v3.0.3 Discussion

[albie_123]

There was no thread for discussion on the new patch, so here it is.

I'm finding early game gold to now be a non-issue... it's a difficult balance between annoyingly difficult and annoyingly trivial but I believe BNW Vanilla may have been slightly closer to the mark. Early-game costs are also pretty low, especially without the extra things to build from GEM straight away (shrine, palace). The AI especially is finding it very easy to buy things, most AI I had met had a trade route by turn 30. They also have huge gold reserves, at 600 or so before turn 50!

There are several issues with the Communitas map, namely oases taking up half of the desert tiles on the map and strange, lone jungles in plains and desert. (In one of my maps there was also way, way too much jungle in general but the next map didn't have this problem.)

Without the promotion that restores health - a good thing to remove - it's vital that all promotions heal a little bit.

There's also a bug regarding a belief that others have already pointed out in the bug reports forum.

Other than that, seems to be a fair bit better already!

 

[mystikx21]

Probably a number of beliefs are going to be bugged from the look of it. Best to report them now and get it in line for later. Fixing the map script also.

Shrine is still in I assume you mean mentors hall?

Coastline seeding though was pretty good. More common fish and isles at least.

 

[albie_123]

I believe shrine was available from turn 0 in GEM? I totally forgot about the mentor's hall though, which I loved. Made sense as well, the library comes a bit late and free science is pretty intense.

Does anyone know what sort of bonuses the AI gets in higher levels in Brave New World?

 

[Puer]

Early CEP makes BNW already better! Can't wait until "trade opportunities" mod is implemented

 

[Ahriman]

Without the promotion that restores health - a good thing to remove - it's vital that all promotions heal a little bit.

I would prefer leaving in the restore health promotion, which makes you expend a pick, to having restoring health from regular promotions.
Note that there is no health restoration from regular promotions in vanilla BNW.

the mentor's hall though, which I loved.

No no no no no
I really hope we don't put that back in. We don't need a pre-library science bonus (we get that through population growth), and it just feels so artificial, the worst building name in the game.

 

[albie_123]

I would prefer leaving in the restore health promotion, which makes you expend a pick, to having restoring health from regular promotions.
Note that there is no health restoration from regular promotions in vanilla BNW.

The restore health promotion is terrible for the reason that it benefits losing when being attacked in a way that other promotions simply do not. There are many cases where I will not attack an enemy unit for fear that they will suddenly get 50HP back from the XP. Even worse, you get experience from being attacked by ranged units, so if you are pursuing an enemy with a ranged unit, they often just restore their health by the time they get to low health. That isn't fun, that isn't strategic, and it certainly doesn't make any sense.

On the other hand, every promotion healing a little means that a promotion ISN'T and CAN'T BE a sudden "bad luck, I win the current battle even though I'm losing" button, but it does help survivability of an experienced unit if the battle is over. If the battle is NOT over, however, and the promotion does not affect the battle, it will probably not even buy another turn of combat.

It also benefits the human FAR more than the AI, as the AI will often pick the health restore even if the damaged unit is in no danger, missing out the chance to get a promotion that will aid it later.

Really, I think removing the restore health promotion is one of the most obvious AND easiest fixes to AI combat (literally taking seconds to implement), and it would take a lot to convince me otherwise.

I really hope we don't put that back in. We don't need a pre-library science bonus (we get that through population growth), and it just feels so artificial, the worst building name in the game.

While I agree with the building name, the whole point of the building was to separate science production from pop growth. There was a big discussion on this a while ago and I don't think enough has changed to render that discussion moot.

 

[Stalker0]

The restore health promotion...

While I agree with the building name, the whole point of the building was to separate science production from pop growth. There was a big discussion on this a while ago and I don't think enough has changed to render that discussion moot.

Albie i think you and i are on opposite sides of the coin for the restore health promotion, so i'll just table my thoughts on that for now.

For mentor's hall, while i agree the point is not moot i would also argue it was never settled in GEM. The mentor's hall was a contentious issue in GEM, many people never really liked the MH for a variety of reasons.

 

[albie_123]

I'd like to hear your opinions on the restore health promotion re: AI use because while in most discussions about this mod I can totally understand the other side and in many cases change my opinion because of reading other people's opinions, I have never seen a case made for this one and I've never seen anyone argue that the AI uses the promotion well.

And I wasn't aware mentor's hall was a contentious issue but there's no reason we can't discuss it some more - it's not something that can't wait.

