A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[Charriu]

1) Improve coastal empires late-game
Coastal tiles and resources are (almost) the only ones not to get any late game bonuses, making coastal-heavy civilizations fall off. PB88-spoilers:

Flunky had achieved a contender position with his extremely food-rich Indonesian islands after conquering Japan and thus the Great Lighthouse. (Since this is BTS it is indeed the Great Lighthouse, not merely the Good Lighthouse as in the rb mods.) It is a truism that a water-based Empire falls off heavily in late game. So Flunky teched Chemistry and Military Science and made an attempt to conquer Australia (shade, Genghis Khan). 

Source

Suggestion:
1a) Astronomy gives +1 commerce to coast/ocean (similar to the Colossus which is obsoletes)
1b) Refrigeration gives +1 hammer to fishing nets

The latter might be too late to really matter, but I think it fits thematically with factory-ships. The first might be on the strong side, making Astronomy even more important than it already is. It also removes a strategic choice for the Colossus-owner, but some similar wonders do expire with a tech that gives the same benefit (Ref Hagia Sophia, Great Lighthouse).

There are two questions to this topic that one needs to answer:

1. Is this something that needs to be addressed?

So far it's only the player owning Colossus that looses a lot more with a water-based empire. Of course it's also true what Civac already said, that water-based empires worth of in late game, but so are other economies. A specialist economy also looses steam as bulbs hit their cap and Representation is really the last option to improve that economy. I'm still not sure if this needs addressing.

2. How to address the problem?

While your first option "+1 commerce to water tiles on Astronomy" solves the problem, I think it gives too much strength to Astronomy. I also agree that Refrigeration comes to late. But there are more options.

a) Giving this commerce bonus to a tech following Astronomy, best would be Physics, because it requires Astronomy at does not come to late.
b) You don't necessarily need to give this bonus with a tech. For example in base BtS you obsolete castles at Economics and the only way to get the missing trade route back is to switch into Free Market there. With this in mind another option is to give your commerce bonus to the civic Environmentalism, which is available at Biology in CtH. That way Environmentalism also gets a boost in usefulness.

2) Re-balance Corporations
Of the seven corporations, there are two pairs that are clearly meant to compete with each other (Mining Inc vs Creative Constructions and Sid's Sushi vs Cereal Mills). CtH has already tried to make these closer to each other in output (or atleast reduce the dominance) by reducing the effect and cost of MinInc to 75% and Sushi to 50%. Based on the calculations in this post I've looked at the cost for similar outputs for the competing corporations. Even if you have enough resources for CreCon to match MinInc in hammers, you're paying twice as much for it. For Sushi it's similar but inverted; CerMil is technically better per resource, but most maps have way more seafood than grains.

Another thing to look at is when they become available. Right now, the "best" alternative is also available first, but by altering this we give the strategic choice of founding the slightly worse alternative now for immediate and guaranteed benefit versus racing for the technically better alternative that you might not get. I propose the following changes:

2a) Revert cost for MinInc to 100% and lower the cost for CreCon to 75%
2b) Have CreCon become availble at Steel instead of Combustion
2c) Have CerMil become available at Biology instead of Refrigeration (and possibly even move Sushi to Refrigeration?)

This allows CreCon and CerMil to be the "worse" alternative while stille having the value of being available first. Steel is very early for CreCon but it feels much more thematically correct than Combustion.

The other three corporations are marginal but have their uses, so I'd leave them as they are.

I agree that two pairs are meant to compete. Aluminium Co and Standard Oil are special as their purpose is to generate Aluminium and Oil if you don't have these resources and Civilized Jewlers aims for the culture victory. While option 2a) (maintenance adjustment) is a viable option, I find moving the tech requirements more interesting as it opens up more decision making like you mentioned. Moving CreCon to Steel is really a bit early, I think putting it at Steam Power and moving MiningInc to Combustion is also viable. 2c) sounds very good to me and I would move Sushi to Refrigeration. Unfortunately this has the side-effect that Medicine becomes a bad tech to research that's rarely required for anything.

Still I don't want to make a final judgment about Corporations with only one PB entering that era right now and possibly another PB getting there due to amount of players: PB59. I think a better judgment can be made after these PBs.

3) Lower the costs of "unused" buildings
When was the last time someone built any of the espionage buildings? Jails might see some consideration in times of heavy war weariness, but even then they are pretty costly for the effect. I suggest lowering the cost of:
3a) Jail (+50% ep, -25% ww) from 120 to 100 hammers
3b) Security Bureau (+8 ep, spy defense) from 220 to 120 hammers
3c) Intelligence agency (+8 ep, +50% ep) from 180 to 150 hammers

The one I feel strongest about is that security bureau should not cost more than intelligence agency.

