals that each fit the affinity ideals. For example, I'll give you my idea for the supremacy questline.

Step 1) make 3 expeditions to gather information about this new world
Step 2) launch 3 military satellites to show your dominance of the skies
Step 3) have a standing army of 15 units to show your military strength
Step 4) make 3 firaxite mines to harvest this powerful resource
Step 5) amass 10000 energy (because supremacy likes energy)
Step 6) make 5 nodes (supremacy tile improvement)
Step 7) conquer 3 cities to show your supremacy over other civilizations
Step 8) launch lasercom satellite (you've shown your supremacy on this planet, now to show it to earth)
Step 9) build 3 hypercores (since it's the supremacy super building)
Step 10) emancipation gate

Now each step once completed gives a bonus and unlocks the next step. You could even have a reward be a unique affinity national wonder, that could be interesting. This method of victory would make affinities much more immersive and victories game long things and have more role playing involved. Of course what I've said above may not be balanced, but I think something along here lines could be really cool. Of course, I'm not well versed in code so this could be really difficult for all I know, but I figured I'd suggest it to see what people say. Also, unlocking the next step could be connected to affinity levels, so it also encourages gaining affinity game long instead of in bursts.

While I agree that the victories could do with a big shakeup, that sort of change is way beyond the scope of this mod, I'm afraid. I'm really keen not to deviate from vanilla too much, and I've already gone dangerously far. I've been looking at moving the victories a little later, at the moment by putting them on an affinity-free leaf tech under their current unlocking branch. I think my ideal solution would be to have the regular victory wonders on ring 4 techs that aren't linked to any precursors (to give more openness to the research paths), and which are unlocked for research at affinity 15 (or e.g. 10 of the main and 8 of another affinity to help out the hybrids). Didn't have much success there when I tried it before, but I might give it another shot. No idea what to do about Contact though, I've been mostly trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

W/ regards to affinity, methinks it might help if the trigger rate for the affinity quests was higher. There were around 8 or so in the basegame for each affinity, then add in the questline style stuff from rising tide... there are plenty of sources for affinity to make it fit in really nicely with how a civ plays instead of just research, but as it is, the rate of those quests firing is so low that you need the tech web, and the tech web is heavily front loaded.

Maybe...but currently my feeling is that affinity is already very frontloaded with the expeditions, so I'm not sure I would want to bring quests forward any more just yet? But that's definitely a dial I can experiment with tuning, to try to keep the affinity progression smooth.

Anyway thanks all, I'll try and put some more work into this and get something out soon!
 
Ya congratulations, now don't go modding civ during your honeymoon :p

I noticed your mod is on steam now? Where will you update it first, on steam of here?

Stuff I'm looking at right now, if anyone has any thoughts:

1) Biowells upped to 3 maintenance, with a +1 energy at Designer Lifeforms. They're such a strong improvement, and I think they could do with a little more downside, and a slightly better advantage for Harmony. Designer Lifeforms mainly because I feel sad for the poor Rocktopus.
I don't now if maintenance is the problem with biowells. Health is a problem on early game so sometimes i beeline biowells, but on late game there's always a virtue or something that, when it kicks in, solves my health problems forever.

Maybe each affinity should have it's alternative source of health? Biowells for harmony, buildings (like optical surgery or whatever) for supremacy, and terrascapes/culture(extra virtues) for purity, with, the hybrids getting health from the hybrid perks. Don't know, just brainstorming here :)

2) Culture. You get policies like crazy in the early game, but they come veeeery slowly later on, and their values diminishes significantly. I've flattened the cost curve slightly - at the moment I've set the base cost to 30 (was 20) and the exponent to 1.9 (was 2). The cost for the next policy intercepts at policy #5, the cumulative policy cost intercepts at policy #7, and the cumulative cost to get 20 policies is 7685 down from 10280 (assuming a single city).
In the late game, changing a few of my water cities to produce culture usually triples (or worse) my culture rate, and i get to fill in virtue trees like mad. The AI won't ever cheat like that off course, so it seems a change like this would make the situation even worse for me, apollo is already too easy... But i agree that "normally" the cost of virtues step up too much. I suggest you reduce the water cities bonus to culture at least, maybe halve it, +50% is too much.

3) Affinity. This is a bit of a bugbear of mine at the moment. It still just doesn't feel quite right in its current incarnation. The patch has also altered things a little, as it's very easy to get a bunch of affinity from the techs gained through spoils of war.

So what I'm trialling at the moment:
- Affinity from tech is slashed. Down to (branch/leaf) 2/8, 3/9, 4/12, 5/15, and 6/18 for each of the tiers. This reduces affinity available from tech by approx 1/4 (798 from original 1134). It also further flattens the ratio of affinity per beaker between tier 1 and 5 techs from 16.5 (original) or 8.2 (released version) to 6.9. So the affinity from tech is skewed substantially more towards the outer ring techs, and there is not a huge amount in the earlier techs. In total, there is enough affinity in the tech web to just scrape to level 15.

HOWEVER, each of the virtue tree kickers (i.e. for 5/10/15 policies in a single tree) now give an affinity level (of your choice). I really do think the cultural approach needs substantially greater rewards in the mid-late game, and this additionally helps reduce the tech-is-everything focus of the current game. Between the two, it may also promote teching towards techs that are useful for the empire rather than just racing to the finish line.

This is also compatible with other virtue tree mods (e.g. New Horizons), as it just adds the affinity levels to the kickers regardless.

