Tools against Too Much Gold

[philipschall]

Here's a quick and dirty fix to the "Too much Gold" issue. This might be a bit of an over-correction, the bonuses have to be improved to incentivize choosing later civics, and it might cripple the A.I (wow, that's new :/), but it works like this:

Early on, there's a massive malus to gold collection, but next to no increase in city maintenance costs. As the game goes on, the gold collection malus eventually goes away, and gets replaced by city maintenance increases. Since the gold collection malus is only tied to one civic (currencies), you can stay in kinda regressive policies for a lot of the game. However, when the modern era hits, you start getting unhappiness penalties for not being egalitarian, democratic, socialized medicine, and green (which are all very expensive). It's a carrot or stick approach to modernization that not every civ will be able to swallow. If you're a massive continent spanning military empire and a few small states go full democracy, you're in for a world of hurt one way or another.

These civic changes make expansion a very calculated choice for most of the entire game. It kinda does away with any need for city limits as well!

You don't need to start a new game to try them on for size

 

[raxo2222]

Here's a quick and dirty fix to the "Too much Gold" issue. This might be a bit of an over-correction, the bonuses have to be improved to incentivize choosing later civics, and it might cripple the A.I (wow, that's new :/), but it works like this:

Early on, there's a massive malus to gold collection, but next to no increase in city maintenance costs. As the game goes on, the gold collection malus eventually goes away, and gets replaced by city maintenance increases. Since the gold collection malus is only tied to one civic (currencies), you can stay in kinda regressive policies for a lot of the game. However, when the modern era hits, you start getting unhappiness penalties for not being egalitarian, democratic, socialized medicine, and green (which are all very expensive). It's a carrot or stick approach to modernization that not every civ will be able to swallow. If you're a massive continent spanning military empire and a few small states go full democracy, you're in for a world of hurt one way or another.

These civic changes make expansion a very calculated choice for most of the entire game. It kinda does away with any need for city limits as well!

You don't need to start a new game to try them on for size

Not compatible with latest SVN, and there were some changes to it since V40.1 to here.
Also most of Information and later era civics should be counted as "good" civics.

 

[philipschall]

Not compatible with latest SVN, and there were some changes to it since V40.1 to here.
Also most of Information and later era civics should be counted as "good" civics.

Ok, will update

 

[philipschall]

Ok, This one is tidied up a bit more. There's obviously still some more room for balancing in the following ways:

-It might be too hard and cripple the A.I ( I loaded it up on a previous early industrial era save and cut a fair deal into my civ's wallet who had 43 cities most of which were fully built out)
-The carrots might not be big enough to warrant the increased expenditures, but I'm not sure how much bigger I could make the bonuses without breaking balance the other way to favoring tall play.
-I'm not sure you can have more than 1 " for civs without with civic" per category. I set those to be late industrial era/turn of the century civics partially to make it like it was in base Civ4, and partially because I don't know if many people play past late industrial and this mod isn't really fleshed out to the same extent past the mid-medieval era.

However, I think these changes favor a gradual, slow, concerted expansion style, with some leeway between a more militaristic playstyle that's a bit wider and a more cultural/scientific style that's taller.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I will be intrigued to hear @JosEPh_II 's take on this if he investigates the setup. I'm not of an opinion on it myself... just interested to hear from someone else who knows civics so intimately.

 

[philipschall]

Well, after running an AI test game it looks like it was kinda ineffective? The gold flood isn't as huge as it was, but it's still there...

Apparently, the carrots need to be much bigger, with maybe sticks inherent to the earlier civs to make them unfeasible to keep long term. Civics are a key part of addressing this, but I'm not sure it can be done solely with civics.

For instance, there's currently a massive glut in happiness sources that makes the unhappiness penalties from not choosing a civic pretty small by comparison.
The sheer magnitude of buildings that provide gold still outweighs massive maintenance costs.

However, I know this is an anti-player-agency thing, but bringing back inflation might be a lifesaver.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I will be intrigued to hear @JosEPh_II 's take on this if he investigates the setup. I'm not of an opinion on it myself... just interested to hear from someone else who knows civics so intimately.

I'll take a look at this in the coming days. Just D/L'd the last version. I will probably be more interested in what was done to the Med thru Atomic Era Civics. Early civics probably less so. We shall see.

