Capitals and satellite cities
- Thread starter Thalassicus
- Start date
Tomice
Passionate Smart-Ass
If everything works as intended, there hasn't been any change to initial capital yields.
The "Capital Building" should work as free city hall, so you should have 3
3
from the start.@Thal:
How does this change affect the "settling on ressources" issue? I suppose the 2
2 still work as minimum, guaranteed yield?So we should get 1 extra production if settling on a hill with iron (because this hill would be 3
without any modifier). But if I understand this right, settling on flat grassland with horses would just give the usual 2 2 (because the base tile yield of 2 1 would be below the minimum threshold).I'll check this out as soon as I finish my current pre-patch game.
To those who don't know what I'm talking about: Click
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
@GoUtes53
We have 3 3 12
12
12
8
with our first city.
@Tomice
I think the only city tile modifier right now is from settling on a hill, but I usually don't pay close attention to it.
We have 3
3 12 12 12 8 with our first city.@Tomice
I think the only city tile modifier right now is from settling on a hill, but I usually don't pay close attention to it.
Ahriman
Tyrant
After some playtesting, I think I don't really like the changes here.
In my view, expansion should be limited primarily by happiness. You pay 4 unhappiness per city, so it's ok that a new city has a decent starting yield without further investment; you already had to invest in the settler and in the happiness to support the city.
The city hall building adds an extra source of culture, which lets you really race through the first social policy tree (including getting a great prophet from liberty and founding a religion super-early), and its maintenance cost means that to get base city food/production yields that we have negative gold income per city.
If you really want to keep the city hall (which seems unnecessary to me) then make it cheaper in production and with no maintenance cost, but without the culture income.
The palaces make early expansion really too easy. They give 12 etra happiness very early in the game, and make Liberty incredibly powerful. I thought the +5 happiness policy was fine. If you really want to use the palace option, then it needs to go down in the amount of happiness it gives; maybe 2 happiness per city spread over 3-4 cities.
In my view, expansion should be limited primarily by happiness. You pay 4 unhappiness per city, so it's ok that a new city has a decent starting yield without further investment; you already had to invest in the settler and in the happiness to support the city.
The city hall building adds an extra source of culture, which lets you really race through the first social policy tree (including getting a great prophet from liberty and founding a religion super-early), and its maintenance cost means that to get base city food/production yields that we have negative gold income per city.
If you really want to keep the city hall (which seems unnecessary to me) then make it cheaper in production and with no maintenance cost, but without the culture income.
The palaces make early expansion really too easy. They give 12 etra happiness very early in the game, and make Liberty incredibly powerful. I thought the +5 happiness policy was fine. If you really want to use the palace option, then it needs to go down in the amount of happiness it gives; maybe 2 happiness per city spread over 3-4 cities.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I mentioned in the other thread I scaled culture numbers, and changed palace happiness to 2. I made these things "too good" in the first version based on requests to overpower stuff in the economy thread. 
@Thal
I've given this issue some thought over the course of a number of days, and from my own experience in the beginning of the game, I feel that a different approach to the problem might be in order. Feel free to take this all with a grain of salt as it -is- a big change I'm about to propose, but its an idea that I've been tossing about in my head for a while now. My reasoning for it is below, but if you want to skip ahead to the idea, feel free.
One of the issues that I've run into during the beginning of the game.. and nearly every game, is.. "Oh! That looks like a great spot for a city- ..Oh wait, there's no luxury resources there, it'll just drain my happiness..." Only to see later that the AI comes along to the take the spot. This is quite frustrating as you could imagine, particularly because it feels like you were just cheated out of a great spot. One could certainly argue it's my fault I lost the spot, but lets think about this from another angle for a moment.
As Thal mentions above, when the capital is automatically better at nearly everything, it becomes an almost no brainer to put the best stuff in it, but it goes beyond just buildings and wonders. The citizens within the capital, as well, are generally -more- productive then those in satellite cities. So, when I look at my happiness counter up at the top, and unless I'm absolutely swimming in excess happiness, I logically conclude that I'm better off saving that happiness towards new citizens within my existing cities, if my growth is there. (Particularly the capital) New citizens within current a city use less happiness, then if I were to found a new one. Moreover, that new city isn't going to be making happiness buildings for a while.