Is this a step too far? My feeling is the power of tech and the power of culture both need balancing, and this is a way to do both without really introducing new systems. And there is already a little bit of affinity in the virtue trees. This also gives another avenue where the AI can have an affinity advantage over the player (since they'll tend to get more policies than you on higher levels), reduces the ability to steal affinity (via espionage or spoils of war), and helps out those who have fewer cities (by choice or misfortune) to be a little more relevant. And it indirectly buffs the culture side of the knowledge tree.
Yes, i like this idea, great changes. But maybe 1 extra level at each tall virtue synergy is too much, i don't know. Can't you make it give xp? Or 1 level at 10 and 15 virtues (tall), and maybe 1 extra level at the level 2 "wide".

The more i think about it, the more i want to see affinities gone from the tech tree. If there was a mod that removed all affinity bonuses from the techs, and granted everyone a free level up periodically (and assuming hybrid upgrades are balanced with mono affinities), i'd test the hell out of it. Civs more of less all upgraded their units at the same time in civ V, while in BE im always the runaway in affinity levels, so if the pressure of beelining xp in the tech tree was gone, i'd research the cool stuff instead, and the AI wouldn't be left behind me in upgrades (since im convinced the AI researches randomly anyway).

But in the interest of finding new sources of affinity xp, maybe diplomatic capital could be a part as well, like, what if everyone gets a free level up from reaching their sponsor lvl 3 trait. Or a spy mission that steals xp? Or maybe one of those HQ projects (each spy increases affinity acquisition by 5% or something). National wonders (there's a mod that adds some of them) could provide xp as well, so affinities from production, i dunno...

The AI is bad at getting affinities from expeditions, and i think they don't get quests? So reducing xp from tech could be bad for them, i dunno... Does changing xp around the tech tree changes the AI research priorities?

4) Affinity continued. Part of the problem is of course that the player gets expeditions and quests that the AI doesn't, and there's a fair amount of affinity there. What to do about this?

I wouldn't change the quest rewards - they're fun and they actually reward choices that have something to do with the relevant affinity.

Expeditions - The released version of this mod gives the AI one or two extra explorer modules (on soyuz and apollo respectively), and it might be wishful thinking, but my feeling is that this has made the AI a bit better at grabbing their local sites?
Reducing affinity gain from the randomly-chosen affinity rewards is one approach (e.g. from 12-14 to 6-8). Unfortunately, the game really doesn't seem to like loading changes to the quest system so it might take a bit of mucking around to get there.
Should the 'free-affinity-of-your-choice' ones be changed? My gut says no, although their prevalence could perhaps be reduced.
There's a mod that does this very well, reduces xp. I'd like to see the "free level up" gone, tbh, or made unique (can only be given once).

5) Espionage. The general feeling with this seems to be that it's a bit too slow and useless to really be worth bothering with, unless you really go hard down an espionage path (particularly as ARC), at which point it is crazy overpowered. It's also not much fun. You sit your spies in a random city and forget about them until they give you some yield or they don't and then you start again.
I'd like it to be a worthwhile investment and still feel really strong, but without the somewhat over-the-top effects currently gained by stacking espionage bonuses. I'd like it to be worth building the spy agency even for those who don't go heavily down that route. And I'd like it to be worth investing in those anti-espionage buildings/policies.

How to go about this one? It's a bit tricky. Most of the over-power problem seems to be with stacking time-reduction bonuses. A fair bit of the under-power problem seems to be that doing anything without those bonuses just takes so damn long.

  • Reduce the mission times but cut down the bonuses to mission speed. Instead give more bonuses to other aspects of espionage - in particular risk and intrigue generation. Unfortunately success chance seems to be a little hard to increase.
  • Reduce the power of science theft vs the other operations, perhaps?
  • Reduce travel time from 5 turns to 3? Allows more of a shift of focus without feeling TOO penalised. Further reductions could be added by policy.
  • Increase intrigue generation. It seems to be almost impossible to raise intrigue levels much at the moment. I'm inclined to bump this by 50%. I'm also semi-inclined to add a new mission like 'develop sleeper cells' that does nothing except raise intrigue (at a considerably higher rate than the other missions).
  • Improve the national security projects. I can get a 3% bonus to city strength if I leave all my spies at home? Be still my beating heart! I'm honestly thinking of a massive boost more along the lines of 5% for each spy (except the health one). Stacking 4 spies at the headquarters to get a 20% increase in success chance for the 5th one is still gonna be veeery situational, but could be worthwhile when you really need that one mission to pay off.
  • Perhaps give the AI players an additional spy at game start on soyuz/apollo? Make things a little more interesting?
  • Harmony gets screwed over a bit in the spy game, should one spy be added (or moved) to a Harmony building quest reward? I feel like it's not worth changing, but I'm open to opinions.

Anyway, any thoughts are welcome.
I like some of those ideas. I think the steal science should give beakers based on time (like current game turn x2), instead a % of the currently-being-researched tech (thats dumb).
i feel like they're, slightly OP, since i feel like the AI doesn't know how to use them. When i see intrigue in one of my cities, i move a spy there and soon, i kill someone. But the AI never moves a spy to clear intrigue from his cities, so i end up hiring my entire army from defectors. Or cruising thought the tech tree with 7 spies stealing science.

And yeah, the national security projects bonuses HAVE to be increased, seriously. 1% wonder construction and stuff lol what is that. Those projects have the potential to be interesting, if they are made decent. Black markets are cool, i use then when low on resources, a project that increase the effectiveness of black markets could work as well (like double resources gain or something).

Affinities could get some perks for spies. Harmony already get a ton of extra spies from quests, harmony could get faster spies, purity tougher (hard to kill, get a bonus chance to kill when on counterspy mission etc), so each affinity does the spy game a little differently.

The spy game in civ V and BE is way more streamlined and less micro intensive, but i liked the system of civ IV.
 
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