MOD: The BALANCER

[TimothyP]

Okay this mod works fine it just didn't unzip everything properly into the right folders so I did it manually. There was then a long pause which I thought meant the game froze but eventually the game continued....So far so good!

[monkspider]

Ugh, I wish I could do more, but this is finals time of the year, and I have had nary a moment of free time. I appologize.
I truly thank all who have kind words to say about our work, it is much appreciated. Thank you all very much.

[Elucidus]

Hey guys,

I am still here, although I may not have time to read Yaga's post and below it, as I have a seminar I have to leave for in four minutes. I will be happy to continue the work until Monkspider can return, with his permission of course (could you send me your latest and greatest Monkspider?). I have had some ideas, that I would like your opinions on.


Here is most of them:
(It is a word document, sorry but no internet at home still)

[skar760]

First of all thanks for this great mod, most of it is really great. BUT: I had 50 cities, with an average of 2 defending units each and a stand-by attacking force of about the same size (just in case the Americans one day wanted all the fine iron on their land for themselves ) I changed my gov to democracy at that time, this causing my annual cashflow plunge from +7/turn to -80/turn. I had to adjust my tax rate to 70%! Since I was playing on a huge map science would now only come every 12-19 turns while the Americans whose military forces more than outnumbered me still got their advances every 7-9 turns, even though being a democracy as well. Of course I was hoplessly backwards after a short period of time.
My question: Democracy and huge maps are not the best mixture, I guess? Or what mistake did I make? Changing to democracy was my standard action to boost science now it will leave me either bankrupt or trying to harm tanks with catapults - which would only work if the tank crew was laughing to death on the effort, but as far as I know this has not (yet) been implemented in your mod

Greetings

skar

[Yaga]

My 1.5 Report

Played through twice now, once straight 1.51, and another time with some modifications of my own.

A couple of things I found which have been unbalanced:
- With coal being present with metalurgy, and therefore seen before Industrialization, I was able to build the Ironworks about 5 advances too soon. Checked the civ3mod.bic, and there's no Advance requirement for Ironworks. Simply adding "Industrialization" would be sufficent to fix this.

- Horses still require a civ advance, The Wheel, to discover them. I'd recommend having no requirement to see the horsies. Afterall, it's kinda hard to miss a herd of animals. I could go into a "Guns, Germs and Steel" diatribe on why Horses are required for the discovery of The Wheel, but I won't.

- Scientific Civs get a free advance at the beginning of each era. These advances are Monotheism, Nationalism, and Ecology. Now, i don't know if it's supposed to be random, but it seems to be only these three that are received. The problem I forsee is that now that Statue of Liberty is under Nationalism, and Sgt. Pepper's under Ecology, this gives Scientific Civs a 5-12 turn advantage over other Civs in their building. While I've no recommendation for Statue of Liberty, I did have an epiphany for Sgt. Peppers: Put it under Radio. Considering the culture-spreaders that radio and later television were, this seems obvious to me.

- "All as road" for the Scout also seems unbalancing: Playing those kooky Iroquois, I was able to discover the *whole* of the world before all the other civs had managed to found their second or third city. Also, since I shared my bulk of it with non-Expansionist civs, I managed to bag a bunch of free Civ advances from goodie huts - all the way up to Literature.

- I *really* like being able to see resources prior to the advances that previously revealed them. It's also more realistic, imho, as without knowing where coal or saltpeter were, how would a Civ try to exploit the resource? Also very good to aid in making decisions on tech research: I discovered that I didn't have any Saltpeter within my borders, so I opted against Gunpowder and went for Theology.

- 2gp / turn unit support on Republic was, as I expected, crippling. With only 24 units, including all those workers, I managed to go from a nice 6.3.1 with +54 gold per turn and 11 turn advances to 7.2.1 at -7 with 11 turn advances. Under Democracy is was much more manageable. I also noted that not all civs jumped on the Democracy Bandwagon as soon as it came out, notably the militaristic and aggressive civs.

