Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[GrafvMonteDisco]

Personally I don't get why it is that bad to have a military trait. You can always use the second for one that boost your economy. AGG SHOULD set you up for war. That's exactly what it intended. You just have to make it more attractive to go to war by saving money to do so.
I liked the idea of reduced civic costs for aggressive civs, more free units and more gold from pillaging. So even if you can't acutally capture a city you can pillage cottages or sth.

culture on barracks would weaken cre/agg too. If i can expand my borders with 30 hammer rax I don't need creative. Maybe for the cheap buildings, but that's rarely the reason for picking creative imo. OTOH if you are creative and are looking for a second trait agg becomes less appealing because the culture from those barracks is totally useless.

[GrafvMonteDisco]

I tried starting the mod with BUG mod activated and when I start a game it tells me Buginit cannot be found. It loads the game without UI. Does anyone know how to fix that?

[Krill]

The reason spies are blind is to remove invisible and unstoppable sentry nets.

culture on barracks would weaken cre/agg too. If i can expand my borders with 30 hammer rax I don't need creative. Maybe for the cheap buildings, but that's rarely the reason for picking creative imo. OTOH if you are creative and are looking for a second trait agg becomes less appealing because the culture from those barracks is totally useless.

CRE is now pretty much one of the top 2 traits, and there will always be a "worst" trait to pair it with. Not that big a deal...if CRE/AGG is good enough now, then it is still good enough with boosts.

[GrafvMonteDisco]

CRE is now pretty much one of the top 2 traits, and there will always be a "worst" trait to pair it with. Not that big a deal...if CRE/AGG is good enough now, then it is still good enough with boosts.

I'm just saying that boosting one trait with some kind of the other traits isn't something I would aim for. If it's by using a UB like the terrace than fine. All the other traits are unique too.

[Krill]

Sometimes traits synergise (IMP/EXP, IMP/CRE) sometimes they don't (FIN/PHI). Sometimes they overlap (CRE+cheap libs = fast Academy = PHI), (IND = early Henge = CRE).

Barracks with culture are available to all leaders, not just AGG ones, so calling AGG "Cre-lite" doesn't acknowledge the other overlaps that exist and aren't considered negative.

[GrafvMonteDisco]

don't you think that monuments will become useless then? If I didn't start with myst I would definetly prefer having a barracks instead of a monument. I guess sometimes you really have to get a border expansion quicker (by saving the hammers), but does that really make up for teching myst instead getting of something more useful?

[Krill]

Do you want to spend 30 hammers on a monument after spending up to 8 turns researching a tech that you will need at some point (game dependent) or 60 hammers on a barracks that you might not want long term in a city?

That's a decision the player has to make, with upsides and downsides on both sides, there isn't a right or wrong answer without the context of a game and a strategy. There are times when I'd always go for the barracks (AGG) and times when I'd always go for the monument (Ethiopia), times when I'd use neither (IND with Henge) and times when I'd use both (the rest).

[Ruff_Hi]

I tried starting the mod with BUG mod activated and when I start a game it tells me Buginit cannot be found. It loads the game without UI. Does anyone know how to fix that?

The RB mod and BUG probably share files and thus conflict. Typically, you cannot start 2 mods together.

The reason spies are blind is to remove invisible and unstoppable sentry nets.

And that is bad why?

[Cyneheard]

The reason spies are blind is to remove invisible and unstoppable sentry nets.

The key word is "unstoppable." In an always war game, this forces spies to be off (which is a shame; espionage would be perfect for that type of game, but the unstoppable spy means that players can't do sneak attacks or use much misdirection at all, because their troops will get seen). In a non-AW game, they still make defending a lot easier than it otherwise would be, because again those sneak attacks get a lot harder to do post-Alphabet.

Spies become primarily military units when they're like this; in neutral territory they're truly unstoppable, and when you need BUG to keep track of what's going on, then it's too complicated for RB when we're not using BUG, and not going to use BUG.

Ruff: How does making the spy blind prevent the spy from performing espionage missions? The harm here has to be severe to convince me that taking away the (nearly uncounterable) military power of the spy is causing more problems than it solves. You still see the tile you're standing on, so the spy knows when it's in a city or on a resource to sabotage, although you have to find your target first; for a spy to do so, it's slow, although if you can find your opponent's borders with a land unit, you can usually deduce where a city is to one or two tiles.

[Ruff_Hi]

Spies become primarily military units when they're like this; in neutral territory they're truly unstoppable, and when you need BUG to keep track of what's going on, then it's too complicated for RB when we're not using BUG, and not going to use BUG.

I'm not talking about using BUG ... rather lifting 1 tab from 1 screen from BUG (the Spy v Spy tab off the espionage screen - see here for an example).

The key word is "unstoppable." In an always war game, this forces spies to be off (which is a shame; espionage would be perfect for that type of game, but the unstoppable spy means that players can't do sneak attacks or use much misdirection at all, because their troops will get seen). In a non-AW game, they still make defending a lot easier than it otherwise would be, because again those sneak attacks get a lot harder to do post-Alphabet.

Ruff: How does making the spy blind prevent the spy from performing espionage missions? The harm here has to be severe to convince me that taking away the (nearly uncounterable) military power of the spy is causing more problems than it solves. You still see the tile you're standing on, so the spy knows when it's in a city or on a resource to sabotage, although you have to find your target first; for a spy to do so, it's slow, although if you can find your opponent's borders with a land unit, you can usually deduce where a city is to one or two tiles.

Does making them blind do this for you? Won't it mean that you have a sentry net out and then a deeper, spy based sentry net that moves back and forth?

If the issue is 'unstoppable', then make them stoppable. Make the spy visible (or randomly visible) and add a spy mission that captures the spy (that only spies can do). In fact, you could add flavour to it by having the result be 'death', 'expelled' (returned to owner's capital), or 'turned' (it becomes your spy). That would add a sub game to the spy game (a game within a game).