Improvement Balancing

Windmill is currently Watermill's weak sister. Where Watermill needed to be cut back, Windmill is crying for help. Windmill stops increasing its yields at all after the Renaissance (getting a neutral change at Electricity), and so is begging to be replaced once you hit the Industrial Era. As it is, I usually only build Windmills to cover Depleted Mines.

Windmill actually starts off pretty good compared to other improvements. The problem is that after the Industrial, it goes absolutely nowhere.

• Default: +1 food, +1 commerce (total: +1.5)
• Medieval Era: +1 food from Agricultural Tools
  • Net: +2 food, +1 commerce (total: +2.5)
• Renaissance Era: +1 production from Replaceable Parts
  • Net: +2 food, +1 production, +1 commerce (total: +3.5)
• Industrial Era: -1 food, +2 commerce from Electricity
  • Net: +1 food, +1 production, +3 commerce (total: +3.5)

First, to make the Industrial Era Windmill better, I would add +1 production at Electricity. I thought about just cutting the -1 food, but I think it will work better with an upgrade path that I am about to detail.

For the Modern Era, I propose to rename the Desert Windmill as the Windfarm. It would be buildable on more tiles; instead of just Desert, it would be buildable on Desert, Plains, Hills, or Mountains. Windmills would then upgrade to Windfarms. The new Windfarm would generate +1 food, +2 production, and +4 commerce; a very small (0.5-point) upgrade over Windmill. It would not need any Transhuman bonuses. This is why Windmill drops to 1 food at Electricity; I would have a hard time buying +2 food from a Windfarm on a Desert square.

The final stage of the Windmill chain is the currently-existing Windtrap. This is pretty much fine as it is, except that I would allow it to be built on the same tiles as Windfarm and cut all the tech-related bonuses except for +1 food at Weather Control. This brings it into line with the rest of the improvements.

• Default: +1 food, +1 commerce (total: +1.5)
• Medieval Era: +1 food from Agricultural Tools
  • Net: +2 food, +1 commerce (total: +2.5)
• Renaissance Era: +1 production from Replaceable Parts
  • Net: +2 food, +1 production, +1 commerce (total: +3.5)
• Industrial Era: -1 food, +1 production, +2 commerce from Electricity
  • Net: +1 food, +2 production, +3 commerce (total: +4.5)
  [*]Modern Era: Windmill upgrades to Windfarm at Ecology, gaining 1 commerce
  
  • Net: +1 food, +2 production, +4 commerce (total: +5)
  [*]Transhuman Era: Windfarm upgrades to Windtrap at Environmental Economics, gaining 1 commerce; +1 food from Weather Control
  
  • Net: +2 food, +2 production, +5 commerce (total: +6.5)

Now the Windmill yield curve looks very similar to the rest of the improvements.

All looks excellent so far.

I take a counter view with the Cottages/Mine debate/wood cutters.

I myself restrict my builds to the base line, and ALL have to upgrade through being worked by the various cities in time.

Make the upgrade available to build, but that improvement has to have been worked for X turns, before it can be upgraded.

The X turns is counted from 1st turn of use to is Y number of turns to upgrade.

Vokarya said:

Actually, I don't think this is a bad idea. I think with more technology, you could have villages and towns built quickly; so Hamlets could be built at Civil Service (when Villages can grow), Villages build directly at Social Contract (when Towns can grow), and then Towns could be built directly at Civil Engineering -- this is mid-Industrial, so one full era after Towns become available by growth. How does this sound?

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I meant

Though I wonder if it could be made optional, as there are people like IPEX that prefer to only build the basic improvement and have them grow over time.

That sounds like a fine compromise, Vokarya. Go for it!

@Vokarya: Sounds even better than Delekhan's solution!

I very much like the idea of windmills upgrading to wind farms and then wind traps. Now if only water mills also upgraded to something which actually exists in the modern era... even Industrial Complex.

Cheers, A.

water mills could upgrade to electric water mill (produces power) and than to water dam.

I don't really want to do any new improvements at this point. There really isn't much difference between an improvement getting bonuses at new techs and an improvement upgrading to another at a particular tech, but adding a new improvement means adding art definitions, and updating anything else that might affect the original.

Although both can provide the same benefits, upgrading comes with risk.
It takes ages to upgrade a cottage to a town, which can be destroyed in one turn.
Newly built cities also won't benefit much from newly built cottages, unlike farms which are improved via tech.

Civics and techs can also be used to benefit just the upgraded versions, while not the basic ones like how only towns get +1 hammer from universal suffrage. Thus, cottages remain not so useful, but if they can mature, they boom. This allows customization.

