Observatories: Balance

So, is anyone else a bit puzzled by the observatory building?

200 hammers for:
"+50% science, but only if the city is built next to a mountain"

While I like this on immersion-wise, it seems to be completely off balance-wise. A huge bonus, pretty much purely luck-based. Especially since the most common strategy nowadays is tradition -> NC and huge capital, for me this is roughly comparable to

"Have a 15% chance of being able to build a second NC"
or maybe
"May build two additional universities for the price of one, but only if the city is built on silk or spices"

I would heavily suggest lowering the science bonus to something in between 10 and 25%, lowering the cost accordingly to maybe 160 (same as a university, which seems somewhat balanced since this is a later, additional building), and perhaps also lowering the requirement to "city built within 2 (3?) tiles of a mountain".

I do realize e.g. circuses, natural wonders and wine/incense for goddess of festivals fall into a similar category, but for me none of these compare to a 50% science boost unobtainable otherwise.

What are your thoughts?

I think it works fine, as the spots next to mountains generally aren't optimal city spots in other ways, so it forces a little more decision making. Do you go for the mountainside, or the riverside, or the seaside, or on the marble, or within two squares of two different luxuries? You generally can't get the perfect site, so decisions like this make the game more interesting.

In OCC situations the Observatory is an extremely powerful science building. Although it works great for Tradition empires as well, it requires you to use the sailing line. So if you're on a Pangea map or in an land-locked area, it makes going to get those observatories less viable. Especially for tradition civilizations, which you could be focusing on getting wonders from the bottom of the tech tree such as Notre Dame, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Red Fort, Porcelain Tower, ect. If you're going for a lot of cities next to mountains, yes the observatory is great, high population cities will make the building more handy, while small population cities (AKA Wide Expansion) won't be as useful.

Just remember, going for Astronomy instead of wonders, which will you choose? As said the Observatory building will work great for those small high population cities and will work less for the wide expansion small cities.

I think it could be slightly nerfed, giving it around 35%-50% science, or probably increasing the production/buy out value.

It's very powerful, but restrictive in a way that gives you interesting choices. I also don't think it's that random : mountains spawn pretty much everywhere, if you really want an Observatory city, you should generally be able to get it... but that might be at the cost of a river/coastal location, or a few luxuries/strategics/bonus resources. Which means it creates possibilities rather than supressing them, which is good design.

It doesn't really change the game. It just speed up if you have observatories. And it doesn't avoid you need to growth, build other stuffs to have a decent science per turn.

Places that are located near mountains are usually pretty awful because they tend to lack grassland for farms, and many tiles are taken up by mountains and can't be utilized. That's usually enough to discourage most people from settling near it.

Aelesia said:

Places that are located near mountains are usually pretty awful because they tend to lack grassland for farms, and many tiles are taken up by mountains and can't be utilized. That's usually enough to discourage most people from settling near it.

Click to expand...

Sometimes that can be the case. However if you have a coastal area with a mountain passage with a river and a hill with some luxuries, would you go for it?

Plus, mountains are lifelines for choke-holds until Artillery. A perfect example would be playing Western Rome in the G&K Scenario: Fall of Rome, there are many choke holds in mountains that protect Western Rome, except in the Scenario you don't really go past the Classical age.

It is kinda a huge buff I agree. Every time my capitol started near mountains I've had much, much higher end science output. Interestingly though this doesn't tend to affect the end of game time much though...maybe because I rush universities and research labs more frenetically when I don't have observatories. I did notice though on my current game (hotseat with 2 players) that a mountain near the indonesian capitol and jungle in an otherwise identical scenario gave indonesia a +100 beaker edge on the zulu, even though he had more cities, universities, and built oxford first. It seems to even out though since the zulu have auocracy and steal so quickly. a constabulatory AND top-level spy don't seem to make a difference. I've noticed a lot more about these intricacies playing two simultaneously though.