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Baronjutter posted:Yeah it's sort of weird how you have to go to mods if you want fairly minor balance fixes. Balance I can understand because it's a constantly shifting space, but I don't really understand why they never really made any effort to fix the tactical AI like certain modders eventually did. I mean, I can think of one reason, but I guess I just still wish they did it anyway.
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Sep 27, 2016 20:41
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Speedball posted:Hindsight is always 20/20 with regards to game balance. Even with excessive player testing you need a full audience who's been playing obsessively to really figure out all the exploits. There are some pretty obvious ones that Firaxis pretty consistently misses, though, like "don't hand out fat science bonuses" and "no, really, don't hand out fat science bonuses."
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Sep 27, 2016 20:54
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Poil posted:+15% science in all your cities? I hope that's not as utterly broken as it sounds. At least organ printers in Beyond Earth need a considerable research investment. Not as bad as my preferred tech path, though. After the early game essentials like computing, robotics, and alien sciences, grab bionics, genetic engineering (I forget the exact tech name, the one that gives you gene gardens), and finish building an institute right after you finish research transgenics. When the institute event fires, grab alien evolution for all your farms to produce 1 science. That adds up fast. Gets more fun once you grab the tech that makes all farms produce another point of food and a point of energy, and then industrial ecology to make all your farms do 1 production as well. Before factoring in the terrain's own yield, satellites, quests, and wonders, you have farms that base produce 2 food, 1 energy, 1 production, and 1 science each.
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Sep 27, 2016 21:01
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Gabriel Pope posted:There are some pretty obvious ones that Firaxis pretty consistently misses, though, like "don't hand out fat science bonuses" and "no, really, don't hand out fat science bonuses."
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Sep 27, 2016 21:36
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I really hope someone figures out an interesting science system for strategy games because flat "science points" you spend on a tree always leads to science snowballing, while on the other hand you have Paradox games where everything is designed so that science is barely a thing and it's almost impossible to get ahead and even if you do it just means you have a +18% bonus to do shock damage when flanking an enemy fleet that has a lower leadership value than your leader's morale level but only when certain events trigger, scaled with your available force pool and number of provinces. I'd love some game some time that actually tried to model actual science and progress in a realistic but still interesting way.
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Sep 27, 2016 21:52
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Baronjutter posted:I really hope someone figures out an interesting science system for strategy games because flat "science points" you spend on a tree always leads to science snowballing, while on the other hand you have Paradox games where everything is designed so that science is barely a thing and it's almost impossible to get ahead and even if you do it just means you have a +18% bonus to do shock damage when flanking an enemy fleet that has a lower leadership value than your leader's morale level but only when certain events trigger, scaled with your available force pool and number of provinces. The issue with this is scientific progress doesn't really go in a straight line or a web or anything like that. Something like that would be a game by itself. Sometimes you just have to lose something for gameplay reasons (the reason why Civ doesn't do stuff like supply lines for war)
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Sep 27, 2016 22:03
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Poil posted:It's almost like some kind of inevitable stupidity/bane of the 4x genre, someone always gets a tech boosts that just catapults them ahead to better production, growth, money and armies purely by being so much more advanced. Endless Legend compensated for this by having its two science-based factions being up against factions that were already obscenely good at growth, production, money, or unit-spamming... Plus one science-based faction could only improve its science gain by expending money to make more science points come out of the ground (that's another way they balance it; in Civ, Science is a function of growth, so boosting your growth through the roof always leads to more science) In the early iterations of Civilization, science was funded by taxes, so you needed a good economy and the ability to balance it against your population's needs. They kinda did away with that in the Civ V generation. Speedball fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 22:02
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I think Scythia is getting hit with the nerf hammer first I know they're moving away from resource requirements but 2 for 1 unit seems insane.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:10
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Speedball posted:Endless Legend compensated for this by having its two science-based factions being up against factions that were already obscenely good at growth, production, money, or unit-spamming... Plus one science-based faction could only improve its science gain by expending money to make more science points come out of the ground (that's another way they balance it; in Civ, Science is a function of growth, so boosting your growth through the roof always leads to more science) That just meant that taxes were science for all intents and purposes, essentially turning upkeep and happiness problems directly into science penalties (because that was practically the only time you'd turn the slider down from max science.) Making science a function of trade versus a function of growth is pretty much a lateral move; either way, whatever's tied to science becomes The Most Important Thing. Baronjutter posted:I really hope someone figures out an interesting science system for strategy games because flat "science points" you spend on a tree always leads to science snowballing, while on the other hand you have Paradox games where everything is designed so that science is barely a thing and it's almost impossible to get ahead and even if you do it just means you have a +18% bonus to do shock damage when flanking an enemy fleet that has a lower leadership value than your leader's morale level but only when certain events trigger, scaled with your available force pool and number of provinces. I was hoping Eurekas would kind of do that but yeah not so much. What I really want is the existing system, but in addition to science generation make it so e.g. culture generation adds beakers to researching culture techs, military experience generation adds beakers to military techs, and so on. Something so that somehow you can at least theoretically have a strategy other than "science everyone into submission" or "stomp everyone in 1000 BC before they can science you into submission."