Vokarya said:

Actually, I don't think this is a bad idea. I think with more technology, you could have villages and towns built quickly; so Hamlets could be built at Civil Service (when Villages can grow), Villages build directly at Social Contract (when Towns can grow), and then Towns could be built directly at Civil Engineering -- this is mid-Industrial, so one full era after Towns become available by growth. How does this sound?

Click to expand...

This and everything else sounds pretty good
Just a small though about Towns. Shouldn't they be left for the Modern era instead? I think that would be more accurate both historically and leave the "village needs to grow " feature for a while.

The mid-industrial era was definitely the rise of urban living, so I don't see a problem with Vokarya's suggestion.

Arakhor said:

The mid-industrial era was definitely the rise of urban living, so I don't see a problem with Vokarya's suggestion.

Click to expand...

Like you said it: The rise, that is not only they became possible, but also common. However that doesn't mean that building of towns from scratch.
Just my opinion.
Anyway it will be great to allow to build them directly

Planned towns are hardly unique to the 20th Century. You can view drawings of mediaeval planned towns if you really want to.

My only comment is that Quarry becomes lacking by the medieval era. It could use some sort of upgrade ala mine/shaft mine at some point. Give it an extra commerce at least somewhere.

Combat Wombat said:

My only comment is that Quarry becomes lacking by the medieval era. It could use some sort of upgrade ala mine/shaft mine at some point. Give it an extra commerce at least somewhere.

Click to expand...

We'll get to those later. There are 10 improvements that are specifically buildable only on resources (Archeological Dig, Camp, Orchard, Pasture, Plantation, Quarry, Safari, Silk Farm, Well, Winery) and those should get some attention too, but I need to look at them carefully. I think the best thing to do is balance those against a Farm or Mine on a resource, since cities should be able to benefit from the resource squares in their radius.

I have now been looking at the forest/jungle improvements. This is difficult because there are so many additional factors to take into account:

• Forest improvements do not cut down the forest, so the forest yield needs to be considered; however, maintaining the bonus prevents the player from considering other improvements that would provide a larger concentrated bonus. As an example, in BTS, Lumbermills only generate +2 production (with a Railroad) while Mines and Workshops go up to +3.
• Jungles provide no innate bonus, so any early improvements need to be good in order to give players a reason not to burn/chop jungle. Overall, I would say the role of "terrain feature to destroy at first opportunity" has moved from Jungle to Swamp.
• Forest improvements are the only improvements that get riverside bonuses. The amount of river coverage varies from map to map, so I'm judging the usual bonus of +1 production/+1 commerce to be worth +1 total yield. +1 commerce alone is worth +0.25 yield.
• These improvements have their bonuses spread out over several yield categories instead of big bonuses in one category.
• Some of these improvements provide health. Like unhealth, I think this is worth +0.5 yield.

So here is what I am considering; tweaking upgrade paths, cutting unnecessary bonuses from techs, and lowering the end a little bit.

Jungle Camp
For the most part, I'm leaving this alone. I think +2 yield (+1 production to start, +1 food from Naturopathy) and an effective +1 if riverside is enough. The things I would like to do are:

• Have Jungle Camp upgrade to Forest Preserve at Scientific Method. Then remove the additional bonuses to JC at Medicine and Tourism. They won't be necessary.
• I don't really understand what Jungle Camp has to do with Gems. I think swapping the interactions over to Tea would be better and leave Gems to Mine.

Woodcutter
This also stays unchanged.

Lumbermill
This stays unchanged except for getting an upgrade path. I think this should upgrade to Treefarm at Ecology and remove any bonuses from Modern Era techs.
However, a possible change might be to remove the +1 production from Railroad and give it to Replaceable Parts. This would smooth out the curve. As it is, the Lumbermill is unchanged from its appearance in the Classical Era until you can build a Railroad over it.

Forest Preserve
This improvement is practically screaming to be improved. As it is, I don't build it, and I would only try to build it if I was basing an entire city around a National Park. Without civics, the only benefits it gives are no more than +4 commerce (1 base, 1 from Ecology tech, 1 from Road, 1 if Riverside) and +0.25 health, which is incredibly small.
I think the best thing to do here is have it be an upgrade of Jungle Camp and gain JC's bonuses of +1 food, +1 production, with an additional +1 production if Riverside, and ability to spawn resources. Then upgrade it just a touch by going from 0.25 health to 0.5. That way you don't have to build 4 of them to get an actual health point. This would make it much more appealing. In fact, it would be a better improvement in terms of yields than any other Renaissance-era improvement so far, but it relies on unchopped forests/jungles and the bonuses are spread out across all the categories.
The last thing to do with Forest Preserve is to make it upgrade directly to Hybrid Forest instead of Treefarm. Treefarm is about harvesting trees; Forest Preserve is more about keeping them growing.