Additionally, I suggest:
3d) Fold the effect of bomb shelter (100h, 50% defense against nukes) into bomb shelter (100h, 50% defense against air strikes)

I absolutely agree that something needs to be done about those buildings as their usefulness is questionable especially because the active missions are disabled. I already mentioned that my big espionage projekt is still far away. The question though is what to do with them. Would reducing their cost make people build them more often? I'm not so sure.

Regarding 3d) I assume you wanted to write bunker in place of the second bomb shelter? Do I understand you correctly that you suggesting:

1. Remove the bomb shelter
2. Make the bunker (100h, 50% defense against nukes, 50% defense against air strikes)

[Tarkeel]

I agree that a straight boost at Astronomy might be too much, but I figured it was a good starting point. I'm not sure the comparison with specialist economy fits though, as that's a choice you make (vs tile economy), whereas water economy is making the most of what the map gives you. It also holds that almost all other tiles will get a bonus in the late game. Giving the bonus to Ecology is a nice idea though.

The cost of MiningInc definitely needs to be reverted to 100% even with the lower income, lowering the costs for CreCon is more optional.

I think that MinInc at railroads fits very well thematically, and steel also fits with CreCon. It is indeed rather early, but you also need to have Corporation for it, which is a rather big detour from the usual military techs. Similarly biology is a better thematic fit for CerMil.

I think cheaper jails would actually get built, not sure about the others but it makes them an option at the very least, and opens up "cold espionage wars".

[Amicalola]

I like the hammer at refrigeration on fishing nets, because Refrigeration is much less enticing without the +1 to ships it used to give. It's a small bonus that doesn't affect balance in a major way, which is welcome. For a similar reason, I would favour moving Sid's Sushi to refrigeration (and cereal mills forwards), which is also good for Corporation balance in general as Tarkeel stated.

[Mjmd]

I like a refrigeration bonus because you could make it part of the existing line in the change log, past that /shrug not sure how many late game changes should add length to the log if they aren't major needed changes.

[Cornflakes]

Possible solution to the concession confusion that some recent game have had: Tweak the United Nations diplomatic victory
• Move United Nations forward in the tech tree ... Paper? Can the normal UN resolutions be unavailable until the current tech is unlocked? Or just create a new "Concession" wonder and give it just a single Concession resolution.
• Make UN cheap
• Trigger the concession vote every 10 turns after UN is built.
• Expand the eligibility for victory to make sure that the person we are conceding to is an option
• Tweak the victory threshold to ensure sufficient weight of mass behind the victor. Maybe offer a "soft concession" option where your votes count 50%, such that if every other player has conceded your half vote will result in concession, but multiple "soft concessions" would result in Play On.
• Hide the individual voting, and just display "Victory" or "Fail" ... simple way might be to just force the pop-up to list "Abstain" for everyone if the vote fails.

[Charriu]

Worth looking into.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Possible solution to the concession confusion that some recent game have had: Tweak the United Nations diplomatic victory
• Move United Nations forward in the tech tree ... Paper? Can the normal UN resolutions be unavailable until the current tech is unlocked? Or just create a new "Concession" wonder and give it just a single Concession resolution.
• Make UN cheap
• Trigger the concession vote every 10 turns after UN is built.
• Expand the eligibility for victory to make sure that the person we are conceding to is an option
• Tweak the victory threshold to ensure sufficient weight of mass behind the victor. Maybe offer a "soft concession" option where your votes count 50%, such that if every other player has conceded your half vote will result in concession, but multiple "soft concessions" would result in Play On.
• Hide the individual voting, and just display "Victory" or "Fail" ... simple way might be to just force the pop-up to list "Abstain" for everyone if the vote fails.

Good idea except that tying this to any one tech sort of puts an expiration date on every game. No matter what tech we choose. But maybe that’s a small price to pay...

[Charriu]

Instead of tying it to a tech I could start this world congress after any other point like a certain advantage in score. (Even under NoScore the game still knows the score, it only doesn't show it)

I know that the RFC Dawn of Civilization mod has something that I could reuse here

[T-hawk]

I'll weigh in that it seems like going way overboard to hijack a game subsystem to implement a concession voting system in-game.

I get the confusion about conceding in general, but it seems that could be accomplished with an out-of-game mechanism, any web site or whatever that can tabulate a secret vote.

[Mr. Cairo]

I'll weigh in that it seems like going way overboard to hijack a game subsystem to implement a concession voting system in-game.

I get the confusion about conceding in general, but it seems that could be accomplished with an out-of-game mechanism, any web site or whatever that can tabulate a secret vote.

I agree with this, I would much rather keep it out of the game mechanics. I think an anonymous google survey or something like that is a lot better.