Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Ruff_Hi]

It seems that the problem with my game is that I build too many maces (regular BTS). I currently have a pbem war going where I only send knights (with very limited mace support) and I am regretting not having more maces available.

[Cheater Hater]

No it doesn't--this is the biggest unnecessary hyperbole I've ever seen. If you want perfect balance play perfectly mirrored maps, otherwise accept that there's going to be some imbalance. If you want games where you have to play the first 30-50 turns in the exact way you want them to, cut them out completely and start playing Classical start games (maybe modding the early religions to later techs, since that's the biggest source of stupid randomness).

I don't know where your comment about me scripting players on their first 30-50 turns comes from, because I sure as hell don't do that. We didn't test a single one of the PB27 capitals, just kind of eyeballed them that they were about the same then randomly handed them out. We used my tool to measure the overall land quantity/quality, but we sure as fuck didn't expect actual players to play like my stupid scripted AIs.

To put it more clearly, my complaint here is that I see this feature as essentially being "some players will randomly get 1-2 extra food resources in their capital." It's like goody huts (a feature that I also hate in Pitboss games) but way worse because it has a way bigger snowball effect, and there's no checkbox for turning it off. If there was that, I wouldn't complain about it.

I also don't feel my comments are hyperbole at all. I have thought about this feature a lot and have probably studied its effects more than anyone. I realize now that the tone of my last few posts would feel exaggeratedly out of place here, but that's because I've been pleading with Krill about this thing via PM for months, and other people wouldn't have seen that stuff.

The way I see it is that the whole point of playing with a balance mod is that we want a richer, more complex Civ4 pitboss experience or whatever. However, personally, if I feel this feature causes such an unbalancing effect on the map, such that I can no longer trust *any* mapmaker to fully compensate for its worst possibilities - including, as I have proven, myself - that it essentially overpowers all the other, more delicate flavors of the mod - akin to casually throwing a lump of mud in a simmering pot of lobster bisque because the chef thinks that the color is a bit too bright. So, then, why wouldn't I instead play with a mod I feel will give me a better game, like RtR 2.0.7.6 or ToW 1.4? This is what has me so frustrated because I'd otherwise greatly prefer to play these new RtR versions, including ones that come out after this. Most of those changes that people complain in this thread complain about? - I actually like them.

The meta of RB has enforced a "one right choice" on the early game: settle in place, go Worker first, get basic worker techs, improve your food resources, get BW, build a Settler, settle the copper, swap to Slavery when the first Settler is in transit, pump out Settlers until you run out of space, run a farmer's gambit and hope your neighbors do as well so you all have a chance in the mid-late game. Anything that can help inhibit the script is a good thing, whether that be balance changes, reasons to move a capital, incentives to be aggressive early, speeding up the first 5-10 techs, or anything else.

Of course, everyone probably prefers to play a different version of Civ4--I want an updated RtR version with all the features restored (Espionage, Corps, Events), Commodore wants 2.0.7.4, Krill wants more stuff in the version 3 branch, some people want base BTS, some want Warlords, some want ToW, some want that Spanish mod used in the demogame. Obviously each community has to settle on a select group of mods or they'd find no one to play with--it's already surprising that we can support 3-4 different versions in our small community (BTS, RtR 3.x.x.x, RtR 2.0.7.x, ToW), but even we have a "default", and that's becoming the latest revisions of RtR. The key is divide the categories on more fundamental grounds (Mac compatibility, tech pace, espionage), rather than something as minor as a 2H capital.

-this is the biggest unnecessary hyperbole I've ever seen.

+1 internets. "biggest unnecessary hyperbole I've ever seen" is the best hyperbole I've ever seen.

I'm not sure if I should take this as a compliment or not

[GermanJoey]

The simplest answer I can give is that so long as a start has 2 food resources and makes 8fpt or more, anything "better" than that start is surmoutable ie if you have a 2 hammer cap and 8fpt you can win regardless of the amount of food resources a capital has. The third, fourth etc food resource a capital has doesn't speed up the start (first 30-35 turns) much at all. I don't think the issues you are concerned about are reasonable concerns.

Well sure, obviously a 3rd or 4th capital food isn't going to drastically improve your position by T30... you're not even gonna have a 3rd hooked until T24 or so, and the 4th not until T30ish. Fast-forward another 30-35 turns, however, and, between extra double and triple whips, and 2nd/3rd cities instantly having an already-improved food resource on the turn of settlement plus being able to grab new one,s and the difference becomes huge. I wish I could give you more specific data on what I measured on the PB27 map pre-game but its still probably too spoilery for now.

The meta of RB has enforced a "one right choice" on the early game: settle in place, go Worker first, get basic worker techs, improve your food resources, get BW, build a Settler, settle the copper, swap to Slavery when the first Settler is in transit, pump out Settlers until you run out of space, run a farmer's gambit and hope your neighbors do as well so you all have a chance in the mid-late game.

