and the same seems true for research agreements.
Sometimes research agreements cost 300 or 350 rather than 250, but I haven't found a clear pattern to this. It certainly isn't by era, and it certainly doesn't reflect the much higher cost of later techs.
There are a few ways to go about it if you want CCs to remain very special.
1) Heals on kills.
2) Doesn't require Horses.
3) 60H
Don't like 1, too similar to Janissiary.
Don't like 2, they should require horses, and they should be capped by the number of courses you can access.
Cost decrease might be feasible. But Greece is already strong, there's no reason why CC need to be a super unit.
The biggest issue with the tree right now is how quickly you can rush to Rifles with Artillery support, as opposed to the amount of time it takes to reach alternatives.
Part of this is the relative weakness of economy techs. Economy/social techs generally give you nothing except the ability to build some new structure, which doesn't really do anything that th earlier ones didn't do - just more happy, more culture, more maintenance. Whereas as soon as you get a military tech you can upgrade your army.
This is another reason why I suggested some yield changes from economy techs.
The gold costs don't increase, but the influence gained does decrease as the game progresses.
Do we know exactly how this works? I haven't noticed this as a significant change.
The nerf to puppets is probably balanced by them no longer draining your treasury with all the military buildings.
No, the nerf to puppets is much larger. If you Trading Post your puppets in the current system, the military buildings don't cost that much upkeep, a 25% penalty is more severe.
owever I do think a penalty against cities would be an added benefit for all mounted units. Sure, knights aren't as overpowered as horsemen, but with 18 str, 3 move, and attack-and-away capabilities, there's really no reason not to build knights over swords other than the cost and if you don't have the resources...
You risk breaking Mandelaku cavalry and its upgrades with a city-attack penalty, but otherwise I'm not strongly opposed. Would be good to make cavalry more specialist, but we don't want to over-nerf. I would prefer to make the resource requirements more binding.
but Horse is far more common than Iron.
My guess is that, overall, it is not more common in a mapscript sense. BUT it spawns in grassland and plains, which are where cities get settled, and where culture expands to, whereas iron is often in tundra, desert, and hills, which are much less likely to be within culture.
Also, iron shows up later, so its harder to settle near it.
I would move iron reveal to bronze working. It is terrible having it revealed at iron working. It means if you research iron working you often have to build a new city near the iron, and then build the mine, before you can actually get any swordsmen. So in practice swordsmen come much later than horsemen.
More importantly... it should be made harder to steal CS allegiances
Agreed. Possibly the amount of influence you get should be reduced the more influence other players have? Maybe a 25% reduction in influence for each friend they already have, and a 50% reduction if they are already allied?
Ok, 1 thing...I don't see anything wrong with hill farms, it's nice to have some great tiles to try to grab or even war for
My problem is that in the current system civil service is too powerful (but there is no other good way to nerf it) and it makes hill farm river tiles too uber in general.
Agree, also as others have said they need to lose a movement point. Maybe also the move after attack???
I don't like losing move after attack. This is the one thing that makes horsemen interesting, and different from other units. It is the defining characteristic of cavalry in this game.
What if you gave a per city bonus with a cap? For instance you get 8 food - 4 for the capitol and 1 each for your next four cities.
I thought of this, but I think it gets confusing and unintuitive, and introduces a city allocation problem (how is the bonus allocated across cities?) and can tend to favor the capital.
This way you have a choice between a trade post for 2 Hammer/2 Gold or a farm for 2 Food/2 Hammer. Mine need to get another hammer so that they are comparable.
No you don't. You have a choice between 3 hammer/1 gold, 2 food 2 hammer 1 gold, or 2 gold 3 hammer. [From mine, farm, trading post.]
Hills shouldn't be good food production tiles, or they make grassland too weak. Grassland's food production should be nice.
I would make mines +2 Hammer, thus a 4 Hammer tile, at the start of the game and then add another at dynamite. For the pastures I would add one Food at the start, +2 total, and then add another Food at Biology or something.
This kind of change would require totally retooling the entire economy, it messes up the costs and build times for everything, and makes lumbermills too weak early on and mines too strong.
One I would add is to not allow Social Policies to be held off until the later, better policies become available. This abuse really compounds the City State abuse.
The problem with doing this is that it can encourage you to avoid earning culture in the early game, so you aren't forced to spend it on weaker policies. Not a good plan IMO.
So city-states might possibly be balanced... but Maritime city-states aren't.
Right.
I'm sorry - I can't take this exercise seriously if you believe that one of the 4 basic victory conditions should require a small empire and be designed to favor 1 city games.
Ok. Bye!
It doesn't favor only 1 city games (on a high difficulty level, you risk getting slaughtered by a vast military if you only have 1 city).
But a passive victory condition like culture should require sacrifice. If you can get culture AND a big army AND a big economy AND big research, then what are you giving up?
Add happiness National Wonders
I'm leaving Wonders aside for now.
make happiness-induced golden ages cheaper
Disagree, golden ages area already incredibly powerful, making them cheaper would be totally broken, particularly with Persia and/or Chichen Itza.
I think they already scale; with a large empire it is much harder to have very high happiness, with a small empire it is easier.
Significantly increase the return of investment of most buildings. In my opinion, a lot of the buildings are so bad for what hammers and maintenance you sink in it's barely worth building them. A lot of this would, of course, be heavily influenced by increased tile yields so it has to be taken with a grain of salt.
I don't think this is the case. I think the main problem with some of the higher end buildings (eg public school) is that its too hard to build large enough specialist cities, because of how much food it takes over population ~14 or so.
Changing the ability to make large cities will change the value of many of the % multiplier buildings, and increasing the value of great people slightly will increase the value of specialists.
For example, I tend to very rarely build even a measly barracks in my cities, much less an armory, and have never built the higher buildings, ever
You should. Build all these in one city, then buy all your units there.
Worst of all, though, are food buildings. But that is probably a lot due to the fact that maritime city states are so out of whack
Right. Fix the ability to get massive food from Maritime city states and civil service, and they start looking a lot more attractive.
