The Great Works system needs some changes

Ricard.Bossle said:

I thinks some religious pantheons or beliefs or reformation beliefs should give some "faith boost" to great works: Religious Art, Choral Music or even the decrepit Liturgical Drama could be much more interesting choices this way - and have their names actually in concordance with their abilities.

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Definitely agree with that.

Liturgical Drama: +1 faith from Ampitheaters, +2 faith from Great Works of Writing in Ampitheaters in cities with 3 followers

Religious Art: +5 culture +5 tourism from Hermitage, +1 faith from Great Works of Art

Choral Music: +2 culture from Temples and +1 Faith from Great Works of Music in cities with 5 followers

TheGrandWazoo said:

If you were worried about the theming bonus for same era, same civ, its only applicable to the Globe Theatre. The Globe comes with a great writer so really the only planning you needed was to spawn a great writer in the same era you completed the Globe... shouldn't be too hard!

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But my point still stands - a culture/domination strategy is not viable because of the chance that the great works will be destroyed and there is NOTHING you can do to prepare for it.

The idea for pantheon beliefs to grant additional faith is an awesome idea, props to the guy who proposed it.

OmniPotent42 said:

So let's see...1 slot from the amphitheater, 1 from national epic, and if you somehow get a barracks in all of your cities then you have 1 from heroic epic. That's only 3 in the capital, and it only scales linearly with how many additional cities you have for the amphitheater. I don't see how this is enough for someone who wants to prioritize either spawning or capturing great works of writing. Shoukdn't that play style be viable?

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What part of building or capturing more cities to generate additional slots don't you understand?

OmniPotent42 said:

So let's see...1 slot from the amphitheater, 1 from national epic, and if you somehow get a barracks in all of your cities then you have 1 from heroic epic. That's only 3 in the capital, and it only scales linearly with how many additional cities you have for the amphitheater. I don't see how this is enough for someone who wants to prioritize either spawning or capturing great works of writing. Shoukdn't that play style be viable?

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There's also Oxford. But anyway, you do need to drop more cities.

"Storage slots" would be very convenient and realistic; a museum usually doesn't have their entire collection on display at the same time. There could be numerous problems with this though; if you were at war, it would be even easier than it is today to just move Great Works and Artifacts away from your frontiers, and would make it difficult to capture ANY Great Work or Artifact unless your opponent had a lot of them or you had nearly captured all of their cities. They could fix this rather easily, I think, by introducing "travel times" for moving your Great Works/Artifacts, which I find rather weird, actually, that they haven't implemented that already.

I just want the ability to swap music. Even though it wouldn't provide any advantage, I like acquiring my favorite Great Works like The Swing or Alice in Wonderland and would like to be able to obtain my favorite music from other civs without having to take them by force.

My least favorite thing about the Great Works system is the "trading." The trade screen is pure busywork. There's no "game" to it. You just look for a work that will satisfy a theming bonus, click on the trading tab, find a suitable trade, and that's it. It doesn't feel like I'm making interesting decisions or interacting with other civilizations at all. It seems like a half-assed feature they just didn't have time to flesh out before release.

For example, why can't great works be traded on the main trade screen? Why must great works and artifacts be traded 1-for-1? Why can't I sell them for gold? I guess this broke the culture game, but it just highlights how artificial, forced, and uninteresting the "trading great works" screen is.

Because this was my main gripe with the great works system, I love your first suggestion:

OmniPotent42 said:

1. Give yields to different great works
I proposed this a while ago and I still think it's a great idea - to add bonus yields to great works and artifacts. Great works of writing would give the city + 2 local city happiness, great works of music would give an additional +2 faith and great works of art would provide an additional +2 gold. Artifacts would give either science, faith, or gold or perhaps additional culture or . This would make the acquisition of great works less one dimensional and provide bonuses even for civs who don't want to become cultural superpowers, and it makes you really feel like your empire is gaining from their discoveries. Perhaps more yields could be given to great works by social policies or ideological tenets as well.

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Now I could trade my +3 science Great Work of Writing for your +2 happiness one! Suddenly the decisions actually matter.

The system of storing and moving great works rubs me the wrong way. The current system does hang together and satisfy all of the important constraints, but it's just annoying sometimes. It's weird that whether or not your great works get plundered depends on:
1) whether you have empty slots in other cities to stow your works into
2) whether you remember to transfer them the turn before a city is conquered

I think the system could be improved if you could not swap great works instantaneously every turn. Perhaps displaying a work in a city could have a 10-turn timer (like a peace deal or golden age) or even a 30-turn timer (like a trade route). Then putting the Mona Lisa on display in Orleans might be a risky proposition you'd have to weigh.

A timer would also let them give us spare storage slots (like the Spy's useless "hideout" option). They probably didn't want to give us extra storage slots because it makes it much harder to capture great works. (Taken to the extreme, if each civ has infinite storage slots, great works could never be captured until it's the civ's last city.) Also, extra storage slots complicates the UI, and you always have to weigh the benefits vs. the complexity in an already complex game. But I HATE that I have to remember to pause an Archeologist's dig if he's going to finish before my next Museum is finished building. That's just annoying and cumbersome. It's also annoying that I might mess up the theming bonus of my Great Work of Music because I discovered a tech that advanced me to the next era before my next Opera House finished building, while my Great Musician was just sitting there in my city costing me gold every turn.

I'm sure the reason they allowed for instant swapping was to make the system more approachable and forgiving for when the player first experiences it. But if the theming bonuses were better documented, then we might not need to learn through trial and error how the theme bonuses will work.

A fixed timer would also allow for the "Great Work Day" idea. (If you can swap works every turn, and if the AI is always willing to trade and trade back, such a mechanic would be totally meaningless.)

This would also work really well with specific local bonuses from great works.

