Yeah I would like to see the eco upgrades cost about 5-10 points each (10 for wheel, HC, food (maybe 7),wood - but 3-5 for stone and 5-7 for gold. So you need to consider them.
I would also try to make certain upgrades less expensive, like HCA and all the techs needed for them just a bit. Otherwise we might not see them at all cause it would be “too expensive” in terms of civ points.
One Idea for variety could also be to make the “defensive” techs more costly. Like Loom costing 10-20 points, so you need to really consider if you want them or prefer other upgrades above them.
All the civs have these though. I feel like archers, skirmishers, spears, and maybe a few others should have a cost of a different type, where players can select the first version for free, but disabling it gives them an extra point or two to spend elsewhere.
Maybe, but it’s actually a difference maker in civ builder. One of the few general design options you have: Do you want a civ with more options or a civ with an insane lategame eco? That’s the choice you have to make. Also it would make “free” eco upgrade civ boni less powerful, as you would need to spent the points there also.
Imo a “OP eco” civ would just easily win against all others, cause there are just several OP eco bonusses and a lot of the unit bonusses are only for the lategame. A civ with an insane early eco could probably stomp everything else before it would even see it coming.
Like for example vikings + franks + burmese + burgundians + bohemians. Or chinese + lithuanians + malay + persians + cumans 2nd tc.
These civs would just dominate everything if they aren’t restricted by eco techs costing a lot of civ points (as they would need to rely on lategame eco techs) to compensate for having no clear “goto” unit, just a bunch of different “mediocre” units.
While civs with bonusses to specific lines can get away with not having all eco techs as the problem (against op eco civs) is more to get your units rolling than maintaining it at later stages of the game.
And I’m pretty sure we don’t want to see 32 * 9 OP “eco” civs in that tournament ;).
(It would also be interesting to see if probably somebody makes a civ with a super fast castle but no eco techs at all cause he wants to spent all ressources into military immediately. And to see this kind of build, we need to make the eco techs so costly that it would be considerable to just skip them for more points to spent on different other things. To see something like this the eco techs would need to have a price according to their utility, not their commodity.)
What about this new civ Idea?
Folwark instead of Mill (Poles)
Farm Upgrades Free (Franks)
Eco Tech Upgrades available one age Earlier (Burgundians)
Farm Upgrades provide 100 % more Food (Sicilians)
Farms cost 40 % less (Teutons)
I created a custom civilization based on your idea, which you can download at this link. I named this civilization the Casusin Berbers.
I also created a guide on how you can use the Advanced Genie Editor to create your own OP custom civ.
I’m organizing and sponsoring a showmatch in the near future kind of like this. What do you think of this rough outline? Also, if you were to pick any two pros/streamers to participate, who would you want to see in this and why?
Great idea! I would also like to see how these OP civs fare against vanilla civs in the hands of human players.
There also seems to be some disagreements over how many points each tech should cost. Therefore, I think we should just stick with existing tech trees, like what was done with SOTL’s OP civs.
First thank you a lot @sn0wsh00 . Exactly as I imagined it. Also great work with that problem solving of the Folwark Farms. I think that can help a lot of other modders with their problems, too.
Also another kudos, as you also had the perfect feeling for the correct civ Bonus: INCAS!
Yes, this Bonus is actually the best thing the civ can have, but I will come to it later.
To the gameplay with the civ: It’s absolutely busted!
I tested it against a 125 % handicap and got one of the toughest opponents you can get with this civ: Mongols. Mongols with their insanely fast rushes (especially with 125 % handicap) are the biggest danger to the civ, as it doesn’t offers any benefits early on. Naturally I was a bit late with my walling as I didn’t expected their maa + archer rush coming that fast. So I had serious problems stabilizing. But with the Folwark bonus I managed to get enough scouts out to fight it back.
But then came the real powerspike. Once I reached castle age the Bonus was just totally OP. I could just flood the map with light cav as much as I wanted, didn’t even need to care about them dying.
What was fine, cause the civ has one major issue: Attention Economics!
With constantly deleting and replacing farms you can’t really care for your army at some point. It’s just too much then. The civ is definetely a nogo for anybody who loves army micro, just not possible.