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Sep 27, 2016 22:20
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Gabriel Pope posted:What I really want is the existing system, but in addition to science generation make it so e.g. culture generation adds beakers to researching culture techs, military experience generation adds beakers to military techs, and so on. Something so that somehow you can at least theoretically have a strategy other than "science everyone into submission" or "stomp everyone in 1000 BC before they can science you into submission." The new culture tree does do that a little. I believe the ability to form corps and armies are in the culture tree, so even if you are behind in science you can at least combine two of your obsolete units and have a fair fight against a unit one era ahead.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:31
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Imperialism 1 had the simplest and most straightforward science system: At specific points throughout the game, a new technology would be available for purchase by everyone. If you had the money, you bought it. If you didn't, you had to wait until you did. Sometimes you had to choose between two (or more) technologies if you didn't have enough cash for all. It was a completely uninspired system, but unlike Civ 1-4 where you could just pump as much money as you possibly could into beakers and would translate into more science, in this game you get an artificial ceiling to science spending, and it just requires you to make sure to have enough money to buy new techs as they become available.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:32
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Meanwhile, if you look at the real world, advanced nations are ones with better infrastructure and a higher proportion of highly-educated citizens. The number of discrete "I know how to do this special thing and you don't" things is usually relatively small and mostly just results in incremental advantages over other nations, kind of like trade secrets. Maybe one way you could do science in a 4x is to have scientific achievements be global, applying to everyone. Being a more advanced nation would get you a few-turns head start on them (so instead of Gunpowder unlocking on turn 100, it'd unlock on turn 97, or whatever), but there'd be no snowball effect, just that incremental advantage (i.e. if the next tech unlocks at turn 110, you'd still have to wait for turn 107 in your advanced nation). Of course, you'd still have to be able to afford building whatever the tech unlocks, and that's where being an advanced nation helps you: by having a skilled worker base, strong economy, and good infrastructure, you can actually leverage the newly-unlocked technology. Meanwhile, that backwater nation you're currently steamrolling certainly knows how to build musketmen; they just lack the practical ability to do so. Maybe in such a game, you could still do research / generate beakers / whatever; it's just that this would just move forward the point at which everyone unlocks the next tech. So you'd do research if you want to accelerate the game pace, or if you feel you have a window during which you can uniquely leverage an upcoming tech.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:57
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La venta really needs to be renamed Tobasco because that's a way cooler name.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:03
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There are plenty of rubber banding mechanics in Civ 5 for science - trade routes, espionage, discounting for prior discovery, the Scholars in Residence resolution, maybe another I've forgotten. What they need is more, or a mechanic that kicks in a bit stronger when the gap widens.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:13
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Brannock posted:It's extremely encouraging that Firaxis has moved towards meatier bonuses instead of the tiny incremental stuff. So true. It's not a 1:1 comparison but Rome 2 Total War did the opposite and went all in on lousy "<5% bonuses!!! Everything is a 3% bonus! Look at this modifier list that extends so long it breaks the UI: It's full of 4% bonuses!!!" and it killed the game for me. Morzhovyye fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 23:23
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The biggest problem wit runaway science in my experience was the fact that you could just beeline to libraries/universities/public schools and just zoom past everyone. Making research not feed into itself that way would probably be the best way to avoid the problem, but that would feel kinda weird when there's buildings for everything but science.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:35
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:There are plenty of rubber banding mechanics in Civ 5 for science - trade routes, espionage, discounting for prior discovery, the Scholars in Residence resolution, maybe another I've forgotten. Meh. If you get behind that far, why not just drop the hammer on you, and you immediately become a vassal.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:37
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cheetah7071 posted:The biggest problem wit runaway science in my experience was the fact that you could just beeline to libraries/universities/public schools and just zoom past everyone. Making research not feed into itself that way would probably be the best way to avoid the problem, but that would feel kinda weird when there's buildings for everything but science. There would be some building for some resource that turns into science which you would bee-line for anyway. Run away science isn't a problem assuming their is a short-term trade off, i.e. the Civ4 axe/chariot rush vs the Buearcracy Slingshot.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:39
