[NFP] What Balance changes would you like to see in the coming year?

[Prester John 2]

I'd like to see improvements made to the loyalty mechanism. Right now loyalty pressure is only felt from other AI civ cities. I'd like to have loyalty drop from an overextended empire, and see major rebellions or even defections break out. As is now, I only armees on my front and can totally neglect my hinterland (well, apart from cities with neigbourhoods).

Secondly, barbs seems to disappear from my maps in the Renaissance. No new camps show up in my hinterland for ages. I want more of a challenge from barbs, maybe even large scale barb uprisings until the industrial era.

 

[Sostratus]

That feeling when almost everything I would say has already been mentioned in the thread.

yes, yes... the forum is slowly being subsumed to my way of thinking...

Reasonable things that have not been mentioned:
1. continue the balance pass on natural wonders. Cough cliffs of Dover
2. fix Helicopter units. Either they shouldn’t require aluminum Upkeep if they are so weak compared to aircraft; or they should be very strong to reflect the premium value of aluminum. Either direction is fine.
3. Earth map needs to be able to flood and have dams if this isn’t already a thing.
4. Nerf gran Colombia

Unreasonable: we need more naval units in the Middle Ages. Either scoot the caravel forward, or create a new melee unit. And add a galleass to bridge quads and frigates. Seriously, haven’t we learned our lesson on gaps after the whole scouts into rangers debacle?

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

So many good ideas in here, simple tweaks that would have a big impact on the depth of the game, I really hope FXS are watching!

I have nothing to add, for me the big one is moving GPP to specialists, as I've said elsewhere.

 

[Myomoto]

Basically I agree with 99% of the suggestions already posted.

One major thing I would like to see if a bonus for linking cities/IZs by rail. In V you got like a 10% production bonus if you linked a city to the capital via rail. Something like this deserves to return.

Likewise a bonus to tourism if you link your cities to neighbouring Civ's cities by rail and have open borders (and a similar bonus for having airports). The world should grow interconnected in the later eras.

Finally, and most importantly, trader units travelling on railways should change their graphic to a train

Edit: Actually, to that effect, have a later tech or civic upgrade trader units on land to trains that draw their own railways automatically. That way railways are initially a military infrastructure built by army engineers, but later it becomes a civilian infrastructure as it is largely today.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Lots of great ideas here and thanks for all the input! I must admit I was kinda hoping this thread would stay in the general forum, as threads tend to go under the radar when they get moved to the ideas&suggestions sub forum....but hopefully Firaxis will notice anyway

 

[darkace77450]

Finally, and most importantly, trader units travelling on railways should change their graphic to a train

I never knew this was something I needed.

 

[civfan_999]

I'd also move the Recruit Partisans spy mission into the city center and make its success rate dependent on a combination of the amenity and housing situation of the city (i.e. one spy could constantly churn out rebellions from overcrowded, unhappy cities but happy and well-housed cities would be extremely resistant to rebellion).

This is such a cool idea! It would be great to have this penalty for not keeping up with housing. Keeping up with amenities is important, but you get to a point (20+ population) where it isn't worth the time to worry about housing anymore because it only stunts growth and your cities are already pretty huge. I think it is a super cool idea to suggest that rebellions are easier with less housing and amenities!

3. Make the World Congress and diplomatic favor more useful by making possible to guide the resolution agenda. Some of the votes are actually extremely useful, but it's completely random as to whether those show up or if the AI just decides to ban a luxury. I'd like to see two rounds of voting, with the first one setting the resolution agenda 10 turns before the World Congress convenes. I would also separate out the A and B parts of the resolutions.

Agree. 100%. Sometimes the items being voted on are important to my strategy and other times they don't matter at all. It would be very cool to be able to vote on the agenda from all the available options for that era.

5. Give us the option to ask an ally to stop attacking a City-State we've suzerained.

This would be an amazing improvement. I really enjoy the city state mechanic and nothing is more annoying that having an AI declare war on and take out a city state just turns after you pumped it full of envoys. If its nearby, I will always liberate it, but if its on the other side of the map or in the middle of enemy territory, it is just lost forever.

2. fix Helicopter units. Either they shouldn’t require aluminum Upkeep if they are so weak compared to aircraft; or they should be very strong to reflect the premium value of aluminum. Either direction is fine.

Again, 100% agree. I love helicopters, but they can't compare with planes, so they aren't worth the aluminum. I don't build them anymore since the GS xpac introduced the strategic resource mechanic (which I love, btw).

Along this line, there probably should be a way to get resources that you don't have access to. Sometimes there is none of a specific resource anywhere near my cities. Not having niter hurts alot early game (bombards). Not having oil, aluminum and uranium hurts alot late game (artillery, planes and death robots). Alternatively/(in addition?) it would be nice to have a few more units that don't require any resources. Right now it is just the anti-cav and range units?