This can lead to a fairly.. boring game where I'm hunkering down for a while until I can get a nice padding on happiness so that I can expand without feeling so constrained. The problem is.. well, that problem I mentioned above is still there. Many potential city spots give off the vibe of 'Why bother?' because they don't have any luxuries that make it worth it. After all, new cities count against acquiring polices as well! ..at least until you can get their culture production up.
With these thoughts in mind, I feel that expansion shouldn't be so.. heavily gated behind happiness. Of course, the problem is we can't just give a bunch of happiness at the beginning of the game, like you pointed out. Too many things are balanced against it, particularly military conquest.
To me, this seems to be the underlining issue: Peaceful Expansion and Military Conquest are tied to the same mechanic.. with the same underlining math. Lets say I have 10 Happiness, as an example, then I have enough to either start a new city or take a new city. If I have less, then I probably want to hold back on both. (Of course, in the later game you'd want more then just 10 happiness to occupy a larger city.) Math-wise, I feel these should be more.. disjointed then they are now and that it should easier to expand peacefully, then militarily. Planting your own city strengthens you, but does not weaken your neighbor while it does when you take one of their cities.
The Idea
Without further a-do, here is the general idea: Rebalance all the bonus, and luxury resources to give some amount of happiness, even allow duplicates to give happiness. My general thinking is to balance all the resources to give a similar amount of yields when improved, but obviously different types. Lets say we're balancing around 6 yields...
Examples:
Wheat: 5 Food, 1 Happiness
Fish: 5 Food, 1 Happiness
Deer: 3 Food, 2 Production, 1 Happiness
Oranges: 3 Food, 1 Gold, 2 Happiness
.
.
.
Silver: 4 Gold, 2 Happiness
Gold: 3 Gold, 3 Happiness
Etc. So yes, I'm basically saying to move the Happiness as a yield to the tile, and only getting that happiness when the tile is improved. This forces us to actively work and improve the tiles to get the happiness. We can't just plant our flag and get them automatically, some further work must be done after. It also encourages us to better protect these resources from enemies. Barbarian ships will be even more annoying when we're loosing both our food and happiness when they sit in our waters. Same with our land. People would be more inclined to.. 'defend at their borders, then at their gates. (Cities)' Sorta thing.
Moreover, its more realistic. People with an abundance of food are naturally happier. 'A full stomach is a happy stomach'. Or they have more to sell then the next person working a non-resource tile, etc.
This setup would fix the, 'Well, this looks like a good spot.. buuuut-' problem! Any spot will at least be a 'good' spot, regardless if it has any luxury resources or not. Obviously, some spots will still be better then others depending on your current situation, but the extremes of 'have' and 'have not' will be lessened when it comes to happiness. Most spots will have a certain amount of happiness around them that can be tapped into to help start up the city, closing the gap between when you can start building happiness buildings there.
Now, the most obvious problem this whole idea causes is perhaps the abundant excess happiness that will be created. Well, obviously we'll need to tweak/create more sources of unhappiness. Here's my current idea: Take a page from Civilization NiGHTS and have military units create unhappiness, although only around 1 unhappiness per-unit, to keep things simple.
This adds another layer of realism: Mother and daughters don't want to see their husbands and brothers go off to war and fight, more over, some of them may not want to off and fight either. But for some reason or another, they are. Policies could even be added to lessen the effect of unit unhappiness, adding flavor to the mechanic.
Further more, these two ideas help disjoint peaceful expansion verse military conquest. With this model, you would only need a small handful of happiness to start out a new city as long as it has some resources nearby. But, a military approach would require you to actively build up a surplus of happiness to support a large army.
The other problem I could see with this setup is trade. How would it work after this change? In all honesty, this part I'm not entirely sure.. But my general line of thinking was this: Most of the luxury resources that the game currently presents us with are raw materials, not finished products, yet these are what we trade. But in the real world, what we typically consider a luxury is usually a finished product. (Obviously food is an exception here)
So, my idea here would be to not trade these raw resources, but to come up with a line of 'craftsman' buildings that make trade-able finished goods from the raw resources. Perhaps only allow one of these buildings per-city, or have some kind of limit. Moreover, perhaps come up with a system that makes that trade-good 'unique'?
For example: Athens has copper nearby, and the city has a smith building that creates bronze from it. It then becomes 'Athenian Bronze' which no one else can duplicate. Think along the lines of Swiss Watches and Amish Furniture!
