Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[fire&ice]

So do you think It would be a good idea.

[Cyneheard]

I'm assuming this is in a game that does not have spying disabled. Where was the discussion for this promotion. I don't remember seeing it. Does this have any impact on 'city visibility' (you can see the tiles around a city once you have enough EPs as if a unit of yours was standing in the city).

It's separate from city visibility, which wasn't touched (and city visibility is counterable, spy scouting isn't). I put it in version 1.0 (way back here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....tcount=276 ), and there wasn't any push-back as I recall. But one of the problems with espionage was the power of Spies as un-counterable scouts that don't even need Open Borders to act. This doesn't completely stop that from happening, because you can still see one tile and move up to 2 or 3 tiles (graphics glitches happened if the Spy couldn't see the tile it was standing on, and the spy could be nearly unusable).



The "free warrior" on settling idea: I'm not even sure how to think of this in terms of power level. It's very unique, but I don't see how making something so complex truly adds to the game. And the warrior rapidly goes obsolete; very soon, the free warrior merely costs maintenance, and doesn't really do anything. It's kind of nice early to let you go worker first no matter what (so, best for Hunting civs), but that's really it.

[Ruff_Hi]

It's separate from city visibility, which wasn't touched (and city visibility is counterable, spy scouting isn't). I put it in version 1.0 (way back here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....tcount=276 ), and there wasn't any push-back as I recall. But one of the problems with espionage was the power of Spies as un-counterable scouts that don't even need Open Borders to act. This doesn't completely stop that from happening, because you can still see one tile and move up to 2 or 3 tiles (graphics glitches happened if the Spy couldn't see the tile it was standing on, and the spy could be nearly unusable).

I really don't see the need for this. If spying is turned off, then it doesn't come into play. If spying is allowed, then crimping the spy this way is too severe. The way to stop the unwanted spy defogging your territory is to have a high EP against the spying nation thus increasing their probability of being caught before they get anywhere.

[Tatan]

The way to stop the unwanted spy defogging your territory is to have a high EP against the spying nation thus increasing their probability of being caught before they get anywhere.

1)That seems to rely a little too much on luck.
2)If spies are invisible, how are you supposed to tell when someone is using them on you?
3)Also, what if multiple people are using them against you?
4)And what about unkillable sentries camping in neutral territory? [esp. in Always War]

[Lord Parkin]

As long as we're talking about a "Pioneer" unit for a Settler UU - what about giving it the ability to found new cities at 2 pop (rather than 1)? That seems like it could be quite an interesting ability - not necessarily hugely powerful, but decent over the whole game.

Just a random thought, anyway. Don't know if it would turn out to be overpowered or underpowered relative to the other UU's... probably would depend a lot on the map.

[Cyneheard]

As long as we're talking about a "Pioneer" unit for a Settler UU - what about giving it the ability to found new cities at 2 pop (rather than 1)? That seems like it could be quite an interesting ability - not necessarily hugely powerful, but decent over the whole game.

Just a random thought, anyway. Don't know if it would turn out to be overpowered or underpowered relative to the other UU's... probably would depend a lot on the map.

That's like giving the player another trait (Imperialistic). Not remotely balanced.

[Cyneheard]

1)That seems to rely a little too much on luck.
2)If spies are invisible, how are you supposed to tell when someone is using them on you?
3)Also, what if multiple people are using them against you?
4)And what about unkillable sentries camping in neutral territory? [esp. in Always War]

This. Blind spies are still useful as, well, spies.

[Lord Parkin]

That's like giving the player another trait (Imperialistic). Not remotely balanced.

You're probably right, maybe a bit much for a UU. Could be interesting to tack onto the Imperialistic trait though, instead of the production bonus. Maybe still a little much though.

Anyway, I'm just throwing ideas around. Don't mind my random musings if they seem silly. It's your mod after all.

[luddite]

Krill I feel like our argument is spinning out of control with too many tangents to things like slavery and cottages. Let's go back to just the original issue which is the Aggressive trait. I'm not too happy about the change to Protective either, but I guess I could live with it.

For one thing, you keep telling me that I'm using a strawman argument. It's really not. Earlier you said,

The problem with AGG is that it works in a completely separate manner to everything else other than vanila PRO: it helps only warfare, and not the economy that sets the player up for warfare. To affect other people you have to threaten them with an army, and in a game where defending is easier than attacking, AGG does not do enough to make that a viable play. Cheap stables and improved siege will either not change that or completely break the game because there will be no place to balance it in the current format.

and also:

Basically, we're refusing to have purely military traits.

And that's why I said that you completely refuse to have any pure military traits. It's a DIRECT RESPONSE to what you said. You (and Cynehead?) think that it's impossible to balance a military trait with an economic one, which is why you're trying to give an economic boost to aggressive. My point was that, with the small boost you've given it, it's still way behind any other trait economically, especially creative. So you're stuck with the exact same situation that you wanted to avoid- a trait which NEEDS to go on offense to catch up to the other traits.

You could avoid that by giving agg a biger economic boost- extra trade routes or +100 gold each time you find a banana tile. whatever. But you've also said that you don't want to create whole new parts of the game, you just want to fix the balance a little bit. I agree with that sentiment completely. Which is I think it would be better to not craft an entirely new trait for agg, which is what you'll have to do if you want to make it a balanced, economic trait. My preference would be to enhance what it already does- free military promotions- but deleting it is better than trying to invent something completely new.

Also, this?

You have not replied to Cyneheards' issues about distorting the metagame nor game design.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Any change you make will change the metagame. Hell, even talking about stuff IN THIS THREAD changes the metagame. Maybe you can quote the section that you're talking about, and explain more about why it's a problem.

[Ruff_Hi]

1)That seems to rely a little too much on luck.
2)If spies are invisible, how are you supposed to tell when someone is using them on you?
3)Also, what if multiple people are using them against you?
4)And what about unkillable sentries camping in neutral territory? [esp. in Always War]

All true but it is exactly balanced for everyone. My comment re making the spy blind is that it nerfs the spy too much in a game where all players have said that spies are ok.

If you want to track who is spying on who, then take a look at the Spy v Spy tab on the espionage screen in BUG. It provides everyone's EP delta against everyone else so that you don't have to sit there with a pen and paper and work it out (actually - it might need a little re-write for a MP game).