 

[Stalker0]

I'd like to hear your opinions on the restore health promotion

Here are my thoughts:

1) The "it ain't broke don't fix it" argument. I am going to always use this one as long as our primary goal in this mod is mostly about improving the game, and not just remaking the game into a different experience.

So to me the burden of proof has to be on justifying the change from the base game.

2) The strategic element of the promotion. Your opinion has been that there is no strategic decision making in using the restore health promotion, where i see just the opposite.

I find early game promotions very boring. Open Terrain vs Rough Terrain....and frankly rough is usually better. Even the tier 2 promotions aren't that exciting, its really at tier 3 that things start to get interesting.

But i have found myself aching over using the health restore in early game battles.

It is absolutely true that sometimes its a non-decision. If I have no problems running, I will. If I have absolutely no chance to win, I'll heal. but there are many cases in between, and that is where the fun decision making for me comes in. Short Term benefits vs long term gain....a key component of civ.

Further i find the strategic decision gets more exciting later game with more veteran units. If i have a tier 4 unit that suddenly gets tier 5 promotions, I REALLY want those promotions. But if the unit is badly wounded and might die without healing....do a sacrifice a precious tier 4 unit to get that tier 5?

3) The "real world" reason for the instant heal. There is one real world scenario the healing can represent. We all know the classic war tale. A unit is beaten down, nearly finished off. The men rally, form up, and strike back at the enemy with a renewed vigor and defeat or severely wound their superior adversaries.

To me the insta heal represents this in many ways. Its lets a unit go from "so weak its useless" to "strong enough to do some damage or maybe even win". Its abstract, but what isn't in a civ game?

 

[albie_123]

Again, that doesn't change the fact that the AI - already useless at combat - will pick promotions seemingly at random, and the instaheal is by far the worst offender. It means that the AI wastes promotions no matter what. It will choose to instaheal a unit that is perfectly safe, and choose not to instaheal a level 4 swordsman when it's almost dead in enemy lines. The AI will also ALWAYS ignore the fact that if it keeps shooting my swordsman with a low-HP archer, it's getting me closer and closer to an instaheal.

I also think that those 'non-decision' moments effectively break combat in many situations. A level 1 unit can effectively perform better against a level 3 unit of the same type in almost every situation due to getting quicker instaheals. That's the problem: It rewards being BAD at combat: Sending in a lower level unit against a higher one, sitting in one spot and letting archers bombard you, etc.

Removing the instaheal and giving a small heal to every single promotion fixes all of these problems. It's not a case of 'it ain't broke' - it's broken beyond repair.

 

[mitsho]

1) Yeah, insta heal needs to go, see the arguments made by other persons
2) I do think there could be something more interesting than flat vs. rough for promotions, not sure what though. Something "sexy", like maybe merging flat+cover and rough+attack which is counter the logic. Meh, not sure there needs to be a change...
3) Re: the Mentor's Hall. I'd prefer not too overload the early game with buildings, because they get very tedious in the late game (or we have the exploration finisher provide free buildings...). I'd prefer to achieve the splitting with breaking the "food" (granary, plantations) tech line away from the science one. Or something like that...
4) I take back what I said about the "missionaries convert barbarians" reformation belief. Because you can take those so early, it's an incredibly strong and fun belief (provided it works with the map, but that's true for all beliefs). It even takes over barb ships!
5) Tile Buying costs are too low.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't care whether we have the restore health promotion or not. But I oppose putting back healing from promotions. *That* benefits the human much more than the AI. And in general I think the less lethal combat is, the weaker the AI will perform.

the whole point of the building was to separate science production from pop growth

But it never made sense to me that this was a desirable goal.

Re: the Mentor's Hall. I'd prefer not too overload the early game with buildings,

Right, there are a number of other early game buildings now too, like the caravanserai.

 

[albie_123]

But it never made sense to me that this was a desirable goal.

I'll be totally honest with you, I never really thought about it too much, just saw people who knew more about the game than I did at the time say it was desirable and went with it.

In the end however I found the large choice of buildings in early game really fun, it meant that every start was different and I could experiment with build orders. It gets boring having an almost identical build order for the first 100 turns of every game! But I suspect me playing on Epic has something to do with it as well, and it did make for a tedious late-game city founding.

Does anyone have any big objections to putting shrine at turn 0? I just like having a bit more variety with initial build / purchase orders, and to be honest there's no real need to keep shrine connected to pottery gameplay wise.

 

[rhammer640]

I just read patch notes and love most of the changes so would love to start playing with the mod but I'm not sure why a few were added so early.

City development starts faster, then slows down sooner (population growth, and culture/gold tile expansion).
Slightly increased construction speed in the early game (higher prod/gold income, lower costs), and reduced construction speed in late game (higher costs, lower income).