If you have multiple sources of copper near the city, you'd get multiple copies of 'Athenian Bronze', but only one would give you some happiness. Encouraging you to trade the duplicates.
So, that's the general idea of my thought. Sorry for the long winded post!
I've given this issue some thought over the course of a number of days, and from my own experience in the beginning of the game, I feel that a different approach to the problem might be in order. Feel free to take this all with a grain of salt as it -is- a big change I'm about to propose, but its an idea that I've been tossing about in my head for a while now. My reasoning for it is below, but if you want to skip ahead to the idea, feel free.
One of the issues that I've run into during the beginning of the game.. and nearly every game, is.. "Oh! That looks like a great spot for a city- ..Oh wait, there's no luxury resources there, it'll just drain my happiness..." Only to see later that the AI comes along to the take the spot. This is quite frustrating as you could imagine, particularly because it feels like you were just cheated out of a great spot. One could certainly argue it's my fault I lost the spot, but lets think about this from another angle for a moment.
As Thal mentions above, when the capital is automatically better at nearly everything, it becomes an almost no brainer to put the best stuff in it, but it goes beyond just buildings and wonders. The citizens within the capital, as well, are generally -more- productive then those in satellite cities. So, when I look at my happiness counter up at the top, and unless I'm absolutely swimming in excess happiness, I logically conclude that I'm better off saving that happiness towards new citizens within my existing cities, if my growth is there. (Particularly the capital) New citizens within current a city use less happiness, then if I were to found a new one. Moreover, that new city isn't going to be making happiness buildings for a while.
This can lead to a fairly.. boring game where I'm hunkering down for a while until I can get a nice padding on happiness so that I can expand without feeling so constrained. The problem is.. well, that problem I mentioned above is still there. Many potential city spots give off the vibe of 'Why bother?' because they don't have any luxuries that make it worth it. After all, new cities count against acquiring polices as well! ..at least until you can get their culture production up.
With these thoughts in mind, I feel that expansion shouldn't be so.. heavily gated behind happiness. Of course, the problem is we can't just give a bunch of happiness at the beginning of the game, like you pointed out. Too many things are balanced against it, particularly military conquest.
To me, this seems to be the underlining issue: Peaceful Expansion and Military Conquest are tied to the same mechanic.. with the same underlining math. Lets say I have 10 Happiness, as an example, then I have enough to either start a new city or take a new city. If I have less, then I probably want to hold back on both. (Of course, in the later game you'd want more then just 10 happiness to occupy a larger city.) Math-wise, I feel these should be more.. disjointed then they are now and that it should easier to expand peacefully, then militarily. Planting your own city strengthens you, but does not weaken your neighbor while it does when you take one of their cities.
The Idea
Without further a-do, here is the general idea: Rebalance all the bonus, and luxury resources to give some amount of happiness, even allow duplicates to give happiness. My general thinking is to balance all the resources to give a similar amount of yields when improved, but obviously different types. Lets say we're balancing around 6 yields...
Examples:
Wheat: 5 Food, 1 Happiness
Fish: 5 Food, 1 Happiness
Deer: 3 Food, 2 Production, 1 Happiness
Oranges: 3 Food, 1 Gold, 2 Happiness
.
.
.
Silver: 4 Gold, 2 Happiness
Gold: 3 Gold, 3 Happiness
Etc. So yes, I'm basically saying to move the Happiness as a yield to the tile, and only getting that happiness when the tile is improved. This forces us to actively work and improve the tiles to get the happiness. We can't just plant our flag and get them automatically, some further work must be done after. It also encourages us to better protect these resources from enemies. Barbarian ships will be even more annoying when we're loosing both our food and happiness when they sit in our waters. Same with our land. People would be more inclined to.. 'defend at their borders, then at their gates. (Cities)' Sorta thing.
Moreover, its more realistic. People with an abundance of food are naturally happier. 'A full stomach is a happy stomach'. Or they have more to sell then the next person working a non-resource tile, etc.
This setup would fix the, 'Well, this looks like a good spot.. buuuut-' problem! Any spot will at least be a 'good' spot, regardless if it has any luxury resources or not. Obviously, some spots will still be better then others depending on your current situation, but the extremes of 'have' and 'have not' will be lessened when it comes to happiness. Most spots will have a certain amount of happiness around them that can be tapped into to help start up the city, closing the gap between when you can start building happiness buildings there.
