Game balance, Civ3 and FIRAXIS (suggestions)

player1 · January 31, 2002, 16:22

What I don't like in Firaxis PR (and suggestion how to fix it).

After a first patch guys from Firaxis posted several threads about bugs and unit balance.

That's OK.

So they are going to do some unit rebalancing.

But why not have discusson with Firaxis team about these issuses?
Like this:

A guy from Firaxis:
-What do you think about giving tanks defense of 10?
-What do you think about giving cavalry movemnt of 2?
-Do you have some suggestion about musketeer modification?
-No, that won't work in Civ3, since AI won't use it properly because...

What bothers me is that this way, we need to wait 2 moths to get patch, and then there will still be lot of unbalances. So we'll need to wait another 2 month to resolve new unbalances, etc...
That's to much time for solving unbalances. They'll need a whole year just to solve that with this speed.

Now, main use of pathes in gaming industry is BUG SOLVING, not balance fixes.

But,
good games use pathes for fixing unbalances (for. ex. look Stracraft).

SO I PROPOSE:
Let's Firaxis make one nice bic file called balance_fix_beta1.bic, and distibute it here on Apolyton.
Then some players will play with that "upgrade", even seperate tournament could be made that way.
Then people should comment new balance issuses on appropriate thread.
Then using plyers FEEDBACK, Firaxis could make balance_fix_beta2.bic and etc...
Until, new patch become released with last balance_fix_betaX.bic as default rules.

Isn't that much faster and more productive. (it's like some sort of public beta testing)

New units stats (and other) won't make new bugs, so this won't delay new patches.

But it will give Civ3 more gamebalance FASTER.

More gamebalance more gameplay.
More gameplay more fans.
More fans more MONEY.

P.S.
For moderators:
This is in startegy section (not in general) because of unit balance issuses.
(and is more likely that someone form Firaxis will give some hint)

Jaybe · January 31, 2002, 16:52

The fun thing is, everyone's got a different view of what is 'balanced', etc.

player1 · January 31, 2002, 17:02

Quote:

Originally posted by Jaybe
The fun thing is, everyone's got a different view of what is 'balanced', etc.

Yes, but it would be nice to know "current version of balance" by official team (something after 1.16f), and discuss about it.

In fact it would be nice to have someone from team to discuss about:
Why is that instead of that?

It would be much better then current "lurking mode".

King of Rasslin · February 2, 2002, 22:11

Its not that Firaxis is slow to patch, its that they never give us updates!!!!!

player1 · February 3, 2002, 09:30

Hmm...

Moved from Strategy to General.
And I though that Balance questions (and way to fix that) are for Strategy forum.

MarkG!!!
Where are you.

Atahualpa · February 3, 2002, 09:43

I dont think this will work

If they change the code (and I am 100% sure they do) then this can affect balancing too and it would render all of our efforts useless.

E.g.: We got a balanced .bic file where bombarding is better balanced and with a patch they removed the bombard feature altogether.

Okay they wont do, but maybe change the rule of bombarding that it requires more than just .bic file. And with just ONE thing changed the whole balancing issue changes!

You could draw a feature graph. Features that depend on other features are children. Features that mutually affect each other are siblings. You could then work out all this links and then you would find out which features are safe to balance without bringing the whole graph out of balance. And you would also know when you would change one node which other nods would be affected.

All the children with no siblings could be then succesfully balanced with .bic changes (if these features do not become parents or siblings because of new code).

I guess that should work.

ata

MarkG · February 3, 2002, 09:44

the strategy forum is for.... strategy mainly

such suggestions are best to be done here

Venge · February 3, 2002, 14:26

I would rather have them work on aspects of the game I can not adjust.
As we all know, unit stats are easily adjusted in the editor.
But some things that need to be changed are things that can not be adjusted through the editor, these are the one I would prefer Firaxis tend to.

player1 · February 3, 2002, 14:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Venge
I would rather have them work on aspects of the game I can not adjust.
As we all know, unit stats are easily adjusted in the editor.
But some things that need to be changed are things that can not be adjusted through the editor, these are the one I would prefer Firaxis tend to.

Firaxis is doing both things (look balance thread in sratgey forum)
wich is good thing.

Now, only thing I ask is to reveal their version of balance-fixes as some sort of half-patch.
So that game could be balanced more quickly (since players would help with their input) and thus leave Firaxis more time for editor, bugs and all other non-MODificable parts of game.

More efficiency! Quicker & better patches.

player1 · February 3, 2002, 15:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Atahualpa
I dont think this will work

If they change the code (and I am 100% sure they do) then this can affect balancing too and it would render all of our efforts useless.

E.g.: We got a balanced .bic file where bombarding is better balanced and with a patch they removed the bombard feature altogether.

Okay they wont do, but maybe change the rule of bombarding that it requires more than just .bic file. And with just ONE thing changed the whole balancing issue changes!

You could draw a feature graph. Features that depend on other features are children. Features that mutually affect each other are siblings. You could then work out all this links and then you would find out which features are safe to balance without bringing the whole graph out of balance. And you would also know when you would change one node which other nods would be affected.

All the children with no siblings could be then succesfully balanced with .bic changes (if these features do not become parents or siblings because of new code).

I guess that should work.

ata

You have a point.
If Firaxis decides to make horse units unable to retreat while attacking cities that could not be reflected in one ordinary Bic file.

On the other hand if Firaxis is NOT PLANNING to add so great changes to next patch, then my suggestion is one nice alternative.