And this is also the reason why Incas is the right bonus here. If you don’t have incas you would need to place multiple folwarks and switch between them to replace the farms accordingly to which are built and which not. That’s just impossible while also macroing at the same time.
I often had more than 3/4 of my vills collecting wood also, as you need a lot of it to replace the folwarks and build houses.
And I learned that you should play this civ extremely defensive in the beginning. All you need to achieve is to reach castle age with 2-3 working woodlines 1 protected folwark and some stables. Then it’s basically won. So: very early walling, house walling behind your walls, if needed some protective towers. Things that normally would be way too defensive and cornering are basically optimal for that civ. You only need that powerspike.
With what I learned from that game I can also conclude possible “optimisation” potentials for the civ.
A) The Franks Bonus isn’t needed. I think it’s even better to have the Celts wood bonus. if 3/4 of your vills are harvesting wood it’s just natural and the “break even” point with franks is reached quite early.
Another Idea could be to add the sicilian bonus instead, as the only thing the opponent can theoretically try to stop you is flooding the map with the spear line. In this situatione the sic bonus becomes easily the best imaginable. (The mongols HP bonus can possibly also be “tied” with the celts or sic bonus)
B) You don’t need “alternative win conditions”. If you can flood the map with lightcav like that civ it’s totally OP. It’s probably even better to have only UTs that benefit them, like silk armor and farimba. But as I didn’t need to research any of them it’s a bit hypocrit to talk about these bonusses anyways…)
C) What also impacts the tech tree choice. The best tech tree for this civ is just one that has all farming, wood and light cav upgrades. Nothing else is actually needed.
IMO this is the strongest civ for all except full water maps. But ofc that’s only my personal opinion.
Good suggestion! I’ll update the Casusin Berbers as soon as possible.
Edit: I’ve finished updating the civ. Chinese team bonus also now work with the the Casusin Folwarks.
While creating these OP civs, I found a couple issues that I think should be addressed before the showmatch.
First, because this showmatch limits civs to 5 non-team bonuses, we need to agree on what counts as a single bonus. For me, I think if a bonus is listed as a single bullet point in the official civilization description, that counts as a single bonus.
For example, let’s take the Burgundian bonus that allows eco upgrades to be researched 1 age earlier and make them discounted. That bonus seems like modify two different things and it feels like cheating to combine both features into a single bonus. However, because the writers placed them both under a single bullet point, I think that this bonus should be considered as a single bonus. Compare this to the Saracen Market bonuses, which are listed under two separate bullet points. This seems unfair, but I feel like this is the best way to avoid controversy regarding bonus count.
The other thing we need to examine are bonuses that modify resources, in that I believe bonuses should match what is written in the description. This is generally not a major issue, as cost and rate bonuses are usually calculated by multiplying an attribute by a multiplier. For example, for the Mayan’s foot archer discount, the game multiplies the Resource Costs by 0.9, 0.88 and 0.88 in the Dark, Castle and Imperial ages.
However, I’ve found two exceptions to this so far. For Kamandaran, instead of multiplying cost values, the game instead subtracts 45 gold and adds 35 wood to all Archer-line units. If you combine this with the Mayan’s Archer discounts and the Korean’s wood cost discounts, Archers will cost 49 wood and -13 gold, instead of just 46 wood. You’ll actually be generating gold when you train Archers. Because Kamandaran’s description is “Archer-line gold cost is replaced by additional wood cost” and not “Archer-line units cost 45 less gold and 35 more wood,” I think this gold generation bug should not be allowed. Instead a new Kamandaran effect should be created that sets Archer-line units costs to only 46 wood.
Another resource issue involves Folwarks and their instant gathering amounts. In addition to Folwarks, the Casusin Berbers have the Sicilian Farm bonuses. The Folwark bonus increases, however, only add 7.5, 12.5 and 17.5 food to the instant gather amount, instead of 15, 25 and 35 food after researching Farm upgrades. Because the Folwark description says that it “Immediately collects 10% of food from nearby newly constructed farms” and not “immediately collects 17.5, 25, 37.5 and 55 food from nearby newly constructed farms,” I think the higher instant gather amounts should be allowed. Once again, like with Kamandaran, new Folwark effects should be created that add those higher instant gather amounts.