Maybe it makes sense to have two versions of some units? The same way the 'Lagrange Laser Station' and 'Terrestrial Laser Station' works. In that case, one runs on aluminim and the other on power. You could have two versions of units. For example, rocket artillery that runs on oil (1 oil + $8 per turn) and another type or artilery that runs on cash ($30 per turn, more?).

 

[civfan_999]

Loyalty and city states – When a city state is captured by an AI and then that same city state petitions to become a free city due to loyalty, why would it not simply liberate itself and revert to city state status? I really enjoy the city state aspect and often try to liberate city states wherever possible, and am annoyed when I have to go conquer a neighboring free city to liberate it.

Difficulty settings – The current difficulty settings give the AI a lot of perks from day one so that you spend the first few eras playing catch up. This makes it difficult to secure early game wonders and still gets you to that cross over point where once you have passed them, you can leave them in your dust. I recommend giving the AI extra things each era rather than a lot of extras all at once at the beginning. For example, instead of starting them off with 5 civs and 5 techs (I might have those numbers a bit off), they could start the game with 1-2 civs/techs and get 1-2 additional civs/techs each time a new world era begins. That way, instead of us being behind early game and pushing to catch up, the AI wouldn’t be quite as strong in the ancient era, but would be better able to keep pace with an experienced human player throughout the game.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Not so much a balance thing, as a game-play improvement thing. When it comes to loyalty, I'd like to see a chance for Independent Cities to become City-States or-in the case where 2 or more neighbouring cities become Independent-an entirely new Civilization. Not entirely sure on what should decide if an independent city remains independent, but it should be at least a possibility.

 

[darkace77450]

One more change I'd like to see is for Diplomatic Visibility to have a diplomatic application to compliment its military application. If we could see the vote distribution of every AI with a lower Diplomatic Visibility then Spies (via Listening Posts) and Mary Katherine Goddard would be become a more integral to Diplomatic Victories.

 

[Aurelesk]

I want so much things that I could write dozens pages. I must admit that I do not play competitively, and I love to plan my city ahead and see it grows. For example, I tend to love to play Eleonor with only her Capital, building all the slots wonders (Apadana, Great Library, Oxford University, Mont Saint Michel, Saint Basil's Cathedral, Medici's bank, Bolshoi Theatre, Hermitage, Broadway, Sydney's Opera, National Museum...), and this need a lot of planning.
Then, a random Iron show up, and now I... take a deep breath to calm out because my whole planning is now not functional.

So, as a Builder, this is what come in mind:

• Strategic ressources do not prevent Wonders and districts production once discovered. This might need some compensation, like half gathering in the process.
  • It raises new questions: what about luxury ressources? Should we able to build on it? After all, you know from turn 1 where they are. But it would add more flexibility (but maybe only the city enjoy Amenity from it as compassion?). Then, what about Bonus Ressource? Should they stay, so you could still harvest (but at half profit?). Then, what about feature, like Forest... Yes, it raises more and more questions.
• Add a "relocate" option for district. For example, we could remove a district from a tile, and relocate to a new tile. It can be useful to correct bad AI placement, missclick, or when taking over a city with district with bad adjacency (for example, taking Mayan cities but Campus is not near Jungle nor Mountain nor Reef).
  • France could also have the ability to relocate Wonders, a rather gimicky but I guess it relates with the Statue of Liberty. Just throwing ideas if they redo France one day.
• Improve the Canal district. First, it could have some yield like Housing / Amenity like Aqueduct / Dam. Being able to produce Canal district earlier in the game (like at Construction / Engineering), and Steam Power should allow us to build it on Hills. Furthermore, allows the Panama Canal wonder to be build on Mountain too (not a requirement, but what made the Panama Canal an amazing feat of mankind was because it was build in hilly / moutainous area).
• Neighboorhood. It feels so outdated, because it doesn't add that much Housing, and let you being vulberable to Rebellion. So yeah, probably the worst district in the game, excluding the farm to never-finished neighborhood gold scheme policy.
• "Harvest" reef like a forest. Sometimes, it prevents to a really good Harbor, but it might need some downside in the process, like pollution?
• Archeological and Art Museum should be more flexible. Archeologist should have 3 charges, and fill the nearest Archeological Museum, and the Artifacts could be moved freely and not only between full museum to full museum. Same thing for Art Museum and the 10 turns delay.
• Military Engineer should have not consume Charge on Roads, or even only 1 Movement for railroad, so you could build them faster.

