ThorHammerz
zzz
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2014
- Messages
- 836
Hey all!
Disclaimer: Wall-of-text below.
Recently, I've been nibbling on some food for thought: design-wise (and in terms of implementation), has the replacement of the Cottage with the Trading Post been anything but "no need to invest time to grow your little huts, just take the gold up front!"?
This line of thought was brought up by a need to engage in the infamous "Trading Post Spam" if playing on a map (or starting area!) with fewer-than-preferred luxuries (or not enough variety of), in order to support a large army/infrastructure/happy, as well as to support consistent rush-buying and city-state bribe-money. While they have been nerfed in the past, spamming these if you have nothing much to do is still free gold.
There are obviously many other ways to accrue gold/commerce in both games, but these improvements are on the whole, an income source unaffected by the winds of your petty diplomatic spats, barring a full-force invasion & pillage/conquer of your lands.
Background Information (for those who are unfamiliar with (or have since forgotten) the arcane rituals of a "Cottage Economy"):
A cottage is an improvement in Civilization IV, that was available as an improvement upon researching the technology Pottery (as opposed to Guilds for Trading Posts in V). It generated commerce (which unlike in Civ 5, can be Globally set to be converted into either Science, Culture, Espionnage, or Gold), but for the sake of basic comparison, we will just consider it's output as Gold .
In Civ 5, although the Trading Post is unlocked later, but does not need to be "upgraded" further; in Civ 4, Cottages must be "worked" by a city in order to "grow" (into Hamlet/Village/Town), which in the end will produce a significant yield output if left to mature. A player would only need to nurture and protect few dedicated (preferably riverside) "cottage cities" to support his mid-late game economy.
However, a cottage was extremely vulnerable to early game invasions: it takes a full 70 turns for one to fully mature. In the meantime, an enemy civ (or barbarian) can simply waltz into your lands (if you do not protect yourself) and pillage your lovely huts (note: there was no such thing as "repair improvement" - you lost it permanently. Compound this with the fact that pillaging these babies gave approximately 2 to 15x the amount of gold than other improvements meant the AI would love to do so at first chance).
The level of vulnerability at the early stages is somewhat similar (in terms of actual units on the ground) to wonder-whoring in Civ 5, in that if you can get through the early game without dying, you will come out with a very strong lead.
So my question(s) to you guys is this:
- Are trading posts a little dull (i.e. build and forget, spam on every non-resource tile, in every city, given enough food to feed the citizen to work it)? Especially with a puppet's focus on gold (or rather, it's inability to do anything else), it pretty much defaults to "demolish everything and build some of these".
- Would a hybrid or re-implementation of a "growing" improvement (not necessarily for just trading posts, mind you) be, in your opinion, an interesting mechanic to be added into the game?
- What else makes Trading Posts spamming so prevalent?
- Which 'system' do you (or if you've never played Civ4, would you) prefer, in terms of generating gold? (Note: diplomacy/trades and trade routes are irrelevant, as both games supported such trade)?
Disclaimer: Wall-of-text below.
Recently, I've been nibbling on some food for thought: design-wise (and in terms of implementation), has the replacement of the Cottage with the Trading Post been anything but "no need to invest time to grow your little huts, just take the gold up front!"?
This line of thought was brought up by a need to engage in the infamous "Trading Post Spam" if playing on a map (or starting area!) with fewer-than-preferred luxuries (or not enough variety of), in order to support a large army/infrastructure/happy, as well as to support consistent rush-buying and city-state bribe-money. While they have been nerfed in the past, spamming these if you have nothing much to do is still free gold.
There are obviously many other ways to accrue gold/commerce in both games, but these improvements are on the whole, an income source unaffected by the winds of your petty diplomatic spats, barring a full-force invasion & pillage/conquer of your lands.
Background Information (for those who are unfamiliar with (or have since forgotten) the arcane rituals of a "Cottage Economy"):
A cottage is an improvement in Civilization IV, that was available as an improvement upon researching the technology Pottery (as opposed to Guilds for Trading Posts in V). It generated commerce (which unlike in Civ 5, can be Globally set to be converted into either Science, Culture, Espionnage, or Gold), but for the sake of basic comparison, we will just consider it's output as Gold .
In Civ 5, although the Trading Post is unlocked later, but does not need to be "upgraded" further; in Civ 4, Cottages must be "worked" by a city in order to "grow" (into Hamlet/Village/Town), which in the end will produce a significant yield output if left to mature. A player would only need to nurture and protect few dedicated (preferably riverside) "cottage cities" to support his mid-late game economy.
However, a cottage was extremely vulnerable to early game invasions: it takes a full 70 turns for one to fully mature. In the meantime, an enemy civ (or barbarian) can simply waltz into your lands (if you do not protect yourself) and pillage your lovely huts (note: there was no such thing as "repair improvement" - you lost it permanently. Compound this with the fact that pillaging these babies gave approximately 2 to 15x the amount of gold than other improvements meant the AI would love to do so at first chance).
The level of vulnerability at the early stages is somewhat similar (in terms of actual units on the ground) to wonder-whoring in Civ 5, in that if you can get through the early game without dying, you will come out with a very strong lead.
So my question(s) to you guys is this:
- Are trading posts a little dull (i.e. build and forget, spam on every non-resource tile, in every city, given enough food to feed the citizen to work it)? Especially with a puppet's focus on gold (or rather, it's inability to do anything else), it pretty much defaults to "demolish everything and build some of these".
- Would a hybrid or re-implementation of a "growing" improvement (not necessarily for just trading posts, mind you) be, in your opinion, an interesting mechanic to be added into the game?
- What else makes Trading Posts spamming so prevalent?
- Which 'system' do you (or if you've never played Civ4, would you) prefer, in terms of generating gold? (Note: diplomacy/trades and trade routes are irrelevant, as both games supported such trade)?