Why not just build the civs using the Krakenmeister civ builder? That would be easier than modding stuff and should just let you do the lot. That’s just me though.
I just tested Kamandaran and the Folwarks using Krakenmesiter’s Civbuilder. For the Folwarks, Civbuilder does not modify the instant gather amount if you have the Sicilian bonus; the immediate collection amount is still only 17.5, 25, 37.5 and 55 food. The Kamandaran bonus, on the other hand, works more correctly in the Civbuilder than in the default data file, in that instead of subtracting 45 from the gold cost, Civbuilder Kamandaran sets the gold cost to 0. Civbuilder Kamandaran still adds 35 wood to Archers, though, giving you an incorrect Archer cost if you have Archer discounts.
Civbuilder also combines the two Saracen Market bonuses into a single bonus, even though the official description lists them in separate bullet points. This is understandable given that both Saracen Market bonuses are defined under one effect (effect 354 to be exact).
In turn, we have two choices for the showmatch:
Use only default non-Tech Tree effects (lots of bonuses are defined within Tech Tree effects). This will make descriptions inaccurate (see the stuff with Folwarks), but it will be quicker to build with Civbuilder. Kamandaran will still need to be corrected on Civbuilder.
Modify and/or add new effects so that bonuses will match official descriptions. This will require Advanced Genie Editor instead of Civbuilder and thus will take much longer.
My Seven OP Civs mod was created in the style of the first choice, while the Casusin Berbers mod was created in the style of the second choice. In other words, Archer Civ Arbalesters in the Seven OP Civs mod generate gold when they are trained after Kamandaran is researched, despite the Kamandaran description never mentioning specific cost change values. Casusin Berber Folwarks instantly gather 32.5, 57.5 and 92.5 food after Sicilian Farm upgrades are researched, matching the Folwark description, even though unmodded Folwark bonuses are less generous.
Your funny scenario with the archer discounts was 100% a bug at one point! (it’s in the June 25th patch note) Civbuilder tries to modify and/or add new effects where necessary, so the Folwark + Sicilian bonus is most definitely an oversight. I’ll look into how Casusin Berbers mod does it, thanks!
For the showmatch, that’s why the civs are to be submitted 48 hours beforehand. That way I can generate with civbuilder, and then thoroughly playtest and triple-check everything, making sure there aren’t any conflicts and/or unexpected interactions (proceeding to manually edit the generated files if necessary).
Given that Folwarks and Kamandaran (Edit: and Forced Levy and Hussite Reforms) are (probably) the only effects that would need tweaking if used in combination with other bonuses, I realize now that it probably won’t take that long to fix civilizations built in Civbuilder. In turn, I now support having bonuses match official descriptions (RIP gold generating Arbalesters). Considering this showmatch has a monetary reward, we should be very transparent in the effects that will be modded. We should post the following notes somewhere:
Kamandaran now sets Archer-line gold costs to 0, as opposed to the original effect where it subtracted 45 gold. A 35 wood cost is still added to Archer-line units.
If Folwarks are used in combination with the Sicilian’s Farm bonus, three new effects will be created in the data file so that Folwarks will instantly gather 32.5, 57.5 and 92.5 food. If the Chinese Team bonus is added, then three additional effects will be created so that Folwarks will instantly gather 35.8, 63.3 and 101.75 food.
Forced Levy now sets Militia-line gold costs to 0, as opposed to the original effect where it subtracted 20 gold. A 20 food cost is still added to Militia-line units
If Hussite Reform is used with the Burmese 50% Monastery tech discount, a new Hussite Reform effect will be created so that the Monastery techs will cost their proper amounts in food (e.g. Block Printing will cost 100 food). This fix will prevent Monastery techs from generating gold when they are researched.
The two Saracen Market bonuses, while listed as separate bullet points in the official description, will be considered a single bonus due to both of them being defined in a single effect.
(Also, for those unfamiliar with modding who are wondering what I mean by “effects,” you can read this guide I wrote.)
We also still need to decide on whether the Burgundian eco bonus (early eco upgrades and eco discount) is a single bonus or two separate bonuses. Civbuilder separates those two eco bonuses, but, going by the bullet point rule, I think it should be a single bonus.