RtR 4.1.1.6 Discussion and Download Thread

[Krill]

Caste remains unchanged. Medium cost, CoL, unlimited specs for scientists, merchant, artists, +1 hammers on workshops.

[Charriu]

Tech: Industrialism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Assembly Line, Electricity. Optional Prerequisites: Fascism.

Fascism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Democracy. Optional Prerequisites: Communism. Base Cost 3300 (was 4800)

Democracy: Base cost 3500 (was 4900)

Communism: Base Cost 4000 (was 2600)

I like those changes. The reasoning is good. Those dead end techs were always a little bit strange.

Civics: Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1h for Watermills and Windmills. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Feudalism. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Environmentalism: Provides +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Chemistry. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Emancipation: +100% Improvement Upgrade Rate Modifier. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Constitution. Low upkeep. Legal civic.

Universal Suffrage: Towns +1 hammer. Can spend gold to finish production in a city. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Democracy. Medium upkeep. Government Civic.

Free Speech: +100% Culture in all cities. +1 commerce from village. +3 commerce from Town. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Economics. Low upkeep. Economy Civic.

I think all changes are worth a try. I especially like moving Environmentalism forward in the tech tree.

Tile improvements: Village: Pillageable, but only by land units [requires DLL mod]. Not Permanent (can be improved over).

Town: Pillageable, but only by land units [requires DLL mod]. Not Permanent (can be improved over).

I like this solution a lot more, then the last "Unpillageable" solution. Would love to implement this and I would say this should be possible to do, but don't pin me down on that.

Units: Marine: Requires Assembly Line, Fascism, Rifling

Probably necessary. Fine with me.

[Krill]

Putting Environmentalism on Chemistry is a bit evil. Just as a player pushes up for the easy to reach Renaissance military land unit in the Gren, and the Industrial era Cannon, plus Drydocks, Frigates and SoL...there is a civic to cut your hammer output down and grab a bit more commerce?

I've read players comments that the Steel/Military Science line is strong. I don't think it's a fair comment.

That tech line has two economic benefits, three if you consider a 700 IW as an economic benefit. It has POlice State, and there is now Environmentalism. That's it. It only makes sense if those military benefits are necessary to help win the game. All the other lines available have immediately accessible economic benefits: tile yield changes on PP>RP, civics on Nationalism>Constitution. Universities and civics on Education>Lib/Economics. None of these benefits other than universities have a real hammer cost, the majority of hammer costs are from Classical and Medieval era buildings (which is one of hte reasons why building v warring decisions in base BtS slanted towards knights: the hammers were needed to build the economic buildings, and that lack of hammer tiles meant slaving was the only realistic way to get the buildings, so there was no happy cap remaining to actually build units and interact).

What I mean is, in an ancient era game, the tech pace and available economic resources will have led to a stratification of the players ability to respond effectively to invasion: ie some players are weak and can be conquered, other players will be ahead and just need to spend that bit of tech to get the uncounterable units. In smaller, 6-10 player games this is an expected outcome. I would expect to see a leading player grab those techs and then build an apparently insurmountable lead with the benefits from those techs.

I'm not designing these changes for those style games. These changes will have an effect that is more noticeable in two specific types of games: Renaissance era and later games where there are fewer turns available before players fight in earnest (and so Emancipation growth bonus is necessary to make the cottage v workshop question relevant to build a tech base rather than just research builds everywhere via instant high powered workshops) and in larger Ancient, Classical and Medieval era games where there are turns available for the stratification of players.

With that in mind, I don't think that testing these games in a small 8 or so player game is going to give any relevant information to judge the effectiveness. I also doubt that we have the player base that wants to play a larger, 15 player game, nevermind a replay of PB27 or PB18. And god knows that most players on this forum have extremely limited knowledge of late era start games.

Which leads me to the new problem of how to actually test these.

