[Vote] (6-40) Make Villages Available Earlier

[rkkn]

move village earlier: Currency → Construction
reduce village base yield: 2 1 → 1 1
Village (re)gains +1 at Currency

Reasons:
There are no universal options early on for building culture except for monument. And the next thing, in early classical, is arena at a mere +1. It takes all the way until late classical before you can really build any. If your luxury doesn't give culture you are just kinda stuck with low culture. You can have AIs come make fun of your for your low culture even though you are trying as hard as you can to get culture. You just literally can't get any more.

Also roads sometimes feel like a trap early. You can build them as early as wheel, but the maintenance cost is significant early on, and city connections give very little. Like values in the realm of 1.3 gold. While the road between your cities could be costing you 5. This can easily put you in the red early on. Ability to have villages on them makes early roads more viable, since you can recoup those costs.
This issue is also exacerbated by the fact that the bottom side of the tech tree has no gold. If your luxury doesn't have gold, all the gold is topside.
The above two reasons are also why I'm proposing to put villages on Construction rather than the arguably more thematic Trade. Trade already has all the gold, and Construction has The Wheel (roads) as a prerequisite, while Trade does not.


Database Changes

 

[pineappledan]

I am very much against crowding more things into the early game techs. mid-late Classical is already a slog with too few things to do.

You get early from policies and from some pantheons. All Ancient trees give some source of culture in their opener. There are Arenas, there is also the free GW you get from Heroic epic.

 

[rkkn]

What is wrong with adding missing basic options? All the other yields you can build for. There are only two science buildings in ancient era, but the first one in early classical is a very big one, giving up to a +5. Meanwhile for culture it's like we want it to be something that's static and predetermined. Dependent entirely on whether or not your local resources allow for it. (Arena is peanuts. A steep tech and production investment to rush masonry only to get a mere +1 per city, in stark contrast to library's +5.)

Yes, there are plenty of other things to do in ancient era. I don't see how that's an argument against. It's still missing a basic option. I've got all these resources I can improve, and all these buildings I can build. If I decide that I want culture so badly that I am going to delay those and build for culture instead, why should that be disallowed? The fact that this basic option is missing is made more important by the fact that all world wonders are gated behind culture. You can rush the tech for them, but you can't rush the culture.

 

[rkkn]

As for pantheons, there are only a few with significant culture income, and most of them are situational. Like Stars and Sky gives good culture, but you need tundra. Ancestor Worship lost half its culture, so your best bet now is Protection, and that's not even its main focus. And it can also be taken. If there were more culture pantheons, then that would be great. But as is we don't have enough to fill that hole. (Changes to pantheons over the past year have actually even reduced the culture they grant.)

 

[Rekk]

The game is balanced around the culture options currently available.

 

[Stalker0]

no thanks on this one

 

[azum4roll]

I don't think having a potential 3 2 1 improvement (on top of the terrain yield) in late Ancient is a good thing.

 

[rkkn]

you won't have that while still in ancient even with it, because it takes a lot to get those full yields. First of all you need a second tech on the opposite half of the tree, and you need to build the caravan and send your 1/1 trade route along that road. Then of course you need the road in the first place, and it has to be complete. That's about 4 or 5 road tiles in addition to the improvement. That's a lot of worker time. You're also paying maintenance on those roads the whole time. The gold is mostly just offsetting that.

Perhaps you could get all that before classical if you focus on it and delay entering classical by getting both sides of the tech tree, and make it your priority instead of improving resources (or just have a lot of workers, which means less buildings/units), and if so I see no issue with that. You give up a lot to get that.

 

[azum4roll]

You'd have built the road already if you have Progress. That still makes 3 2 1 on a hill village, on par with improved luxuries.

 

[Enginseer]

I will sponsor this if this passes.