Also I keep saying this but I don't think anyone is paying much attention. If you play on long GS or Use a Lot of the Set up Options it does make gold easier.

Also how much change is going to come to Mil units after your review is over? How much are upgrade costs going to change? All these will play a substantial role in how much Gold you will need in your Treasury.

 

[raxo2222]

Ok, This one is tidied up a bit more. There's obviously still some more room for balancing in the following ways:

Still it isn't updated to latest SVN - there are building/unitclass references, and building/unitclass was removed, there was comment cleanup too.
Also there are old civic tag names.
Most likely it doesn't include all changes since V40.1

So you can't simply replace civic infos in latest SVN.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Still it isn't updated to latest SVN - there are buildingclass references, and buildingclass was removed, there was comment cleanup too.
Also there are old civic names.

If you are not set up for Git then the files will never be fully updated even using the latest SVN.

I myself have not run a Git set up game for sometime. I update GitHub every day though to keep up with the changes. Then I wait to see when the next SVN comes out. When the SVN is updated I update my games accordingly.

 

[raxo2222]

If you are not set up for Git then the files will never be fully updated even using the latest SVN.

I know

I don't think that he uses Github.
Problem is that this civic info file is from V40.1 or at least from before savebreaking SVN.

 

[philipschall]

Dag Gummit, ok, I'll get the latest SVN/Github, I misread your comment and just downloaded 40.1

 

[raxo2222]

Dag Gummit, ok, I'll get the latest SVN/Github, I misread your comment and just downloaded 40.1

Here is guide to setting up SVN https://github.com/caveman2cosmos/Caveman2Cosmos/wiki/Using-SVN

 

[VCrakeV]

Piggy backing on Joseph, is any using the option that adds expansion limits to civics (+ x unhappiness per city settled beyond y cities)? I find this makes it so that sometimes you have to stop expanding before maintenance costs stop you. If you don't have this option on, you can expand more, to get more gold-producing resources and buildings. That is just one of many factors.

Think you could go up a difficulty level? My current game is on Monarch, though I started this mod on Prince, and I feel I can try Immortal next game. This, of course, will reduce gold glut.

I've also found gold glut really ramps up with guilds, so maybe they should be nerfed, or entirely reworked. I know on an older svn (still 40.1), I went from ~0 gold per turn (it fluctuated a lot) during the beginning of the Medieval era, to over 2000 per turn after building some guilds and what not. Guilds provide a lot of gold, 5 to each appropriate building (e.g 5 gold to each fishmonger for fishmonger's guild). That's easily 50 to 100 gold before *all* of those +x% gold bonuses from every building in the cities with fishmongers.

Still, I feel expansion should be exponentially more expensive. If you have to build many more cities than anyone else to eliminate the gold glut, you're not really fixing anything; you're just replacing too much gold with too many cities. Like, could their be something like "-x gold per city settled beyond y cities"? Perhaps increase costs for overseas and distance from palace for renaissance era and later, when colonies arrive on the scene.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Still, I feel expansion should be exponentially more expensive. If you have to build many more cities than anyone else to eliminate the gold glut, you're not really fixing anything; you're just replacing too much gold with too many cities. Like, could their be something like "-x gold per city settled beyond y cities"? Perhaps increase costs for overseas and distance from palace for renaissance era and later, when colonies arrive on the scene.

I don't play with the Combat or SM options during my Civic test games. With the Barbs seeming to always start near me, from when Barbs enter the game in Preh Era until almost thru the Ancient Era, expansion by surrounding the barb cities with my cities is my only Good defense to kill the barb cities. Culturally start nibbling tiles away from them. Plus making raids into their territory to pillage tiles and try to capture gatherer/workers. Then build a huge army to finally take a city that has as many as 60+ defenders inside. Not to mention the smaller 4-10 unit stacks milling about their territory as well.

But the effect of being forced to do this is that I end up with 3-4 of my largest cities on meager and then lesser Gold to keep from going bankrupt. My Research slider will go as low as 5% . So atm I don't agree with your suggestion. I am just now in sight of entering Classical Era ( next 10-15 techs). Maybe once I get my younger cities up to strength. And my economy Off a War driven one, I might see it your way. But not at this stage of my test game I do not. And this is on a Monarch Diff and Normal GS setting on Large C2C_World map, start everywhere ( don't do old world starts anymore either), low sea settings, no extra resources but plus 3 on rivers.