[Krill]

A further refinement:


The joys of night shifts are that many in number. At least, if you are a masochist. Thank fuck they are over for a few weeks, I can actually start to understand abstract concepts again. Probably worth posting a few thoughts following a period of reflection:

Tech: Industrialism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Assembly Line, Electricity. Optional Prerequisites: Fascism.

Fascism: Mandatory Prerequisite: Democracy. Optional Prerequisites: Communism. Base Cost 3300 (was 4800)

Democracy: Base cost 3500 (was 4900)

Communism: Base Cost 4000 (was 2600)

Units: Marine: Requires Assembly Line, Fascism, Rifling

Paratrooper: Requires Assembly Line, Fascism, Flight

I stand by these as necessary changes to make the civics work, and keep the units in the same (tech) position that they are in before any of the changes are made. This is just housekeeping to manage the unintended effects of the civics changes.

Civics: Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1h for Watermills and Windmills. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Feudalism. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Caste System: +1h for workshops. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Code of Laws. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Environmentalism: Provides +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Chemistry. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

These changes are basically just putting the free spec slots onto the old civics after swapping Emancipation and Environmentalism. I think it works, in terms of it making all of the civics viable just because it doesn't fuck up great people, but at the same time, I think it has gaps in what we want to happen: we want the labour civics to be strategic options that help us meet strategic (not tactical) goals. To be more specific: Caste stays as the workshop production civic, Environmentalism can return to the health civic (the easier to reach and maintain high pop civic) and Serfdom is...something. I don't see a reason to change the worker speed bonus, but it needs more than that. Then all the civics have to be balanced against each other, so they are roughly the same power level, even if one of thee civics is more niche.

One of the advantages of returning Environmentalism to a health bonus, and possibly giving it a food bonus to, say, windmills, is that it places it in an interesting position against Caste: Does an industrializing player find the time to invest into the health buildings, and keep caste for the extra base hammers than then go through the new multipliers, or do they go for the Environmentalism health bonus, ignore those additional costs, and just try to murder someone? This sort of decision also feeds into other economic decisions: the extra health and bit more food can enable higher population cities, with the spec slots: are those specialists ramped up with Rep?

This point matters: State Property will always want Caste for the hammers in base BtS and current RtR, I see no reason to change that, and it has no use of Universal Suffrage. But then how it fits in with either Representation or Police State is slightly more dependant on each individual game. We need to keep this in mind if we are making a mid to late game cottage spam/surge relevant, because we have to compare how we think the State Property style gameplay will compare and compete with a cottage spam.

None of the Labour civics matters if a player decides to go beyond, say, re-tuning a bunch of cities into cottage cities (with the city improvements already built), to just spamming them everywhere. Maybe Serfdom for windmill hammers. These three civics need to take this into account.

I think the easier way to approach the labour civic balance is to rebuild Environmentalism first, the look at Serfdom and Caste. Therefore:

Environmentalism: +4 health, +2 health from public transport. +1 gold, hammer per specialist, +1 hammer from lumber mill. +3 hammers, +2 commerce from forest preserves. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Chemistry. High upkeep. Labor civic.

Too much? In amount, probably. But forests aren't that common by Machinery, but the forest preserve gives 1 happy at Scientific Method and I don't see how making a flatland forest into a 2/4/3 (or 1/5/3 or 0/6/3) tile is a concern when we are talking about cottages being 2/1/8 tiles or workshops 2/4/0 tiles around this time. The lumber mill bonus is just a placeholder until they are replaced, and that's not exactly a worry either.

To be clear, the changes from base BtS are the change to a labour column civic, 3 hammers on the forest preserve, 1 hammer on the lumber mill, 1 gold and hammer on each spec, and losing 2 free health. It's actually quite honest to the original civic imo. Also, it's a high cost civic, we could definitely drop the cost to medium and drop the hammer on the specs. But the health and the forest preserve stuff is the core point of this civic, let cities grow bigger, or stay at a reasonable size and industrialize without the health cost. I think this is a good starting point for discussion, if not testing.

