VP Gold Build - The Master List

[Stalker0]

So we have been discussing that the end of the journey may be near. That we may soon come to find a final stable version of the mod, the mod that we advertise, the one that people build all of their modmods on. The immortalized work of so many here....the gold build.

That said, I have done enough project management to know that the last 5% of the work can take forever without a definite plan of attack. So in this thread, my goal is to outline the master list. Aka these are the things we want to certify are done and complete. This is the list that we say, once everything has a green checkbox, we have arrived at the Gold Build.

The key thing in this discussion.....is to remove items. Because its the very end, people are going to want those little "features", those things that now there is a chance they can never ask for them again...they will want to throw in.

We have to resist that, features are done. Its time for final polish; time to put a bow on this baby. So I am going to put a lot of items on this list, and I hope to steadily remove some of them as we tighten down what we actually need.

Last note, this is not the place to actually discuss the balance of any of these items. This thread is purely to decide what the master list should be. From there, other threads can be made to discuss balance in any area that requires it.

Core Balance Items

Spoiler :

• Pantheons - Poll 1 Complete. 9 Y / 6 N. Recommendation: G already made a few adjustments based on feedback, Plan for Poll 2 in a few weeks.
• Founder Beliefs- Poll 1 Complete. 6 Y / 6 N. Recommendation: G already made some adjustments. Plan for Poll 2 in a few weeks.
• Follower Beliefs (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 4 Y / 2 N. Recommendation: Honestly there wasn't a lot of strong complaint here. I feel this is Ready for Gold.
• Enhancement Beliefs- Poll 1 Complete. 6 Y/6 N. Recommendation: Focus seems to be on adjusting the scaling caps on certain beliefs.
• Reformation Beliefs (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 5 Y / 2 N. Recommendation: Ready for Gold.
• Policies- Poll 1 Complete. 7 Y / 8 N. Recommendation: Tradition and Imperialism Policy still seem to need a little tweaking.
• Units- Poll 1 Complete. 14 Y / 5 N. Recommendation: G is already making some changes here, but note this is one of highest Y polls we have seen, so I don't recommend much. Will do Poll 2 in a few weeks.
• Buildings (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 4 Y / 0 N. Recommendation: Ready for Gold
• Wonders (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 14 Y / 1 N. Recommendation: Ready for Gold
• 
  
• Leaders - Poll 1 Complete. 16 Y / 1 N. G has asked that the final assessment on leaders be one of the last areas locked by the project. We will hold for another poll towards the end of this review.
• Ideologies - Poll 1 Complete. 5 Y / 5 N. There were concerns noted but no strong consensus here. Recommendation: I will do another poll to suss out a better response.
• Great People (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 8 Y/ 2 N. Recommendation: Ready for Gold
• Terrain / Improvements (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 6 Y / 2 N. There was very little debate on this one, could mean we take it as good but its something to consider. Recommendation: Ready for Gold
• Resource / Monopoly Bonuses - Poll 1 Complete. 10 Y / 10 N. Recommendation: Start a new poll in a few weeks after a few of the adjustments just made can sink in.
• 
  
• Specialists (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 11 Y / 4 N. Recommendation: Ready for Gold.
• City State Bonuses - Poll 1 Complete. 6 Y / 8 N. Recommendation: Looks like a more aggressive review is needed here, there look to be adjustments people want here.
• Pillage Bonuses - Poll 1 Complete. 6 Y / 8 N. Recommendation: People are already working on alternate formulas for this. Will review again in a few weeks.
• WC Resolutions (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 6 Y / 2 N. Recommendation: Ready for Gold.
• 
  
• Promotions - Poll 1
• Events (LOCKED) (noted for completeness, G has already said this won't be changed for Gold)
• Trade Route bonuses (LOCKED) - Poll 1 Complete. 15 Y/0 N. Recommendation: Ready for Release.
• Theming Bonuses - Poll 1 Complete. 9 Y / 5 N. Recommendation: Some proposals are still being discussed, recommend a second poll here.