 

[VCrakeV]

I don't play with the Combat or SM options during my Civic test games. With the Barbs seeming to always start near me, from when Barbs enter the game in Preh Era until almost thru the Ancient Era, expansion by surrounding the barb cities with my cities is my only Good defense to kill the barb cities. Culturally start nibbling tiles away from them. Plus making raids into their territory to pillage tiles and try to capture gatherer/workers. Then build a huge army to finally take a city that has as many as 60+ defenders inside. Not to mention the smaller 4-10 unit stacks milling about their territory as well.

But the effect of being forced to do this is that I end up with 3-4 of my largest cities on meager and then lesser Gold to keep from going bankrupt. My Research slider will go as low as 5% . So atm I don't agree with your suggestion. I am just now in sight of entering Classical Era ( next 10-15 techs). Maybe once I get my younger cities up to strength. And my economy Off a War driven one, I might see it your way. But not at this stage of my test game I do not. And this is on a Monarch Diff and Normal GS setting on Large C2C_World map, start everywhere ( don't do old world starts anymore either), low sea settings, no extra resources but plus 3 on rivers.

That seems like way too many Barbarians (and presumably, you have a large number of units too, to defend yourself). Do you have raging barbarians on, or a similar setting? What svn is this save from? If you have to put most of your 4 ancient cities on wealth production, you probably have too many units or other maintenance costs. I haven't had much of an issue with gold in my current game (though admittedly, we have some different settings), and I'm at about the same spot on the tech tree as you (on Emperor). Unless you have raging barbs on, I don't see why you should need so many units. Barbs merge units too, IIRC, so size matters doesn't give you an advantage over the barbs.

Perhaps, however we may decide to address gold glut, it ought to be an option? Like upscaled research/building times. That way, if you find gold glut to be a problem, but higher difficulties are too hard in other respects (or even higher difficulties can't get rid of the gold glut), you can turn the setting on. Otherwise, don't.

 

[margolloxx]

VCrakeV here is an advise for your next game: On game creation set your difficulty to immortal + no player handicap and in game on turn 0 before you even do anything go to BUG options and up the difficulty to deity or if you feel bold go straight to nightmare although nightmare scares me myself.

Edit: I just realized that deity ai doesnt get 2 starting cities anymore. So you may as well straight start on deity.

Tell us when you reach "too much gold" problems there. Also no save scumming and the likes.

I understand that players may be scared to lose and i was there too at some point but c2c games really get interesting when faced with seemingly overwhelming opponents especially when you realize that not all is necessarily lost just because you lose a couple fights or even cities on one front.

I imagine it to be very difficult to balance things out with so many options changing the gameplay in drastic ways already and i think (as an outsider/non modder) that asking for even more options at this point is not going to help majorly.

 

[Esfera]

I'm going to bump this thread since @irishhombre got a gold overflown in the late eras.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...n-after-oct-2019.650924/page-61#post-15742881
This time the overflow isn't caused by the absolute amount of gold one hoards but by the income of gold that player has.

As @Thunderbrd points out the overflown may be caused by an individual city, here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...n-after-oct-2019.650924/page-61#post-15742968

In that thread has started an interesting discussion about whatever the developers should limit the amount of gold you can get from buildings having access to resources (i.e. +1% to bakery if the city in question has access to apples) as they can get out of control.

 

[philipschall]

Ok, here's the updated civics alteration I made. It's pretty straightforward. In the beginning, there's a negative modifier to gold collection tied to currency type. It starts at 90% and decreases as the game goes on, reaching 0 at fiat currency. However, maintenance penalties start off rather light, and get heavier as the game goes on. THIS IS ONLY DONE THROUGH THE MODERN ERA, NO FUTURE TECHS HAVE BEEN TOUCHED. This file is for testing only as a result, but in the couple games I've played it works pretty well. There's a heavy financial restriction to expansion early on through at least classical, making the mechanic of " from city limits" pretty redundant.

However, there's still the issue of AI. You can't use this with negative traits because some leaders have -10% which cripples the AI. Also, there's not enough carrot to entice the AI, and in some cases the player, to pick the later civics and swallow the maintenance costs.