- I must have corrupted my civ3mod.bic somehow, as the Statue of Liberty cost 0 shields. Could someone be so kind as to let me know what the real cost is?

- On the whole, I throughly enjoyed the game, and thought it was a decent improvement over 1.4x

--

Now for my own list of suggestions: I made these changes in my Civ3mod.bic, and played them through the Industrial Age, and found them to be a little better, imho. Anyone who doesn't want to go through the bother of making the changes themselves, feel free to let me know if you want to dl the bic:

Governments:
- Monarchy no longer immune to Plant Spy
- Republic unit cost reduced to "1" per unit per turn
- Repulblic and Democracy Diplomats made "regular"
- Democracy Spies made "regular"

Units:
- Catapault, Cannon, Arty and R.Arty all airliftable
- Cruise Missles can now be Loaded
- Galley Movement lowered to original 3, to try and keep civs a little more contained in the early years
- Frigate movement increased to 6
- Ironclad to 6, and marked "Sinks in Ocean"
- Transport, Carrier, Battleship, and Nuke Sub movements increased to 8
- Sub to 6
- Destroyer and Aegis to 10
- ZOC added to all mounted Unique units (eg Rider, Cossack, Elephant) and to Knight.
- Removed "Oil" requirement for Modern Armor, as "synthetic materials" should include synthetic oil
- War Elephant now available with Monarchy (as opposed to Chivalry)
- Swordsman and Longbowman had "upgrade to" flag checked, which allows them to properly upgrade to Riflemen
- Legionairre now upgrades to Rifelman, too
- Scouts now have two movement, and are not "all as road"

Wonders and Improvements:
- Carnagie Steel Trust expires with Electronics
- Engineering now allows irrigation from non-fresh water. This is partly because I play a lot of Archepeligo maps, which rarely have rivers around. Also, the AI "cheats" and can irrigate from costal tiles (known bug) - since they usually start doing this around the time Engineering is available, and since Engineering allows for artesian wells and other such goodies, I figured this was a good place for this change.
- Hills can now be irrigated. I don't know why this was changed from Civ II. South America, Japan, and China all have complex step-irrigation of hillsides. It is not very efficent, but shold be an option. Provides 1 food.
- Horses have no requirement for visibility. Considering they are a valued resource for many, many units, including a number of Unique units, I figured this would be a good addition to the changes made by Monk and Eluc.
- Coal appearance rate increased from 120 to 130
- Game now provides 1 shield. Given that Tundra is a *****, and that Cattle provide 2 food and 1 shield, I figured this was needed.
- Factories have "industial" flag checked.
- Iron Works requires Industrialization
- Magellans Voyage provides a Harbor in *all* cities, not just Continental cities.
- Wall Street has Commercial trait
- Reichstag now requires Military Acadamy. This severly limits this Wonder's building, and I feel for the better. Having no requirements of the Military Acadamy, and putting one in each city, was a little too much. Am also hoping this fixes the bug that doesn't actually cause the Reichstag to function properly.
- Statue of Liberty requires Nationalism. Needs a better place still, and I'm think of "Industrialization."
- Sgt Peppers now requires Radio
- Removed "Resistant to Propaganda" flag from City Assembly - since these effects continue after gov't change, I thought it might be too much
- Added "reduced war weariness" to City Assembly to balance
- Removed cultural penalty from Stock Exchange
- Re-Education Camps reduce war weariness

MISC:
- Reduced tax collectors and scientists to 2 from 3, each

--

So, those are my thoughts. Comments?

[WesW]

Just a few comments, since I have not played with the 1.5 version yet...