Civics: Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1 hammer from Watermills and Windmills. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Feudalism. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

Caste System: +1 hammer from workshops. Unlimited Scientist, Artist and Merchant slots. Requires Code of Laws. Medium upkeep. Labor civic.

The more I look at this, the less I think any changes are drastically needed on these civics. I think they will work well enough, that the Environmentalism change will be what players want to sit in, but it's High upkeep, and I think Caste ends up giving higher output. Serfdom falls off, but it doesn't matter if it's niche, it's actually viable to run it just from the extra spec slots.

The real change that I think needs consideration is this:

Emancipation: +100% Improvement Upgrade Rate Modifier. +1 food, -1 commerce from Town. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic). Requires Constitution. Low upkeep. Legal civic.

The logic is this: With Emancipation available at Constitution, it is available to use to rebuild (or build) a cottage base that has been pillaged, so we can remove the "Permenant" mark fronm Towns and Villages. As it costs nothing to drop into, it is not dependant on SPI or golden ages to be available so it is truly available to anyone to use, with no bogus, unexpected costs except opportunity costs of not running Nationhood or Vassalage (and opportunity cost of teching to Constitution).

The cost to the civic is that once the cottages are fully grown, it loses value, but the cost to leave the civic has to remain IMO: this is where it becomes a meaningful decision to not use it, but also gives other players a route to force a player to pay this cost. At the same time, it is possible to get stuck in the civic, and it should not be completely useless as this is unfun.

If it is necessary to make the civic have some power incase players are stuck in it, that power needs to come in at a later point, and not be immediately accessible. That means linking it to Towns or Villages (which would come on after 15 turns, which is too son IMO).

Next comes the power level: How valuable is the food? It's on a tile improvement that gives commerce. You can't draft, you could whip, but whipping off Towns seems counter productive and you'd have to get into Slavery, so you could get out of Emancipation. If you are not cottage spamming, what tile improvement are you using to sink the food into: mines and workshops? Hybrid cities do need a massive hammer investment in buildings to make benefit of city output. All this whilst drafting can allow a player to turn 17 food into 80 hammers or 35 food into 110 hammers, or vassalage is there to make sure units get odds.

No, I figure the real benefit from this is the ability to grow cities that bit larger for a much lower cost compared to running farms and spec slots, and then possible draft the cities down afterwards. But then happy issues exist, and the food cost commerce (it's not free food). Or run Environmentalism and try to sit on the economic output train to Infantry. But even so, I think this makes the civic work but it isn't broken. I'm not saying this is the only way to make Emancipation work either, but I don't think a hammer boost is right because I think it gets much closer to being a one right choice some of the time. I think the food cost gives it a bit more nuance.

I won't even mention the maths around growing already developed cottage cities whilst other cities grow new cottages.

Universal Suffrage: Towns +1 hammer. Can spend gold to finish production in a city. Requires Democracy. Medium upkeep. Government Civic.

Looking at this more, I don't think US has to change. It's fine as is, because the cash rush can be stupendously strong in a true cottage spam situation, which Emancipation can almost fall into in some circumstances.

Free Speech: +100% Culture in all cities. +1 commerce from village. +3 commerce from Town. Requires Economics. Medium upkeep. Economy Civic.

Same as above, I don't think it needs changing. Free Speech is on Liberalism. It's available at the same time as Free Market, and dependant on how Emancipation gets used it can very quickly surpass Free Market (which only reorgnaizes the good trade routes and just gives you newer, weaker ones, and is also on Economics that no longer obsoletes Castles). The culture is just...gravy.

The cost to running US/Emancipation/(Environmentalism)/Free Speech though is that even if you spam cottages everywhere, there is that period of weakness in getting everything online. It takes you nowhere near a single military advantage (Nationhood isn't a bonus if you are running Emancipation). Yes every tile will be at least food neutral, and you can grow, but you can't whip, you can't draft, and you have to land Kremlin for cashrush to be really, really good. So you blow up in pop, but you don't have rep specialists. Slavery is possibly, but that's a lot of work and again needs Kremlin and industrialization. Players should get torn apart if they tried to run this straight away.