Gameplay Style Balance

Spoiler :

• (New) Start Balance: Are majority of start conditions viable?
• Religion vs No Religion - Poll 1.
• Tall vs Wide
• Aggressive vs Peaceful
• Heavy Puppets vs Annexed
• Victory Conditions (VC, DV, etc)
• Map Size
• Map Types
• Game Speed
• Heavy WC use vs Little WC use
• Internal Trade Routes vs External TRs - Poll 1
• Multiplayer vs Singleplayer
• Planting GPTI vs Bulbing - Poll 1
• Different Tech Tree strategies - Poll 1
• Completing policy trees vs christmas treeing them

Subsystem Balance

Spoiler :

• War Weariness - Poll 1
• Unit Supply - Poll 1
• Happiness System
• CS Unit Costs (aka cost of acquiring CS influence vs rewards gained) - Removed, covered in previous CS Balance discussion.
• Religion Spread vs Religious Defense - Poll 1
• Espionage - Poll 1
• Handicap Bonuses

MISC

Spoiler :

• Tooltip Updates
• Civilopedia
• Performance Polishing
• (New) Create a list of settings for optimized balance.

AI
(Removed) G considers this one pretty much done at this point.

 

[ScooterDWiebels]

I have done enough project management to know that the last 5% of the work can take forever

never more true words spoken, while on this is it to soon to talk about version 2

 

[ScooterDWiebels]

• Multiplayer vs Singleplayer

Don't even touch this one, the Multiplayer environment is unstable even in vanila.

 

[Gazebo]

Thanks for organizing this @Stalker0. On my personal list (where it lines up with yours, goody):

• Look at any outlier Civs in terms of potency - Zulus, for example, took a hit lately, and may be due for another one. This is especially true for civs most heavily affected by war tactics, as we're very close to a final tacticalAI.
• Make sure religious founders are all of relative potency. Not equal, but...relative.
• Can all pantheons found on a semi-reliable basis if the stars align? If not, what's missing?
• Are we happy with how culture victories end? I'm keen to consider adding the Utopia Project in the Atomic Era somewhere. It's really the only victory type that continues to see complaint.
• How's start/turn-100 geographic balance? Are there tools to make most starts work?

G

 

[Moi Magnus]

Additionnal bullets:

• Micro-optimisation vs Automatisation.
  
• Low difficulty vs High difficulty.

Additional bullets that I qualify as "less important"

• Team play vs Normal play
• Latter era start vs Ancient era start (the most important is probably classical era start)
• More generally have a list somewhere of all the options the game is balanced around (research agreement, ...), and the options the game is not balanced around (teams, ...)

 

[Owlbebach]

@Stalker0 this is a good list. Though, one important thing is that there is always too much Freedom on forums lol, a bit more Autocracy is required.

I mean this thread will be flooded with lots of messages that are all on different topics, there will be dozen of people who talk with each other on different topics and it will soon become impossible to see where everythhing is going.

Someone should create a thread that will be moderated in a very authocratic manner (@Gazebo? But i'm afraid you are too democratic in heart;D).
1) He should set the topic for the discussion (i.e. now we are working on Founders)
2) He should mercilessly delete all messages that not on topic (even slightly).
3) Messages that do not have any useful info should also be deleted without mercy (e.g. "this is an awesome change, i like it!" should be removed)
4) After it has finished - this topic should be closed unless some major problem slips in.
5) And what is even more important - new fixes/versions should include changes in only one field, i.e. new version with Founder changes only --> founders are fixed --> new version with Followers changes --> Followers fixed --> new version with building fixes --> buildings fixed.
6) Go from big to small, no UA/UB changes before all buildings are fixed (unless there is a major, gamebreaking problem)

There was an attempt to do it (the "final tuning" threads) but they all were overloaded with useless stuff. Also such topic should be sticked above i think.

This is because every change influence all other topics, Founders depend on followers, followers depend on Pantheons, they all depend on buildings and policies, so in order to get to a stable state - you need to start somewhere, say that "this is good and never gonna be changed"

 

[Stalker0]

I'll start updating the main list here soonish, but just to get the discussion rolling again.

Map Size: Bottom line is this an area we need to consider for balance, or are we at the point that says "Standard size is standard, anything else is balanced enough"
Game Speed: Same thing
Advanced Starts: This is a topic that has had very little conversation. Is this even worth discussion?

AI: G would love your thoughts here. Are there any fundamental goals for AI that are still left to achieve to consider this gold? Or bottom line, if everything else is checked off the list....would we consider the AI done enough to stop work on it and print out a gold version?

 

[Gazebo]

I’d say that the AI is very near completion. I’m still tweaking building and unit production logic, and city citizen logic, but otherwise I don’t have any new features or major changes planned.

G

 

[Stalker0]

Ok lets try to get this list hammered out. One big question I have....are we going to spend any time on balance for game speeds or map size? Or at this point its balanced for standard, standard....and the other variations are "good enough"?