I agree that Republic needs to go back to 1 gold per unit. When you go from Monarchy to Rep, you lose your free units, and that is enough of an increase in cost. I really agree with all of Yaga's observations. I don't agree with all his suggestions, but most make sense. All the gov ones I second, as well as all the improvements and wonders changes.
I would not make Ironclad's coastal ships. I know that the unit looks like the Monitor class from the Civil War, but all the European nations built armor-plated steam ships as their deep water fleets for the last half of the 19th century.
I would also vote against increasing ship movement any more.

I just read thru Elucidus' ideas doc. Going from the bottom up:
Instead of expanding the tech tree, I would increase the cost of techs so that they match the proper timeline. You must trade techs to keep up with the other civs anyway, so why not increase the cost to factor this into account?
The Citizens ideas all sound good. I hope you can implement them one day.
Hills should be irrigatible (sp?), and add +1. I would also support irrigation without fresh water with Engineering. This handicap is a real annoyance, esp. if the AIs cheat.
A Fund gov could fit in, with superior food prod and/or city growth ala the Longevity effect, Communism-like corruption, free units and commerce. I have not studied the govs like you guys have, so these are just tentative recommendations.
I support all the General Settings suggestions, except the shield-to-gold ratio change and the Default Difficulty level change. I really don't see the benefit in the level change, other than to make us feel better about ourselves.

One new recommendation, if possible: increase the amount of stored food necessary to grow. I do not normally bother to build Granaries until I have Hospitals, and sometimes not even then. The old way of an extra row per city size always seemed to work right to me.
Also, I would recommend increasing the cost of Settlers and Colonists by 10 shields.
The increase in city growth and the reduced cost of Settlers has more than negated the extra pop lost when a Settler is created. ICS seems worse to me now than ever before.

Also, I read something in the Biltz mod news item about upgrading Armies. If this is possible, please implement it.

[Rhuarc]

This mod seems like the closest one to what I am looking for. Wes, I am just wondering if you are planning on doing any modding for Civ3? I played your mods on all of the other civ games and really loved them, and I am looking for a mod that concentrates on improving the whole entire game, and after it becomes possible including new units and things. So basically I want a mod that is like what you did for the other ones. Is this pretty close? THanks a lot for all of the hard work everyone has done on modding civ3. Is the balancer mod going to continue being updated after patches are released and are you going to do things like changing units and civs and thigns like that? I really think that someone needs to do this for civ3 like Wes did for the other ones. Thanks a lot!!

[mavmcleod]

Re: My 1.5 Report

Originally posted by Yaga
- Removed "Oil" requirement for Modern Armor, as "synthetic materials" should include synthetic oil

IMHO, Oil should be required for nearly all modern age units (Tanks, Arty, Planes, Ships,...) 'cause there're really important things you can make out of oil. For example GAS and KEROSENE !!!

Of cause you wouldn't need oil for the nuclear powered units, so why not have a nuclear career, but than we would also need nuclear powered planes....

OTOS, I implemented all the other changes you suggested and I like it very much, Yaga.
Could it be you took the best out of The Balancer & the Blitz mods and mixed them?

I can't wait for the patch.
Hope it doesn't mess up the changes of the mods.

Thanks for reading....

Maverick

[Mkinser]

Question about the files

I believe that I read in one of these posts that to use this mod all I need to do is unzip ALL of the files into the root directory. Is this correct?

Or should the Civilopedia and other text documents go into a different directory and the art work into the Art directory?

I am hoping to play this with this mod tonight when I get home and I would really like to have it work.

Thanks....

[Yaga]

Good points

Maverick : I agree with the Oil requirement: Forgot about gas I guess it all belies my wish that there were some greater way to determine a Civ's usage of resources beyond "one is enough," esp since the disappearance is a matter of chance. Oh well, it's beyond modding capabilities. Also, I was unaware of the status of other mods; I downloaded the Longwinded Changes, since it was the first out, but have played Balancer since v1.0. I like it so much, I havn't really bothered to look at any others

Mkinser: I used winzip and simply unloaded everything into the root Civilization III directory and had no problems. Keep in mind you'll need the 1.51 civ3mod.bic that was posted later in the forums.