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SirKibbles posted:I think Scythia is getting hit with the nerf hammer first I know they're moving away from resource requirements but 2 for 1 unit seems insane. I don't think their bonuses are too game-breaking if taken on their own, but taken together it sounds like it can get out of control really fast. Oh you basically get double production of light cavalry units all the time. Okay, that's fine and good. Oh, but you also get double production of your UA, a mobile ranged unit (are normal chariot archers even a thing in Civ 6 for anyone else?) that doesn't even require horses. Okay, that's pretty hairy. Oh, and your units also get +5 strength against wounded units all the time, so your light cavalry/horse archer spam is even stronger and more oppressive on the whole. But hey, this is still a cavalry focused army, which means that they're susceptible to counter attacks as units take damage from slamming and can't defend very well, right? Oh wait, your units also heal when killing enemy units. Granted this is all theorycrafting since the game isn't out yet but combat looks similar enough to Civ 5 that in principle we should be able to predict how things will play out. They really do sound oppressive in the early game in a similar way that the Huns are and I have no doubt they're just going to be a pain in the rear end to deal with. Or very fun to play AS, that will be true too. E: Powercrazy posted:There would be some building for some resource that turns into science which you would bee-line for anyway. I think runaway science wasn't as much of a problem in Civ 4 because there were a bunch of usable strategies and the tech tree was very nonlinear, much more so than Civ 5. You didn't have to focus too hard on scienceing everything super hard because there were a ton of different potential ways to generate commerce/gold/science and you could typically get the techs you needed to do your chosen strategy and backfill the unneeded stuff later when your civ starts to take off. Super Jay Mann fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Sep 28, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 23:52
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Powercrazy posted:Run away science isn't a problem assuming their is a short-term trade off, i.e. the Civ4 axe/chariot rush vs the Buearcracy Slingshot. The axe rush you mention is kind of a balancing factor, but IME axe rushes were targets of opportunity, considering the amount of time it takes to move an army around in the early game in Civ4. You just hoped that your target didn't build much military to stop you with. Really the problem IMO is that you aren't sacrificing enough if you want to specialize in science. Ideally the guy that focuses on science is doing so at the expense of military, economy, expansion, etc. and all of those areas should give benefits proportional to investing in science. So if you go whole-hog on military then you should be just as strong as the science guy, because your hordes of crappy units can beat out his tiny number of elite units. And if you go whole-hog on economy, then you can beat the science guy too, because you can actually leverage the techs you know, whereas he knows tons of techs but doesn't have the infrastructure to put them into play effectively.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:58
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I also think Scythia will be nerfed. Imagine multi-player. A human brain with healing double free horse units next door to you. There's probably a near 100% chance you can defend them off, but you would be way behind when it's over, and Scythia will just fine because they were getting two for one production. Need game in hand to really see, of course, but two-for-one that early in the game is scary.
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Sep 28, 2016 00:24
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I don't think it's that significant as Saka are also twice the hammers that Spearmen are, and even with their wounded bonus they're at a significant disadvantage if the Spearmen force melee. To be a real force Scythia would need proper cavalry, which are now in the Classical era and still require resources to build.
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Sep 28, 2016 00:35
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I've always thought it would be cool if they made the cultural tree of roughly equal importance to the science tree, so that instead of there just being one obvious thing to sink stuff into there would be at least two. Probably an order of magnitude harder to balance though.
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Sep 28, 2016 02:32
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MMM Whatchya Say posted:I've always thought it would be cool if they made the cultural tree of roughly equal importance to the science tree, so that instead of there just being one obvious thing to sink stuff into there would be at least two. That is exactly what they're doing in Civ 6. They shifted a bunch of "cultural" techs like government, organization, and art into a Cultural tree, and you learn them by building culture. Clarste fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Sep 28, 2016 |
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Sep 28, 2016 02:39
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For some reason I thought the last time this was discussed the conclusion was that wasn't happening or something? I can't remember what's real and what's speculation anymore.
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Sep 28, 2016 02:46
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Ah yeah, here it wasEiba posted:I had gotten the impression, maybe from that Quill118 video or something else I read, that the culture tech tree will pretty much just unlock "cards" that you can slot into your government for different bonuses. Though I suppose it would unlock the governments themselves too. But we'll have to see how powerful that is when the game is released
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Sep 28, 2016 02:52
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Well, some of the early examples were than you unlock cultural-type buildings like Coliseum in the Culture tree, as well as things like combining units into armies. Even if it doesn't directly unlock units, it's still a tree.