 

[ScooterDWiebels]

Ok lets try to get this list hammered out. One big question I have....are we going to spend any time on balance for game speeds or map size? Or at this point its balanced for standard, standard....and the other variations are "good enough"?

I found a good way to balance for map size is that larger maps need more starting civs then the default, can be fixed using really advance setup.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

I'll start updating the main list here soonish, but just to get the discussion rolling again.
Map Size: Bottom line is this an area we need to consider for balance, or are we at the point that says "Standard size is standard, anything else is balanced enough"
Game Speed: Same thing
Advanced Starts: This is a topic that has had very little conversation. Is this even worth discussion?

I wonder if we couldn't put together a community map script. Communitas is basically unchanged since Thalasicus made it, right?

...I wonder whatever happened to Thal. =/

 

[ryanmusante]

I wonder if we couldn't put together a community map script. Communitas is basically unchanged since Thalasicus made it, right?

...I wonder whatever happened to Thal. =/

I continue to jump around from tectonics to planet generator to communitas mainly out of a desire to find the one best situated for VP. Sometimes it seems like one or more of the scripts I try are not fully compatible (missing luxuries, generation hacks). I would appreciate a communitas-VP update or community script like you mentioned.

 

[ScooterDWiebels]

I continue to jump around from tectonics to planet generator to communitas mainly out of a desire to find the one best situated for VP. Sometimes it seems like one or more of the scripts I try are not fully compatible (missing luxuries, generation hacks). I would appreciate a communitas-VP update or community script like you mentioned.

I have yet to see a custom map that is balanced for VP most seem to have resource problems usually way too many.

 

[Stalker0]

Alright, I made a few adjustments to the list but haven't seen any strong debate. I figure in a few days I will start generating polls to look at these items individually, and start checking things off the list as Gold Complete

 

[Recursive]

• (New) Create a list of settings for optimized balance.

What do you mean by this? Is it similar to difficulty settings, or like the CBO Options file?

 

[Stalker0]

What do you mean by this? Is it similar to difficulty settings, or like the CBO Options file?

It was one of the suggestions brought up earlier in the thread. Basically, show the list of settings that the game is most balanced under.

Example: Standard Speed, Standard Size, Ancient Starts, No Events, etc

 

[Moi Magnus]

What do you mean by this? Is it similar to difficulty settings, or like the CBO Options file?

It was one of my suggestions. The idea is that along all the settup option, some of them are "balanced", and others are not.

Ex:
+ Quick/Standard/Epic are balanced, Marthon is not (yet) balanced.
+ No Events is balanced. All Events is balanced. "Good Events only" is not balanced (favor runaway)
+ Tech trading is balanced, and Research agreement too.
+ No ancient ruins is not balanced (Shoshones...)
+ Huge maps are not balanced with the default number of players. You have to significantly increase the number of players to obtain a balanced game.
+ 2-player games are not balanced at all
+ Random victories is balanced. But taking only a subset of the victories is usually not balanced.
...
=> It is difficult for a new player to know which settup is "balanced", and which options are just here because some peoples want them.

 

[ryanmusante]

+ Huge maps are not balanced with the default number of players. You have to significantly increase the number of players to obtain a balanced game.

Question related to this, is it still balanced using for example "large" map setting with 11 civs and 14 city states? Do non-default numbers cause unpredictable and undesirable effects?

 

[Moi Magnus]

Question related to this, is it still balanced using for example "large" map setting with 11 civs and 14 city states? Do non-default numbers cause unpredictable and undesirable effects?

In maps larger than standard, maps are underpopulated (with the exception of some maps types)

+ Underpopulation -> Favor progress, and makes tradition even worse. Some civs (like China) become almost OP. And you increase the chance of a runaway player (someone who somehow managed to settle twice as much cities as normal). There will most likely still have some lands to settle with pionner/colonist, so you also favor the tech leader (so even more runaway). In case of extreme underpopulation, some AI will overexpand and suffer from it.
+ Overpopulation -> Favor autority and tradition (if you have a defendable position). Civs with early UU become almost OP. Strangely enough, it also increase the chance of a runaway player (usually polynesia settling all the island). In case of extreme overpopulation, some AI will refuse to settle their second city even though they have a settler ready.

 

[ElliotS]

+ Random victories is balanced. But taking only a subset of the victories is usually not balanced.

Favors Domination (Always available.)

Quick/Standard/Epic are balanced

Is epic balanced now? I remember it being much easier for domination. Has XP change made it even enough?

All Events is balanced.

This also favors runaways imo.