[Krill]

There is something Charriu and I have been discussing: implementing tech cost scaling as per ToW, from Seven. I know we played it in PB27 but that was with a multitude of other changes and it always got played in the ToW pitboss games. My understanding is that players generally found it fixed the issue of ancient era tech costs on huge maps effectively.

I was thinking to revert the tech costs for the Ren and later eras and implement as per Seven. This is not something that affects the recent changes to the start tech costs as that is about Civ balance, but does anyone have any thoughts about this?

[superdeath]

There is something Charriu and I have been discussing: implementing tech cost scaling as per ToW, from Seven. I know we played it in PB27 but that was with a multitude of other changes and it always got played in the ToW pitboss games. My understanding is that players generally found it fixed the issue of ancient era tech costs on huge maps effectively.

I was thinking to revert the tech costs for the Ren and later eras and implement as per Seven. This is not something that affects the recent changes to the start tech costs as that is about Civ balance, but does anyone have any thoughts about this?

Stole this from GeneralKilCavalry, but i think it would be a nice boost to the wonder. Great Wall: Free walls in every city, in addition to normal bonus.

[Krill]

You had to post something like this when I'm on nights, didn't you? I could write a 1000 word answer to explain the choices around these sorts of changes, but I'm tired, and I need a bit of sleep. So I'm going with the lazy option until I can write something more thorough:

What is the reason for making that change? And what is the reason for making any change in a mod? (Hint: why are mods made in the first place, and what is the none existent mission statement for the RtR mod?)

[Krill]

Here is a selection of the tech costs discussion that has happened overthe past several years:

What would you guys think of the following change to the tech cost calculation? The goal here is threefold: 1) Increase later-game tech costs, and do it smoothly. 2) Decrease ancient tech costs a little bit to lessen importance of starting techs 3) Make different world sizes have a more useful effect on tech cost - currently, large world sizes increase the cost of all techs with the justification that players will have more land and thus cap out at a higher tech rate, but having more land doesn't help you with ancient and classical techs.

X is a percent bonus based on world size: 0% for duel up to 50% for huge. Current tech cost modification according to world size is simple: Cost gets multiplied by 1 + X. My proposal is to multiply cost by (1 + the following) instead:

((log(cost of tech) / log (40) - 1) * (1.2X + 0.3)

What does that do? The quick summary is it means the map size multiplier doesn't apply at all to the cheapest techs, applies about as usual to medium-cost techs like paper, and applies by a greater factor to expensive techs.

The first term, ((log(cost of tech) / log (40) - 1), is a number between 0 and 1.5 depending on how far down the tech tree we are. 40-cost techs are 0. Future tech is 1.5 (well, a tiny bit less, but close enough). Paper is approximately in the middle with 0.73. (We are caring about the geometric/multiplicative mean here, not the arithmetic mean. I don't consider advanced flight to be an average-cost tech because it costs half as much as future tech.) The second term, (1.2X + 0.3), is a number between 0.3 and 0.9 depending on the map size.

Multiply these two terms together and you get 0 for a super cheap tech, a number like 20-60% for a tech like paper (depending on map size), and a number like 45-135% for the top end stuff (future tech), depending on map size. Remember this is replacing a number that ranged from 0-50%.

Here's a link to a spreadsheet showing tech costs for variable world size / handicap / etc, compared to how they would look under this formula. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...sp=sharing
You should be able to make a copy of it so you can try out different variables.

From PB27, which used a combination of tech cost scaling, much lower start tech costs, extra commerce from the palace and huts

Classical techs are so damn early this game! Can't even blame the map for it; its a combination of huts, tech cost scaling, and the first-row techs all being 35 beakers. I hope that last change gets rolled back, its really too much. But, at least we should see some different strategies showing up this game compared to what we usually see.