Treefarm
Treefarm is in pretty good shape, although I would make a small change and lower its base commerce to +2. This is not counting +1 from access to each of Road and River. I would also make it available starting at Ecology tech. I think Treefarm and Hybrid Forest were pulled as a concept together from Alpha Centauri, but there is no reason why Treefarm shouldn't be available earlier on Earth, and I don't like cramming both Treefarm and Hybrid Forest into the Transhuman Era.

Hybrid Forest
This is the final forest improvement. It has a wide array of abilities. Both Forest Preserve and Treefarm upgrade to this, so I do not want to weaken it to the point where you lose any benefits by upgrading either improvement. However, to do this, I have to keep the bonuses high. So that it doesn't get out of control, I think we should lower its base commerce to +2 (no better than Treefarm or Forest Preserve) and cut all of HF's bonuses from techs, which has it stay at +2 food/+3 production/+3 commerce (with Road or better, but that's assumed by this point in the game)/+1 health.

This still winds up being a better improvement than just about any other, but it does require hanging onto a forest/jungle and the bonuses are spread out across the categories without concentrating on any one.

So a yield curve starting with Woodcutter and ending at Hybrid Forest would look like this:

• Default: +1 production
• Classical: Woodcutter upgrades to Lumbermill at Machinery, gaining +1 production, +1 commerce IF RIVERSIDE (net +1 yield)
  • Net: +1 production, additional +1 production/+1 commerce if riverside (total +2)
• Industrial: +1 production, +1 commerce at Railroad; +1 commerce at Mass Transit
  • Net: +2 production, +2 commerce, additional +1 production/+1 commerce if riverside (total +4.0)
• Modern: Lumbermill upgrades to Treefarm at Ecology, gaining +1 food, +1 commerce, +0.5 health, and converting a conditional +1 production from River to flat +1 production
  • Net: +1 food, +3 production, +3 commerce, +0.5 health, additional +1 commerce if riverside (total +6)
• Transhuman: Treefarm upgrades to Hybrid Forest at Environmental Economics, gaining +1 food, +0.5 health
• Net: +2 food, +3 production, +3 commerce, +1 health, additional +1 commerce if riverside (total +7.25)

And a curve starting with a Jungle Camp would look like this:

• Default: +1 production, additional +1 production/+1 commerce if riverside
• Ancient Era: +1 food from Naturopathy
  • Net: +1 food, +1 production, additional +1 production/+1 commerce if riverside (total +3)
• Renaissance: Jungle Camp upgrades to Forest Preserve at Scientific Method, gaining +2 commerce and +0.5 health
  • Net: +1 food, +1 production, +2 commerce, +0.5 health, additional +1 production/+1 commerce if riverside (total +4.25)
• Modern: +1 commerce at Ecology
  • Net: +1 food, +1 production, +3 commerce, +0.5 health, additional +1 production/+1 commerce if riverside (total +4.75)
• Transhuman: Forest Preserve upgrades to Hybrid Forest at Environmental Economics, gaining +1 food, +1 production, +0.5 health, and converting +1 production if riverside to flat +1 production
• Net: +2 food, +3 production, +3 commerce, +1 health, additional +1 commerce if riverside (total +7.25)

And here is the latest version of the yield curve comparisons:

Jungle Camp
For the most part, I'm leaving this alone. I think +2 yield (+1 production to start, +1 food from Naturopathy) and an effective +1 if riverside is enough. The things I would like to do are:

Have Jungle Camp upgrade to Forest Preserve at Scientific Method. Then remove the additional bonuses to JC at Medicine and Tourism. They won't be necessary.
I don't really understand what Jungle Camp has to do with Gems. I think swapping the interactions over to Tea would be better and leave Gems to Mine.

Click to expand...

From ancient time up thru modern days Jungle Camps have provided much more than "some" food. All manner of precious stones, rare metals, hard and soft woods, and a plethora of medicinal and food plants.

<deleted>

JosEPh

I don't see it as a problem that Jungle Camps upgrade to Forest Preserves. What's your issue with that?

Because there are basically 2 types of "Forest Preserves" Temperate and Equatorial. The Temperate is more about forests that everyone identifies with. While the Equatorial includes more terrain types than "forests".

The forests of the Great Northwest USA, Canada, Argentina Northern Europe, and parts of Siberia do not match the diversity of the Equatorial Jungles.

Never mind, it's a naming issue as much as anything else.



JosEPh