Let's gather all Balance Issues in Civilization 5 Here!

[Robert]

As with every new Civilization release, Civ5 also comes with a lot of balance issues. Let's make it easy for Firaxis to find and fix these issues by gathering these here.

Balance issues are like:
- unique units that are way too strong compared to other unique units
- unique civ bonuses that are way too strong or weak compared to others
- units that are overpowered
- mechanics that are overpowered or worthless
- city state mechanics that may be way too useful or too weak
- etc. etc.

This is not about bugs or interface or how you think that a game mechanic may be unfun! It's just about balance.

When we got a big list ready we'll try to get the attention of the developers focused here.

[Fidel]

Arty too powerful in comparison to cannons.
Modern naval vessels too weak vs. old wooden vessels, while modern land units are too strong vs units of previous generation (that gap should be kinda tightened).
More penalty for rapid expansion by conquest, making it less feasible, but not impossible. Once happiness is too low, a revolt would be fine. Revolts were always cool. I read somewhere (civfanatics?) a proposition that, just like a golden age counter, you can have a 'dark age' counter, so when too much unhappiness accumulates over the year, chaos ensues. That would be very interesting.
Stonehenge is overpowered.
Unless AI learns how to fight, wonders giving defensive bonuses are worthless.
A lot of wonders have meek reward.
Greek unique ability could use toning down in terms of percentages.
CS worker exploit should somehow be fixed - perhaps the relationship with the CS should be repaired only with money and does not 'heal' itself soon. Do not know how to handle it altogether, but once one gets a hang of a couple of things, it is clear why AI goes on rampage, eliminating CSs.
I am sure I will come accross more things.

[binTravkin]

Civ traits.
Bismarck's 50% chance of getting a barb unit is a killer - you can practically count on a human player to use this to a huge initial military advantage.
In MP, you can expect people rush you with "farmed" barbs. Pretty much impossible to outproduce this early in the game.

On the opposite Suleiman's 50% chance of getting barb boat is simply laughable. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically the whole civ traits system needs to be reworked so that the civs have bonuses that are at least roughly comparable in their impact.

City States
In advanced setup there should be a tick box "No City States".
I would always play with that on.
We could have merrily done without CS instead Firaxis fixing the other stuff.
They need to be taken out of the equation at least to deal with the overall game balance and put them back in only after that is somewhat ok.

Upgrading units
Cheaper than building/purchasing new.
Makes no sense.

Tile improvements
What the hell is a "trading post"? It's even worse than a "cottage"!
It's not realistic and it's not balanced when all you see is trading posts all around the map.
In my opinion this improvement should never have been in, same as cottages, instead other improvements need to be stackable (mines do not exclude the possibility of farming in area IRL) + bring back the windmills and watermills, they at least make sense.

Pop growth
With much larger possible city radius, there should be a feasible way to work all those tiles, if player chooses so + maybe some specialists on top of that.

Research and civ size
Research currently scales linearly. This means if you get big, you get big research and soon kill the enemy's riflemen with tanks.
Snowball effect, uh? What happened to CIV4 economy where getting big was actually getting you some real penalties?
Current ones are a laugh as you can use trading posts to get enough cash to purchase, not build, units.

Research agreements
Need to be removed or completely reworked.
Makes no sense if you can have any free tech from any civ via a research agreement, even if that civ does not have that tech or is not researching it.
Besides, do you remember people signing research agreements before 20th century?

Happiness
There is not nearly enough options to increase your happiness.
Clearly, it should not come easy, but currently you're stuck with luxuries, a couple of buildings and then some social policies.

Enough for now, there are certainly more.

[Fidel]

Oh, yeah, since AI is retarded and I do not expect it to be just plain dumb any time soon, once the civilizations meet make it that the fog is gradually removed hex by hex (traveller's tales, merchant's stories), for us and AI alike. This can be scaled so that the fog is removed quicker when one has open borders.
As it is now, I discover everything and even AI superpowers on another continent have no clue about what lies where. Of course, this leads to balancing problems - they have no idea where to mount invasion (not that they would be particularly successful in it).

[OzzyKP]

Civ traits.
Bismarck's 50% chance of getting a barb unit is a killer - you can practically count on a human player to use this to a huge initial military advantage.
In MP, you can expect people rush you with "farmed" barbs. Pretty much impossible to outproduce this early in the game.

On the opposite Suleiman's 50% chance of getting barb boat is simply laughable. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically the whole civ traits system needs to be reworked so that the civs have bonuses that are at least roughly comparable in their impact.

On first glance I too was kind of shocked and surprised about the imbalance between different civ traits. But I spent some time in the civilopedia last night and since some civs have unique buildings and others don't, and some have better UUs than others, I think you need to look at the civ/leader overall. Not just traits alone. Some civs with crappy traits have powerful buildings or powerful units.

[binTravkin]

You can't "offset" a crappy trait with a good UU/UB.
It is not logical to do so as it is much harder to judge one against the other and is likely not giving any more balance as traits are applied in a very different way than UUs and UBs.

[binTravkin]

More thoughts on traits - ideally the traits should be usable by the AI and AI should have "knowledge" of them, meaning that AI for each civ would not be generic, but slightly tailored to it's traits, so that it can exploit them at least to some level.

Barb farming might be usable by the AI, but the current AI doesn't do it.
Barb farming is currently a viable option for at least two civs - Germans and Songhai.

[Aro]

Civ traits.
Bismarck's 50% chance of getting a barb unit is a killer - you can practically count on a human player to use this to a huge initial military advantage.

I did it.

[binTravkin]

Yes I did it too for a Deity Domination win.
Walkover.

[Aro]

Civ traits.
City States
In advanced setup there should be a tick box "No City States".
I would always play with that on.
We could have merrily done without CS instead Firaxis fixing the other stuff.
They need to be taken out of the equation at least to deal with the overall game balance and put them back in only after that is somewhat ok.

You can down the "city states" slider to zero. It's on the top/right corner in advanced setup.

[Robert]

Let's not discuss things here.
When we got a list compiled we can discuss it and/or move it into a rating-area and all rate the best/worst suggestions here.

[Robert]

I accidentally closed this thread.... now it's open again!

[Zoetstofzoetje]

i just found a city state on an island in the middle of the ocean, 0 additional tiles, militaristic, and it built a pikemen and a worker.

this city state is obviously pumping out military units to conquer the world. that worker has been the most productive in history, no doubt

[yin26]

I have linked this list (and the interface one) in our testers' forum. Firaxis was undoubtedly watching this on Poly already, but hopefully my link, which includes lists from other sites, will help keep things easy to find.

[Robert]

Thanks yin! Let's keep it coming.