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

[Charriu]

You can also find some information in my curious civ player segment (see my signature). But those topics are more niche, advanced etc.

[Ramkhamhaeng]

Thrawn, in Civ4 we have access to all game mechanics of the game because the DLL code is public. A cornucopia of information!
So most of the game mechanics were discussed in the past decade(s). The problem is to find & order the information. It is spread over multiple forums and wiki's. Sometimes it is easier to look directly at the code and Charriu made this in the mentioned thread.

In my opinion the knowledge of the mechanics does not help as much as expected to master Civ4. Reading the actual game is more important and this requires to play a few Civ4 matches.

The difference between BTS and CloseToHome is low. That's the spirit of this mod. So you can select both to learn playing Civ4. An advantage of CtH is that it implements some changes required for Pitboss MP games. No need for this if you're playing against AI.
Other communities can prefer other, more complex modifications. I would still suggest to start with BTS unless you want directly starts with multiplayer games. In this case just take the setting the older players use, I assume.

[Ramkhamhaeng]

20 years ago I could also play 3-4 weeks nonstop but now need to be more efficient...

Reading stories of good players could be efficient.

[civac2]

The advantage CTH has is automatic BUG integration even to just get to know the game. Without BUG the UI is a bit lacking.

[Lazteuq]

I definitely think CtH is a good for singleplayer, I don't see a reason not to use it. That reminds me, I've noticed the new leaders Lieu Ye and San Martin have been really strong in my small sample of games. I'm really curious what AIs they're based on.

[Charriu]

To be honest I didn't pay much attention to their AI scripts

[Tarkeel]

Returning to the topic of boosing INDustrious, here are three options (with more details in my PB58 spoiler-thread):

1) +100% production of National Wonders
This should give a small boost throughout the entire game. Yes, there's not that many national wonders you want to build, but several of them are best built in low-production cities where the bonus nevertheless is meaningfull.

2) +100% production for levees
This will give a small boost in the later stages of the game. It will not make a difference for most games, but it should turn levees into something that is worth building.

3) Workers build tile improvements 25% faster
This will give a small but noticeable boost in the early to mid game. It should make farms and mines complete in one fewer turn, while leaving roads and chops at normal speed.

The last one might be a bit controversial, and I'm not even sure that IND needs an early game advantage, but this would be a fitting way of achieving that.

[Miguelito]

Returning to the topic of boosing INDustrious, here are three options (with more details in my PB58 spoiler-thread):

1) +100% production of National Wonders
This should give a small boost throughout the entire game. Yes, there's not that many national wonders you want to build, but several of them are best built in low-production cities where the bonus nevertheless is meaningfull.

2) +100% production for levees
This will give a small boost in the later stages of the game. It will not make a difference for most games, but it should turn levees into something that is worth building.

3) Workers build tile improvements 25% faster
This will give a small but noticeable boost in the early to mid game. It should make farms and mines complete in one fewer turn, while leaving roads and chops at normal speed.

The last one might be a bit controversial, and I'm not even sure that IND needs an early game advantage, but this would be a fitting way of achieving that.

I like 1), even if it may not do the whole job. Your point about NW often being built in hammer poor cities seems valid.
2), shrug.
3) seems very strong, and isn't close to home. It affects everything besides roads and chops.

[Charriu]

1) is already on my mind and I'm pretty sure I will implement it. Main reason for me to increase it to 100% is to offset the wonder resource modifier change for IND players:

- Resource modifiers: All wonders that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.


Honestly it might be even worth thinking about the resource modifiers for national wonders for all players. Should the resource modifiers only apply to world wonders or to all kinds of wonders?

2) while thematic I doubt it will have much of an impact.

3) I think it is thematic, but so would be a production bonus towards workers like the one EXP has in BtS. I would rather implement the production bonus as it is easier to do and well known. But I feel like this is too strong for IND.

After all and as you have pointed out in your thread. One true strength of IND is being able to build forges a lot easier.

Civac also mentioned the following change in your spoiler thread:

- Fail-gold: You never get fail-gold if you also completed the wonder somewhere else (so no National Wonder fail-gold, or doubling up on a wonder to guarantee yourself a paycheck. The game still informs you that you received "0 gold" from your hammers).

You can just reenable failgold which is probably sufficient and also close to home. Apparently, many players here are against that but I have been unable to figure out why. This is particular baffling in light of the fact that CTH includes the BUG fix/change to allow for failgold from overflow.

I think I mentioned this the last time we talked about this here. I'm not totally against the failgold. I took it from RtR because to me it felt like the right thing. I'm tempted to make a survey to see how many players really think about this changelog entry.

[civac2]

There were several detractors who didn't want it reenabled. May well be a majority.

Miguelito mentioned that failgold from wonders would make it easier to recover from crashing your economy in the expansion phase. This is somewhat true. The art of keeping you economy afloat early on allows for expression of skill and is a great gameplay element. On the other hand the BUG fix for excess overflow already detracts from this element to an extent.