I like the lack of storage slots. It forces players to be proactive in building buildings and wonders that grant new slots, and de-emphasizes the "hoard every Great Work" mentality.

Right now, swapping Music would not be very helpful because there are only two wonders/buildings with theming bonuses and they both just want music from the same civ. So it's almost always easiest to just generate them yourself. However, in theory you could conquer Great Works of Music from someone else, so being able to swap them would be nice.

The trading system has lots of potential but it's a bit of a failure right now. The computer just puts things up for trade and doesn't proactively trade. I've never seen AI's swap great works with each other, so the system pretty much only benefits the human player. It would be nice if there was more complexity, allowing for different types of trades. The only concern is whether the AI would be smart enough to handle it, since it doesn't do a good job with the current simplified trading system. Also, it would be nice if trading was more interactive and/or worthwhile than the current system, where you only trade for a few specific cases. (Most notably Great Library, Oxford, Hermitage, and Louvre). The vast majority of the time, you just stuff the slots with your own Great Works.

Halcyan2 said:

I like the lack of storage slot. It forces players to be proactive in building buildings and wonders that grant new slots, and de-emphasizes the "hoard every Great Work" mentality.

Right now, swapping Music would not be very helpful because there are only two wonders/buildings with theming bonuses and they both just want music from the same civ. So it's almost always easiest to just generate them yourself. However, in theory you could conquer Great Works of Music from someone else, so being able to swap them would be nice.

The trading system has lots of potential but it's a bit of a failure right now. The computer just puts things up for trade and doesn't proactively trade. I've never seen AI's swap great works with each other, so the system pretty much only benefits the human player. It would be nice if there was more complexity, allowing for different types of trades. The only concern is whether the AI would be smart enough to handle it, since it doesn't do a good job with the current simplified trading system. Also, it would be nice if trading was more interactive and/or worthwhile than the current system, where you only trade for a few specific cases. (Most notably Great Library, Oxford, Hermitage, and Louvre). The vast majority of the time, you just stuff the slots with your own Great Works.

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I agree i think adding storage would only make it harder for people aiming for a cultural victory to win the game due to hoarders. And yeah the trading system is lackluster but would it make sense any other way? Trade it away for money/luxuries and your handing your enemy victory points. In the current scheme, victory points can only be exchanged not bought which may or may not lead to a theming bonus. Add this storage option and gold for great-work trading and you could as venice just buy all the other civs GW's and keep them in your capital.

I dont see why GW's need boosts otherwise. People love to neglect the fact that if you have no tourism, the ideology you choose will have little influence over other civs. So what you say? Well your culture may defend against ONE other influential civ but when it flips 3 or 4 other civs to the same ideology and all of that pressure is being added you will not be able to keep up. And how about that, the buildings which produce even more culture to help defend against the victory youre trying to prevent happen to hold more of those thingies everyone is whining about not having enough space for!! Solution = build less units build more culture buildings.

And about the not having space for artifacts .... you can make them into landmarks. If you truly arent playing to win culture victory this should be preferred since it helps fend off culture giants and if you are its additional free culture for policies. Outside of your territory you say?? Why are you digging it up sillies? If you are playing a domination victory you should just let the people you are stealing from dig them up for you and then nab them through conquest. And if you arent then this should not be a problem, if you can make an archaeologist you can make places to stuff all that crap. Get building!

Halcyan2 said:

The trading system has lots of potential but it's a bit of a failure right now. The computer just puts things up for trade and doesn't proactively trade. I've never seen AI's swap great works with each other, so the system pretty much only benefits the human player. It would be nice if there was more complexity, allowing for different types of trades. The only concern is whether the AI would be smart enough to handle it, since it doesn't do a good job with the current simplified trading system. Also, it would be nice if trading was more interactive and/or worthwhile than the current system, where you only trade for a few specific cases. (Most notably Great Library, Oxford, Hermitage, and Louvre). The vast majority of the time, you just stuff the slots with your own Great Works.

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I have swapped for foreign Artifacts for my Museums multiple times, since one of the ways it gives its maximum theming bonus is by having two Artifacts from the same Era, from Civilisations OTHER than your own.

But yes, it would be awesome if you could actually sell and buy Great Works and Artifacts for resources other than other GWs and Artifacts. It would turn GWs and Artifacts into another, potentially valuable bargaining chip, one that you would have to be careful to utilise, since it could inadvertently hand over victory to your opponents.

Also, unique attributes for each Great Work or Artifact would be cool, but with the sheer number of Great Works at the moment, and with people still clamouring for MORE, I think it would be a pain to give an appropriate bonus to each of them. Of course, they could make it so that it would be randomly generated, but then you would have rather incongruous examples such "+2 " for "Alice in Wonderland".

+ 2 is waayyyy too much for one great work fo writing.

I would like for the great works to be possible to use as a trade item. I would like to be able to pay gold to acquire one from my neighbours.

Tiggurix said:

I have swapped for foreign Artifacts for my Museums multiple times, since one of the ways it gives its maximum theming bonus is by having two Artifacts from the same Era, from Civilisations OTHER than your own.

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It's easy to get artifacts of other civs. When you do an archaeological dig, most of the time it's not going to be from your civilization. So the theming bonus for museums is pretty easy to get.

Halcyan2 said:

It's easy to get artifacts of other civs. When you do an archaeological dig, most of the time it's not going to be from your civilization. So the theming bonus for museums is pretty easy to get.

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But the Digsites closest to or within your borders are usually of your civilisation, and since those are the easiest to get to, I, at least, usually end up with a lot of them, and the AIs seem to have it the same way. Thus, it is often worth it to trade for some Artifacts from other civs, if you have Artifacts of your civ that are not from the same Era, so that you wouldn't get the maximum theming bonus from them.