This isn't true at all. Well, I suppose the first 4-5 items are pretty ubiquitous among all types of early-game Civ4 - pitboss mp, ladder mp, sp deity, sp nobles' club, sp civfanatics hof games, and, hell, even ffh2 mp, ffh2 sp, etc. We could even include the other civilization games in that list. However, the rest of your "script" isn't the law of the land at all. It might be how you think every map should be played, but there's other ways the game is played successfully. PB27 is a perfect counter-example to your post.

No matter how much you insist your "farmer's gambit prisoner's dilemma" theory is the state of the world, the fact remains that it is all in your head. We try to tell you that over and over again. Sometimes it's the right way to go, and sometimes its the worst thing you can do.

[Cheater Hater]

@GJ: Obviously wars post T50 can sometimes be good, and in PB27 where the equivalent of the first 50 turns of tech is done by T30 max it's even more true. If people can get to the end of Classical techs by T100 (by a combination of tech scaling and a lush map), if some people don't realize how much the pace of the game has quickened, there will be some casualties (two already, and CivStats says more could follow soon), and people can benefit. That still doesn't change the hypothesis, but that's not the point. The problem is that the full story requires the PB27 map (or at least the story of the person who "screwed it up" by moving), and we won't get that for a while (Astronomy minimum, and probably not until Satellites/end of game due to the lack of map trading). Without the full picture, I just can't see how 2H capitals are equivalent to the other categories I mentioned.

[Krill]

Few comments on the sword and effects on classical/medi combat.

The sword as is at +50% city attack doesn't appear to be overpowered. It's not the one right thing to build, it has weaknesses and it can be countered. It doesn't replace the HA, it fits in a different role. It works with the ancient era units of axe/spears and archers reasonably well. The issues with the sword muscling in on the power of the mace, and not other units, suggests that the straight nerf to the sword or buff to the mace are the safest solutions.

Nerfing the sword just reintroduces the same problem that HA are go to units for the Classical era and removes what is now a series of significant choices. That makes me think that the mace is better off being buffed, as it's a utility unit that has it's utility niche taken up by Xbow and longbows that also have other uses.

For the record, I strongly dislike +50% against cities for swords. Much better is to give them 7 str, -20% against mounted and 50 hammers cost. Worked excellently in my SP tests.
And don't touch maces, they are fine.

I have to ask why the dislike? As it's an opinion, after all. Giving units a high strength makes them stronger in all situations, whereas combat bonuses only apply in certain situations so they keep the niches. For example, the mace as is fits a niche of a medium strength unit that eats ancient era trash and with reasonable support beats all classical era units 1v1. It fails to do anything against equal tech without a tactical advantage of some sort as it's both higher cost and has no innate combat bonuses that matter as pikes fall to the the strength difference anyway, and the mace has significantly higher tech costs than other units (almost as high as the knight). It's countered by Xbow and can't really do anything against Longbows in city without siege support.

Realistically, I think the role of the mace is fine, but because of the higher tech cost and hammer cost, giving it a combat bonus for city attack fixes all of the problems people have highlighted:

• it combines the role of sword and axe in medi era so no "feels bad" problem with obsoleting swords.
  
• provides more oomph to stacks that reach opponents cities in the medi era ie reasons to invest in slow mover stacks opposite knight stacks.
  
• doesn't greatly alter the niches of longbows, Xbows and pikes (other than the adjustment around how to construct counter stacks when opponents build different units). Does provide alternative city attacker to knights though.

The +50% city attack swords have is too much for maces. +10% is frankly shit. I figure somewhere between 20% and 35% is the right amount. Just need to make sure the Zerker is also kept below broken in power, probably by dropping the city attack bonus to 15% or so. The other reason for the mace having that bonus, is it splits the utility unit between musket and mace for the early ren era.

[Gavagai]

@ Krill. What I dislike are bonuses to city attack, especially that big. We start to get situations in which it is more difficult to defend a city than a random empty tile. It creates an imbalance between a value of a target and its vulnerability. This imbalance eats away too much part of defender's advantage, especially in marginal situations (e. g. defending freshly captured or freshly settled land). Tactical landscape becomes bizzare and counter-intuitive. Most importantly, it starts to deviate too much from what we got used to while playing civ. I think that balance between attack and defence we had in BTS is fine and 'don't fix what isn't broken' maxim applies here.
Besides, +50% against cities just makes Swords insanely good in their niche. Think of it, with promotion advantage they can trade favourably with Rifles if attack them inside cities.
You can make your own conclusions how I feel about giving bonus to city attack to maces.

[BRickAstley]

To Whom it may concern:

You can tell the guys on RB things are going fine and they can fight over the RtR mod and make whatever changes they want to it from this point on. I'm not going back to that.

[Charriu]

Hey, I tried finding my answer via search but it only directed me to this massive thread. I always loved the BUG mod's min and max button's for the science slider. Would it possible to implement these?

[Krill]

Possible to implement? Yes. Going to be implemented? No. The mod is completed, only time new versions of 2.x are released are for small alterations like around map trading needs.

[Charriu]

Ok thanks.