Tech cost scaling is around a 20b discount on each ancient era tech. Classical techs, eg. anything around the cost of Mathematics, are pretty much the same cost as before. The reduction in starting tech costs adds another 20b discount to each of the 6 starting techs. I think one of those discounts was badly needed, thinking about the nightmare of PB18 tech costs. In comparison the ToW games still feel like you have to prioritise what techs you want, you can't just have any ancient era tech whenever you need it. Combined they're probably too much though, imagine starting PB29 with 120 free beakers in overflow.

Btw, I think Krill and REM(and anyone else I may have missed) have given up the same opportunity cost they would have had in any other game by teching IW; Mathematics. The relative cost of the two techs is pretty much the same as before. The reason they're going for IW first is because they're invited(or forced) to do so by the map, not the tech costs.

If you use the spreadsheet that Seven provided, the difference between the base BtS tech costs for the entire ancient era, and the formula Seven produced is 440 beakers on a huge map at monarch difficulty, which is about the cost of Maths. On a standard size map, it is 220 beakers which is less than IW. There are 17 techs in the ancient era. This is considering the change in tech costs for start techs all costing 45 base beakers (before adjustments for map size etc), keeping Archery at 40 base beakers as well, but inclusive of the cost increase of Meditation to match the cost of Polytheism.

FWIW, the start tech costs with Sevens formula cost 52 beakers apiece on huge or standard, for 204 beakers to research the remaining 4 start techs (as you always start with 2 anyway).

[Krill]

And one last thing:

Bureaucracy needs to be changed to no cost, Vassalage sticks at Medium Cost and the unit upkeep number (the amount you don't pay for doubled), and then Nationhood and Emancipation both need to be high cost IMO.

Those 4 civics have to be balanced against each other.

[Krill]

Stole this from GeneralKilCavalry, but i think it would be a nice boost to the wonder. Great Wall: Free walls in every city, in addition to normal bonus.

People mod games for many reasons. Some because they want to add new graphics, some to change user interfaces and make the game more usable. Then there are total conversion mods like FFH. All of these different types of mods have different criteria for why changes are made. I don't know or understand enough about these to give fair and competent answers about why changes are made in these mods.

Balance mods, though, I think I can give some form of an answer to.

Balance mods are primarily designed because whomever is making the changes thinks there are mistakes in the mod that lead to "poor balance". The aim should be "Preventing any of the component systems from being ineffective or otherwise undesirable when compared to their peers".

Some component systems are more important than others though. Tile improvements, Maintenance, Civics: the inputs and outputs of city and empire growth, that are then allocated into city improvements and units. Then there are the rules surrounding units interacting: combat mechanics, cultural control of land. These issues are the core of the game and are what the above quote is referring to. Thirdly you hit Traits, Civs and Wonders. These are actually peripheral issues that should not have massive effects on the games (specifically, not every civ, or every wonder has to be useful, and they should never be necessary). They are what add in niche options and strategies that are sometimes the right move and add variety to the game, they add replayability.

Which brings me to what you originally posted. The Great Wall. 200 hammers for 2 culture per turn, 2gpp and barbs not being a problem (and keeps them bottled up to get a HE unit). Available on an ancient era tech. I just don't get why it needs changing? Do you always want to build it? No, but it's a wonder, any wonder you always want to build is OP (Looking at you Mids). Does it have value exceeding it's 200 hammer cost? Yes, emphatically. The GPP alone is worth it if it gives you the first or contributes to the second GP (depending on when you want to trigger a GA). The safety in managing barbs differently and the reallocation of hammers can be more or less of the opportunity cost of the wonder (again, varies game to game, as a mechanic such as this is supposed to).

That mod has other mechanics changes that complicate matters, but I will make no judgement on the reasoning, validity, effectiveness, of the changes in that mod. But here, I repeat the question: Why?