New Balance Mod

[GermanJoey]

Hi Gavagai, I like your mod and think it has a lot of cool ideas. I've wanted to reply for a few days but have been busy. I'll try to respond more thoroughly next week, but for now, can you talk a little bit more about how you envision your ideas of the EP system? Have you calculated costs, e.g. if you have a civ of 20 cities in the early industrial era, how often can you poison water, forment a city revolt, steal tech, etc? IMHO having static bonuses of the kind you're talking about combined with multipliers is very dangerous; for an example, see my PB26 game. To me, food is the anchor of which all things are balanced around in civ, and things that give benefit without needing food are hard to balance. I think your idea of removing the slider is very good, and probably the only way an EP system can work. However, IMHO, it might be better to have the EP buildings give very high multipliers but then only allow EP to be generated by spy specialists. Feels right to me thematically too, having a downtrodden peasant farmer populace supporting a massive state secret police apparatus... Either way, I feel like you need to consider/balance the cost of the missions at the same time as how EP is generated.

A second, but somewhat related question, while I'm at it. I can understand why you dislike the conqueror's plateau, but I think that would mean that map size would need to be a very controlled factor in games played on your mod. For example, a game on a map like PB13/PB18 would be fairly unworkable. and a map like PB22 would be unplayable for several of the civs.

[Borsche]

Just get rid of espionage entirely, imo. It's such a huge concept that was introduced so clunkily into BTS with very little thought (like everything else BTS brought). While corps can probably be balanced because of their base values, esp is something that feels like it'll always be awful, even when nerfed into oblivion (civ4 vanilla's 3 spy limit springs to mind)

[Gavagai]

Joey, thanks for feedback, you are raising important points.

1) Fixed espionage income from buildings gives an advantage to large civs which have more cities and can build more buildings. So, yes, there is a case for decreasing it. I'm not sure, howeveer, if I want to eliminate it because it would decrease the variety of the game.
A more general point about removal of the slider is that it makes espionage very inflexible. If you find yourself having a large espionage disadvantage with your rival, it is very difficult to fix as you can no longer produce a lot of EPs fast. Not sure if it is a good or bad thing though. Another problem is the power of early great spies; early spy bombs are to an extent countered by an increased cost of spies but what about settled great spies? A spy from Great Wall settled in ancient era will generate a lot of EPs which would be practically impossible to compensate. Definitely, this is something to think about; I may possibly remove spy points from the Great Wall.

2) I didn't calculate anything in regards to poison water / froment unhappiness missions. I think the issue is grossly overstated: when we played with this missions, did we have a single instance of abusing it? I can say without any calculations that systematically terrorizing your neighbor with this stuff is pretty expnasive: you will be, say, given up visibility on them and granting them visibility on you. I can say that in SP I'm rather happy when AI does this kind of stuff to me: the harm is negligable and for a price of a destroyed lighthouse in a fishing village I can see the insides of their cities.
A completely separate question is whether we want Espionage to influence victory conditions that much. In theory destroying buildings/projects can be very abusable in space/culture races but in practice - I think, I have yet to see a game (MP) where it played crucial role. In PB22 Plako wasn't able to make a dent in TBS' space run despite his huge espionage advantage.
Also, this stuff can be equally easily done by all parties.

3) I think you are overestimating the effect of removal conqueror's plato, in line with Krill. I have a lot of experience with this mechanics and I can say that it slows the snowball but doesn't stop it. Late game your costs will be dominated by inflation and corporation expenses anyway, even with the increased number of cities maintenance.
Also, Emancipation now decreases number of cities maintenance by 75%, so if it becomes a problem, it can be countered. However, I'm still not sure that Emancipation is competetive with Caste System even with this effect...

[Krill]

Commenting on the Espionage and number of cities costs:

Espionage: I like the idea of removing the slider, changing the building effects and values, essentially rebuilding Espionage as a method of gathering information from the passive effects. Active missions have huge effects on SS and CV victory conditions, and the tech steal missions needs to be balanced against research. Ultimately, I don't see why the tech steal mission is implemented as it adds a layer of complexity that is unnecessary IMO. But the active missions that affect SS and CV need to go in any game where you expect it can get played out to the end IMO.

Number of cities: Basically I don't see the point in removing it, because I don't see the issues with limiting the advantages of being bigger. Admittedly I've been a player that often prefers to settle more land and play defensive on it, but you're saying the numbers are altered such that it really affects those players that conquer opponents and get to really large numbers of cities. But by removing this, you don't just affect the ability to go wide. The # of cities cost also increases with the number of pop in a city, so by removing that cap you also increase the costs in going tall. End of the day I don't really see the point, even if it's to bring another civic into line like Emancipation: If you build the mod to make Emancipation a one right choice to the "winners" whom have taken over more land, that's still not an improvement over Caste being a one right choice.

Oh and a third:

Corps in an MP environment are going to be a bitch for you to balance, but the HQ gold effect will always make them viable only for a single civ. So don't plan building and unit costs around the available of more hammers from the corps that most people won't have economic access to.

[Bacchus]

Corp gold effect could be balanced with a National Wonder, which gives 2/3 coins of income for each corporation present in your cities, but access is still going to be restricted, as hardly anyone will spread their corporations to others. Corporations are just a very weird mechanic, to be honest.

[Gavagai]

Does anyone know what are the exact effects of having having a spy/bureua in your city? Do their effects stack in any way?

[Bacchus]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=247719

There is no stacking on the "counter-spy" modifier, the Bureau basically counts as a resident spy for the purposes of detection.

[The Black Sword]

Bureau also adds +50% to mission cost, that the spy doesn't.

[Gavagai]

Corps in an MP environment are going to be a bitch for you to balance, but the HQ gold effect will always make them viable only for a single civ. So don't plan building and unit costs around the available of more hammers from the corps that most people won't have economic access to.

I don't really understand what you mean by that. My mod at the very least has three equally viable hammer corps which compete with each other. It means that we will easily have up to three players using corps. In pretty much any game which have reached this point this should be the majority of players with a real chance to win.

[Qgqqqqq]

Mining Inc and Creative Constructions don't compete with each other.