Worlds_Crossing
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2012
- Messages
- 52
I won't comment too much on the other two, I don't think those civs really need help but that's just me...
But American bonus... No. Bringing "a" settler to have one city within close range of whoever you are invading is one thing. Using it to start tunneling into your opponent taking Citadels, negating the Great Wall... No... Way too many negative ramifications.
That's why one should make the associated costs of doing so high, that way it does not become an end-all-be-all tactic but rather a strategic tool. I wrote earlier that it would be best to increase the cost by 1000% for buying enemy tiles. That way, yes you can tunnel into an enemy civ, negating the Great Wall, but the costs would have made the option much more prohibitive for just one city. For this example, you have just spent three thousand to grab a few border tiles as a launching area for assault. Does that sound in any way bad to you? That your opponent spent a healthy amount of money to give him an advantage in declaring war? That they spent three thousand on tiles rather than Artillery and Infantry? That is balanced because the associated costs of spending three thousand on tiles, rather than say units. By making the option prohibitively expensive, it becomes a non-spammable ability, as when you are finally in the position to spam it, you're basically rolling in enough gold to just roll over everyone. While giving the option opens up new avenues for strategic play. Is a thousand gold worth a Citadel? Depending on the situation, most likely no. Is a thousand gold worth a luxury/NW/strategic resource? That is an interesting question.
Also, your reasoning, that it negates certain aspects of a game (in this case Citadels and the Great Wall) as a form of abuse doesn't really hold up. For one, Greece and Austria in a situation that, quite literally mimics the above, that by throwing a lot of gold at a target the civ removes an aspect of another's ability. Second, so long as the ability isn't exploitable and is unspammable, there is nothing wrong with the idea, mechanic-wise.