The last two improvements that need looking at are the
Groundwater Well and the
Geothermal Factory. These are both late-game improvements but need very different adjustments.
Groundwater Well
This is an extremely weak improvement by the standards of the game. As far as I can tell, the only time Groundwater Well ever gets built is on a Desert tile that can't get anything else. It can be built on Grassland, Plains, Desert, or Marsh, but in just about any of these cases, another improvement would provide higher yields. In GW's defense, though, it does not clear Forests or Jungles, but in that case you would get much better yields from a Treefarm. Groundwater Well also spreads Irrigation, but so does Farm, and Farm does it with better food production. Groundwater Well does not produce fresh water. (I tried using
<bAddsFreshWater> as defined in the terrain schema, but it doesn't seem to do anything for improvements. It is used for Oasis and Ice features to provide water.)
So what I think we should do is give Groundwater Well a set of tech bonuses.
- Default: +2 food, +1 commerce
- +1 food, +2 commerce at Hydroponics
- Net: +3 food, +3 commerce (total +4.5)
- +1 food at Ecological Engineering
- Net: +4 food, +3 commerce (total +5.5)
- +2 commerce at Weather Control
- Net: +4 food, +5 commerce (total +6.5)
Geothermal Factory
Unlike Groundwater Well, Geothermal Factory is just a little bit too good. It out-produces Mine and Workshop without giving any unhealth; that's not good overall. I think what should be done is reduce the base production from 6 to 4, remove the +1 production from
Teleportation, and reduce the bonuses from Routes down to +1 production/+1 commerce (Maglev and Jumplane currently give +2 production/+1 commerce, but Maglev is available long before Geothermal can be built, so that's my default assumption). This results in the following:
- Default: +4 production
- +1 production, +1 commerce from Route
- Net: +5 production, +1 commerce (total +5.5)
- +2 commerce from Planetary Economics
- Net: +5 production, +3 commerce (total +6.5)
which is equal to a Workshop and just better than a Mine.
Here's a final comparison table for all the improvements.
Farm Mine Workshop Cottage Watermill Windmill Jungle Camp Woodcutter Groundwater Well Geothermal Factory
Ancient +1 +0.75 N/A +1 N/A N/A +3 +1 N/A N/A
Classical +1 +2.75 +1 +1.5 +1 +1.5 +3 +2 N/A N/A
Medieval +2 +2.75 +2 +2.25 +2 +2.5 +3 +2 N/A N/A
Renaissance +2 +4 +3 +3 +3.5 +3.5 +4.25 +2 N/A N/A
Industrial +3 +4 +5.5 +4.5 +4.5 +4.5 +4.25 +4 N/A N/A
Modern +4.5 +5 +6.5 +5.5 +4.5 +5 +4.75 +6 +4.5 N/A
Transhuman +6 +6 +6.5 +6.5 +6.5 +6.5 +7.25 +7.25 +6.5 +6.5