The other thing I'd suggest outside of this is bringing back inflation. I know it's kinda anti-fun, but it's easier IMO than going through and stripping all the buildings of their +1% bonuses.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I'm going to bump this thread since @irishhombre got a gold overflown in the late eras.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...n-after-oct-2019.650924/page-61#post-15742881
This time the overflow isn't caused by the absolute amount of gold one hoards but by the income of gold that player has.

As @Thunderbrd points out the overflown may be caused by an individual city, here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...n-after-oct-2019.650924/page-61#post-15742968

In that thread has started an interesting discussion about whatever the developers should limit the amount of gold you can get from buildings having access to resources (i.e. +1% to bakery if the city in question has access to apples) as they can get out of control.

Actually irishhombre's game does not have a overflow problem. It has a management problem that occurs late game when there is no viable opposition from or by the remaining AI.

That seems like way too many Barbarians (and presumably, you have a large number of units too, to defend yourself). Do you have raging barbarians on, or a similar setting? What svn is this save from? If you have to put most of your 4 ancient cities on wealth production, you probably have too many units or other maintenance costs. I haven't had much of an issue with gold in my current game (though admittedly, we have some different settings), and I'm at about the same spot on the tech tree as you (on Emperor). Unless you have raging barbs on, I don't see why you should need so many units. Barbs merge units too, IIRC, so size matters doesn't give you an advantage over the barbs.

1. No I don't have any advance Barb Options On.
2. My save is constantly updated with each new SVN.
3. Yes I have too many units But I Must have this many to defend my cities from the barb stacks attack And to build my own stacks to attack the barb cities. I lost my 2nd city 3 times before I could hold it and rebuild it. I had it turns out 2 barb cities within 10 -13 tiles from my Capital original city that was 2 pop larger than my capital as well.
4. I don't use SM because these are Civic test games I play. I don't need but basic C2C play Options. So no SM, No Custom Traits, No Combat Mod Options either. I do allow Barbs, I do allow the NPC to fight each other. I generally use a Large C2C_World map with low seas and +3 rivers. But No extra resources. default AI setting minus 1 or 2, so the number of players is 8 or 9 including me plus NPC.

This game I happened to be on a mid sized continent with 3 other AI and the barbs placed the majority of their cities next to me and inbetween my closet AI neighbor. That neighbor also lost 2 cities that I know of to the Barbs. Barbs razed them both then built a barb city just south of one of them. But the 2 Barb Cities next to me were the 1st barb cities built in the game. And being only a Monarch Difficulty game the barbs could keep pace with the AI. While I eventually, thru Culture expansion by city bulding to stop the Barb cities from growing and to shrink their territory thru culture, was able to outpace the AI. For a Monarch game the late Preh and Ancient Eras were quite entertaining and supplied game tension to add to it's fun.

When I get back into the game I will copy my Victory settings that show all Options I use and post it here.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Ok, here's the updated civics alteration I made. It's pretty straightforward. In the beginning, there's a negative modifier to gold collection tied to currency type. It starts at 90% and decreases as the game goes on, reaching 0 at fiat currency. However, maintenance penalties start off rather light, and get heavier as the game goes on. THIS IS ONLY DONE THROUGH THE MODERN ERA, NO FUTURE TECHS HAVE BEEN TOUCHED. This file is for testing only as a result, but in the couple games I've played it works pretty well. There's a heavy financial restriction to expansion early on through at least classical, making the mechanic of " from city limits" pretty redundant.

However, there's still the issue of AI. You can't use this with negative traits because some leaders have -10% which cripples the AI. Also, there's not enough carrot to entice the AI, and in some cases the player, to pick the later civics and swallow the maintenance costs.

The other thing I'd suggest outside of this is bringing back inflation. I know it's kinda anti-fun, but it's easier IMO than going through and stripping all the buildings of their +1% bonuses.

Suggestion, make this file a Modmod for the game and place it in the Modmod section. There it will get more attention than this thread will.

Personal note:

However, there's still the issue of AI. You can't use this with negative traits because some leaders have -10% which cripples the AI. Also, there's not enough carrot to entice the AI, and in some cases the player, to pick the later civics and swallow the maintenance costs

This is why for over the past year and a half the Civics have not adopted these methods. If the AI is stunted by a Civic option change, no matter if the Player can overcome it, it will not be used by me in my continuing work on Civic balance.

But you, as a player, are free to make a modmod of the Civics and put them up for usage for any that wish to use them. Hence my suggestion of placing this file in the Modmod section as another Modmod to Civics.