I think we should maybe take some more time with the default economy before making so many early economy changes...

I haven't played with it yet so maybe these are very minor and fine with people but they seem like fairly important changes due to snowballing effect of super early changes.

Any opinions on this?

 

[albie_123]

I can see where you're coming from, but those are changes that in general the community of Communitas has basically agreed upon in every previous iteration. I'm still playing a few games without the patch just to compare, regardless.

 

[rhammer640]

I can see where you're coming from, but those are changes that in general the community of Communitas has basically agreed upon in every previous iteration. I'm still playing a few games without the patch just to compare, regardless.

Yeah, and they might be fine still for BNW but with all the changes to economy things in the expansion figured we would need more time to see if they still were needed. I guess Ill have to play a few without the patch as well....those other changes are so alluring though, lol.

 

[Ahriman]

I think we should maybe take some more time with the default economy before making so many early economy changes...

Agreed. What worked in GEM is not the same as BNW; the gold economy has changed completely. GEM I think went too far in making gold just another way of producing stuff, rather than a resource that was flexible but inefficient. There are enough things to do in the early game with exploration, expansion, barb fighting, and trade route protection, we don't need to have lots of gold that lets us buy stuff, which would undermine the importance of early caravans.

 

[mystikx21]

I'd rather the shrine have a "mysticism" line separated from pottery than be a turn zero. Getting faith, science, and growth all on the same line with a couple of techs is pretty strong. We could attach an early wonder to the tech if it's otherwise too weak (Stonehenge is an obvious candidate). GEM had already the "training" tech that wouldn't be likely to return if we nix the vanguard line, so there's a slot there to add something ancient if we wish. Not a huge priority though.

Generally undecided on the mentors hall. I would not be excited or displeased with it if it came back, but I don't think it adds much to the game either that it is a must have feature. The vanguard line at least has some vital roles that need to be discussed if it were left out. This does not. It's easy to make the existing science buildings more percentage based or add raw science instead of per/pop if that was the goal rather than to add another science building early on.

So far I think there's probably two issues with the early game changes
1) Gold is a bit too efficient on buying, both tiles and buildings/units. I would want gold to be more efficient than in the vanilla game, and scale well to expensive things versus cheap, but it's really easy to get going by buying up everything early on. Push it up to 2.5x instead of 2x at least.
2) City production is probably too high to start (was it 5 before ever?). Modestly beefing up the water mill, barracks, stable, as early production sources (1-2 a piece, maybe more from the stable in some cases) and requiring a bit of investment to build things would be less of a departure.

Barbarian camp gold seems about right. It was way too high before at 100. 50 is better.

If the instant heal promo stays, at least park it somewhere off to the side in the UI. Albie's argument that it rewards being bad at combat is pretty strong though. I'd much prefer it to be abandoned as a broken promo.

 

[skobr]

I'm finding early game gold to now be a non-issue... it's a difficult balance between annoyingly difficult and annoyingly trivial but I believe BNW Vanilla may have been slightly closer to the mark. Early-game costs are also pretty low, especially without the extra things to build from GEM straight away (shrine, palace). The AI especially is finding it very easy to buy things, most AI I had met had a trade route by turn 30. They also have huge gold reserves, at 600 or so before turn 50!

Agreed, the gold bonus in combination with reduced prices for early buildings is just overkill. If anything, the costs of the buildings should be marginally raised from their base values to slow down early progression to the point where you have to make real decisions. I wouldn't mind having shrine available from turn 1 if only to eliminate immediately researching them first thing every single game and give the early game a little more flexibility.

I would also like to see the restore health promotion removed altogether, I've noticed that the AI seems to use it less skillfully than players and wastes it fighting barbarians are other ridiculous stuff. Anything to make the game more challenging without adding even more bonuses to the AI, plus it makes combat feel a lot more impactful when you can't insta-heal your way out of a crappy situation. Then again, I can always disable it myself if Thal chooses otherwise.

I oppose putting back healing from promotions. *That* benefits the human much more than the AI. And in general I think the less lethal combat is, the weaker the AI will perform.

Couldn't agree with you more.

 

[Thalassicus]

I consider Civ 4 levelup healing much better than Civ 5's style, and will use the Civ 4 style (leveling up a unit heals a little). This is also better for the AIs.

I'm not sure why a few [changes] were added so early.

I didn't add the changes early, but it's hard to know how to explain why.

I'll put it this way - I recommend completing several games of standard BNW before starting mods. I base everything in the project on extensive playtesting and experience.