Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Azoth]

Getting a successful rush off that doesn't wreck your economy is hard...

Well, if you're looking to boost postwar reconstruction, how about...
* -50% unit upkeep costs (Now you can build, use, and maintain an army on the cheap.) OR
* No resistance in conquered cities (Get your neighbours' cottages working for you, fast.)

OR, my current favorite:
Move -50% civic upkeep costs from Organized to Aggressive. (Because war civics tend to be expensive and successful Aggressive empires tend to be large.)
And give Organized +1 trade routes (whatever the implementation) to compensate.

[T-hawk]

If you must give Aggressive an economic bonus, how about no or greatly reduced unit supply costs? That gives the bonus for exactly what an Aggressive leader should be doing, attacking in enemy territory. And that's real easy to hack in the DLL, just check the trait in CvPlayer::calculateUnitSupply().

[Krill]

Exactly!

Krill/Cyneheard, I am sure you have good reasons but you're not arguing them well. A good argument would be: in order for AGG to be strong enough, you'd have to give promotions X, Y, and Z or equivalent, and this would change combat too much: combat between AGG and non-AGG civs would be fundamentally different from combat between two civs that are both AGG or both non-AGG. And that is undesirable.

Actually even giving extra promotions wouldn't work: You collateral the stack down as hard as you can, and you'll still get odds with equal tech units. But warrior choking and axe rushing? No chance. You give those boni to later era units and the current problem will still exist. Extra promotions aren't a solution either.

[Tatan]

Just to put out an oddball idea, what if you gave AGG units the ability to build roads? It would give an indirect economic bonus by letting workers focus on other improvements, and still loosely fit thematically. Of course, I have no idea how balanced that would be, and I imagine it would be a pain to implement [maybe via a promotion?]. It certainly seems like it would make for interesting possibilities during war-time, though.

Alternatively, you could just kill AGG entirely, or merge it with another trait. Merging with CHA could be interesting.

Anyway, just my two cents.

[DaveV]

Another suggestion from the peanut gallery: give AGG civs HR happiness for every 2-3 garrison units (so 4-6 units = 2 happy). This would kind of correspond with CHA's advantage.

[SevenSpirits]

Actually even giving extra promotions wouldn't work: You collateral the stack down as hard as you can, and you'll still get odds with equal tech units. But warrior choking and axe rushing? No chance. You give those boni to later era units and the current problem will still exist. Extra promotions aren't a solution either.

Use your imagination, man! It is trivially true that some set of promotions would be enough.

[Gaspar]

To me, some significant reduction in war weariness makes most sense, its an economic benefit only felt at war, sure, but shouldn't the idea of the Aggressive trait be that it makes civs play more aggressively? So if you're going to war as you should, its not making the same negative economic impact as if you're not aggressive.

[novice]

You want an AGG civ to be able to keep up in tech long enough to make later-era wars a feasible plan.

How about increasing known tech discount for AGG leaders?

[regoarrarr]

You want an AGG civ to be able to keep up in tech long enough to make later-era wars a feasible plan.

How about increasing known tech discount for AGG leaders?

Honestly I think (and I had a few discussions with darrelljs about this awhile ago) that the known tech discount needs to get bumped way up regardless.

[Sullla]

I merged this thread with the original RB Mod discussion thread as requested.