 

[AsH2]

Not so much a balance thing, as a game-play improvement thing. When it comes to loyalty, I'd like to see a chance for Independent Cities to become City-States or-in the case where 2 or more neighbouring cities become Independent-an entirely new Civilization. Not entirely sure on what should decide if an independent city remains independent, but it should be at least a possibility.

Let's decide that in World Congress..

 

[Myomoto]

Definitely Neighborhoods need a looking over.

The Recruit Partisans spy mission needs to be removed from Neighborhoods first of all. It's too big of a deterrent to actually build them. It is by far one of the more powerful spy missions in its ability to disrupt the player, and it really doesn't make sense that a spy can just go to the suburbs and instigate ISIS. The earlier solution to put the mission in the city center and have its success rate depend on the city's loyalty is a lot more sensible in my opinion. Especially if it caused a further loss of loyalty to the city so it that might flip it to a Free City (basically you would soften up the loyalty in a city with a few Forment Unrest spy missions, and then try to perform the coup with the partisans mission, having several spies working together).

Secondly, I think Neighborhoods should get a flat +4 or +5 housing, and a major adjacency bonus from city districts (i.e. +1 housing per adjacent district). The appeal bonus should instead give a flat gold yield per housing of the neighborhood (it's more attractive to live there - so land value goes up). This way you can basically stack neighborhoods together in a big cluster and become a horrible slumlord in order to get all the population to cram into your factories as specialists (if they ever buff that ), or you can make your nice idyllic suburbs that will still compete with the tourism tile improvements.

 

[Myomoto]

Sorry for the double post, but I just thought of another separate issue.

Great people! They're great, but sometimes, especially for the writers, artists, and musicians, you cannot activate them because you simply do not have the great work slots available. I would really like to see a return of the mechanic in V to 'burn' them for a one time boost:

Writers for a bunch of culture/civics inspirations.

Artists could give a big boost to era score.

Let great musicians work as a single charge rockband.

 

[darkace77450]

Strategic ressources do not prevent Wonders and districts production once discovered. This might need some compensation, like half gathering in the process.

• It raises new questions: what about luxury ressources? Should we able to build on it? After all, you know from turn 1 where they are. But it would add more flexibility (but maybe only the city enjoy Amenity from it as compassion?). Then, what about Bonus Ressource? Should they stay, so you could still harvest (but at half profit?). Then, what about feature, like Forest... Yes, it raises more and more questions.

The inability to build on strategic and luxury resources drives me batty. I hate it when I've got a map tack marking the perfect location for a district that I can't utilize because horses - unlike cows, sheep, and deer - can't be removed.

 

[darkace77450]

One last suggestion: Give us a military policy card that boosts the number of build charges on Military Engineers and/or remove the consumption of Military Engineer build charges when building roads.

 

[Sirsquier]

+2 production in cities 10-15 population
+3 for cities 15-20
+5 for 20+

 

[alkurte]

Tweak the victory conditions.

Domination:
When playing on standard map size and above, domination victory is a huge problem because of the distances while traveling the whole world with all of your units. Maybe chance the domination victory condition to: after modern era, you must have 2x the army strength of al the civ's together. This makes more sense, because human being, now we think more sensibly. We are trying to avoid wars instead of conquering lands/ capitals. In the modern world, domination is not waging wars, but more showing of your power.

Add also one economic related victory condition.
Mid/ late game you have a plenty off gold. When you built markets (to maintenance your army), you also get +1 trade route. Use those trade route mechanics for economic related victory. Instead of spending al of your gold and buy literally everything what you want, adding a new economic victory condition can make it more interesting just not to spent it, but holding it for your economy, something like that.

 

[Sirsquier]

Curmudgeon and Flirtatious agendas to be re-added. They would go well with leaders like Eleanor and Cleopatra.

 

[monikernemo]

Kongo is quite weak due to low/unreliable faith generation. I suggest giving Kongo the following:

Allow building of Holy Sites and their respective buildings.
Nkisi to give faith for artifacts, sculptures if city has a holy site.
Mbanza to give 1 faith per 2 population point.

Buff religious world wonders, some are laughably bad:
Allow purchase of missionaries for cities that has a religious world wonders.
Additional religious pressure for cities that has religious world wonder. Religious tourism from cities following your religion that has religious world wonder.
Religious spread after completion of religious wonder.

Stonehenge: Unlock Pantheon and Great Prophet after building (weird to grant GP while blocked from founding a religion due to absent pantheon)
Kotoku - In: Keep + 20% faith, remove warrior monks.

Change religious victory:
Player wins a RV if all religious wonders are built and the cities that possess these religious world wonders follow player's religion. (We should also prevent razing cities that has a religious world wonder).