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Sep 28, 2016 02:55
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There are a lot of cards for your government, but you also unlock units, districts, wonders, military options and government types, with the last one especially letting you leverage a lot more slots for your cards so you can do more things than your opponent.
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Sep 28, 2016 02:57
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Hey, well nevermind then, Glad to hear it! I thought that was the case initially but the thread consensus early on was that it was a lesser tree to science.
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Sep 28, 2016 03:04
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Scientific advancements should spawn randomly, being weighted towards larger/more developed civs, then spread on a civilization level by distance and speed up as technology progressed. You could have techs appear in more than one place at a time, of course. This would also allow for "backwards" civs that are geographically isolated. It would make espionage interesting- if you have some key tech you could assign a shot to "protect state secrets" or if someone has something you want you could target them specifically. In the later game you could build things to help techs spawn in your civ or even research specific techs (that still will only have a certain chance to appear). Glass of Milk fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Sep 28, 2016 |
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Sep 28, 2016 03:13
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"You country's top minds have suddenly hit upon the idea of Chivalry! You may now train knights using this advanced new technology."
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Sep 28, 2016 03:31
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Well hopefully it would be something like, "A new code of conduct for your nation's mounted warriors has developed, interspersing martial valor with honorable action. The result is Chivalry, and we may now train powerful and noble Knights."
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Sep 28, 2016 04:03
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I think the end result of the split trees is that the science tree will be the better of the two, but if you really want to hit science hard, you won't have any flexibility. The new government system is a major part of the culture tree, and it looks pretty awesome. It allows you to adjust many aspects of your civ every several turns, which will allow you to specifically deal with any science-based assholes you are currently dealing with. I'm sure it will require a balance patch a couple of months from now, but the skeleton for the science vs culture fight is there.
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Sep 28, 2016 04:16
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When there are policies like "Chivalry: +100% Production towards Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial era heavy and light cavalry units", "Serfdom: newly trained Builders gain +2 actions", or "Natural Philosophy: +100% Campus district adjacency bonuses" on the table, I'm sure you won't want to neglect Culture.
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Sep 28, 2016 04:22
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Yea. Culture is not the same beast as Civ 5 at all. In Civ 5 you just needed some level of culture to get the best policies at a reasonable pace. Getting more culture had serious diminishing returns as policy quality and cost increased. In Civ 6 culture is a completely parallel path, complete with economic and military bonuses. You won't be able to ignore it and you will be incentivized to get as much as possible. There's even wonders and buildings there to reward the player who goes hard for culture.
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Sep 28, 2016 04:27
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Balance chat reminded me of how MadDjinn was bending Beyond Earth over his knee on the livestreams while the dev/community guy looked on in horror.
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Sep 28, 2016 04:36
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Glass of Milk posted:Scientific advancements should spawn randomly, being weighted towards larger/more developed civs, then spread on a civilization level by distance and speed up as technology progressed. You could have techs appear in more than one place at a time, of course. This would also allow for "backwards" civs that are geographically isolated. This is basically what Crusader Kings does except techs are hilariously low impact with a few key exceptions
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Sep 28, 2016 04:48
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TASTE THE PAIN!! posted:Balance chat reminded me of how MadDjinn was bending Beyond Earth over his knee on the livestreams while the dev/community guy looked on in horror. Is that when he used the advantage of not being attacked by aliens to set units near alien nests and force them to attack another player because the could only move toward that player?
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Sep 28, 2016 04:52
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StashAugustine posted:This is basically what Crusader Kings does except techs are hilariously low impact with a few key exceptions And the techs spread by province which sort of makes sense but is also infuriating when it works against you. An abstraction would definitely benefit Civ in that regard. It would definitely make the science victory condition more interesting if you had to steal and plunder your way towards required techs to build a spaceship.
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Sep 28, 2016 08:24
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MMM Whatchya Say posted:Ah yeah, here it was They seem to have a pretty sensible division between physical technology and cultural/organizational ideas. You may learn how to make a new weapon in the tech tree, but you can get pretty significant bonuses from the way you use it in the culture tree. Corps and armies seem like the most significant military advantages you can directly get from the culture tree so far. You can afford to basically be an era behind in military tech if you've got a higher level of organization than your neighbors. But the cards that give you discounts on producing units and bonuses in combat seem like they could be just as important in the end.
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