Wes: Good point about the Ironclads. I did have The Monitor in mind when I thought of this, and I'd agree that that flag should be unchecked. When you said "disagee with increasing ship movmeent anymore," I'm wondering if you meant beyond my changes, or if the increases I used are too great? I've been playing around with figures, trying to keep them, well, balanced and am curious about your thoughts. My main concern is that the ships be able to keep up with armies when advancing along the coast, and to be able to move across a significant amount of ocean in one turn. Since I like playing with a lot of ocean and many small islands, I'm sure my gaming experience differs. Your thoughts?

I also agree with you re: graneries. Increasing the cost of settlers may help the ICS-esque landgrab. This is, actually, one of the reasons why I play with lost of landmasses - I've had a few games with a "New World" and have enjoyed the settling & taming of that place. It's really interesting if you set Barbarians at Raging Hordes.

Am also going to try a couple of different things to that already posted and play around a bit trying to create new units and new techs. Someone mentioned adding to the tech tree; I'd like to see more insular approaches that require a significant investiture, like a sub-tree off Ecology that allows for significan polution reduction, one off of Education that provides increased research, etc. Anyways, back to my real world of work n' s***.

Take care all,
Yaga

Oh - anyone have the cost of Statue of Liberty? Mine's still at 0...

[Elucidus]

Hey guys,

Sorry for being out of touch. My Cable company has been giving me the run around.

I am still working on the Mod and I am sure Monkspider will rejoin soon enough.

I like a lot of what Yaga has suggested and I have been looking at getting the armies to have the unload command. I have been working on other things as well, but without internet access and most of my house-hold goods still in boxes it has been a slow time, for that I apologize.

I'll see what I can do and will have more time tomorrow.

BTW, Statue of liberty price should be (this is from memory now) 80, I believe.

[Mkinser]

No Go for 1.51 for me....

I attempted to use 1.51 last night. When I unzipped the file, it created a BALANCER subdirectory. Being a fairly intelligent person, I just moved each file from the BALANCER directories to the appropriate CIV3 directories. And then I attempted to start playing.....

Simple level as the Russians so that I could exploit the Colonist unit. Settle my first city....click on Colonist to build and....crash to desktop. It caused a fault in the exe file. OK....reboot the system and try again. Same thing...

Try one more time...but before I build a city I check the civilopedia. Most of the new wonders don't have pictures attached to them, they are just yellow squares. Same for some of the units. Build a city but this time I don't build a colonist. I just build a warrior. Play for about 10 turns just investigating the area. I save my game before I attack the French. I attack and get my butt kicked. So I reload the game....nope....Error with the save file. Try to use the autosave version....nope...error after error with some bad tile messages.

So, I reboot. Uninstall and reinstall CIV3 completely. I think I will stick with either version 1.1 or try the Korn Blitz mod for the next round.

Thanks any way though....

[Yaga]

Hey Mkinser,

Don't worry about the Balancer sub directory. There're some things in it, but its contents don't need to be moved.

Yaga

[Mkinser]

Please elaborate Yaga....

Some things don't need to be moved?

Could you be so kind as to tell me what I need to move where...as far as the Balancer is concerned.

Thanks....

[Mkinser]

1 more thing....

This is just a suggestion, feel free to ignore it if you want.

I also have been using the mod from Che Palle that basically overlays the wonders with descriptions of what they actually do. It would be nice if you could incorporate this into your mod for all of your new wonders.

Another BIG help would be an updated tech tree. I have been using one by HipShot as a reference. In case you haven't seen it, it lays out exactly which techs lead where, as well as what unit, improvements and wonders become available with each tech. Since you are altering these and adding new units and such, it would be amazingly helpful if you could do the same thing. Possibly even just modifying HipShot's. However, if you can't or don't see the need for it, I understand (he says sobbing into his shirt sleeve).