Now, the most obvious problem this whole idea causes is perhaps the abundant excess happiness that will be created. Well, obviously we'll need to tweak/create more sources of unhappiness. Here's my current idea: Take a page from Civilization NiGHTS and have military units create unhappiness, although only around 1 unhappiness per-unit, to keep things simple.
This adds another layer of realism: Mother and daughters don't want to see their husbands and brothers go off to war and fight, more over, some of them may not want to off and fight either. But for some reason or another, they are. Policies could even be added to lessen the effect of unit unhappiness, adding flavor to the mechanic.
Further more, these two ideas help disjoint peaceful expansion verse military conquest. With this model, you would only need a small handful of happiness to start out a new city as long as it has some resources nearby. But, a military approach would require you to actively build up a surplus of happiness to support a large army.
The other problem I could see with this setup is trade. How would it work after this change? In all honesty, this part I'm not entirely sure.. But my general line of thinking was this: Most of the luxury resources that the game currently presents us with are raw materials, not finished products, yet these are what we trade. But in the real world, what we typically consider a luxury is usually a finished product. (Obviously food is an exception here)
So, my idea here would be to not trade these raw resources, but to come up with a line of 'craftsman' buildings that make trade-able finished goods from the raw resources. Perhaps only allow one of these buildings per-city, or have some kind of limit. Moreover, perhaps come up with a system that makes that trade-good 'unique'?
For example: Athens has copper nearby, and the city has a smith building that creates bronze from it. It then becomes 'Athenian Bronze' which no one else can duplicate. Think along the lines of Swiss Watches and Amish Furniture!
If you have multiple sources of copper near the city, you'd get multiple copies of 'Athenian Bronze', but only one would give you some happiness. Encouraging you to trade the duplicates.
So, that's the general idea of my thought. Sorry for the long winded post!
mitsho
Deity
I surprisingly like the idea, but it may belong into another thread. Some comments though:
That said, I always disliked civ5 system of luxuries being global when compared to the introduction of numbered strategic ressources. It was headscratching why the benefits of making the latter this way were supposed to be untrue for luxuries.
- I like happiness being spread over more ressources and tiles. And I like that you need to work them to get the effect.
- But how does that adress the problem that a citizen in a current city is better than a new city?
- Units costing unhappiness may be a good way to balance conquest versus peaceful expansion, but it's also a unfun one: How do you defend against a conquest empire with fewer less experienced units?
- Craftman buildings go too far away from the base game in any case. It forces you to build up your cities and fill it up with buildings. I'm not sure I like it.
That said, I always disliked civ5 system of luxuries being global when compared to the introduction of numbered strategic ressources. It was headscratching why the benefits of making the latter this way were supposed to be untrue for luxuries.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
@Teirusu
Welcome to the community!
Coincidentally, I added the capability for happiness to act as a tile yield a few weeks ago. I did this mainly for natural wonders and opportunities which give happiness. We actually have to work those tiles to get the happiness. I also like the basic idea of making happiness more location-dependent. I might revert Stoneworks to their original happiness form for this reason.
Something I'd like to explain is terrain generation in Civ 5 places bonus resources (like deer) specifically to counteract "bad" terrain (like tundra). These bonus resources exist solely to equalize yields in patches of terrain. I believe it would be too difficult to balance terrain if these bonus resources gave anything other than small basic yields like food and production.
It's a very difficult situation to untangle. On the one hand, I like terrain-dependent bonuses... but on the other hand, happiness is exceedingly challenging to balance. It's hard to accomplish both these goals simultaneously.
One thing I'd like to point out is with the recent changes to happiness buildings, new cities can now break even at 6
, Liberty policies, a Publishing House, and the Commerce finisher. This means expansion is profitable again in the midgame.
Welcome to the community!
Coincidentally, I added the capability for happiness to act as a tile yield a few weeks ago. I did this mainly for natural wonders and opportunities which give happiness. We actually have to work those tiles to get the happiness. I also like the basic idea of making happiness more location-dependent. I might revert Stoneworks to their original happiness form for this reason.
Something I'd like to explain is terrain generation in Civ 5 places bonus resources (like deer) specifically to counteract "bad" terrain (like tundra). These bonus resources exist solely to equalize yields in patches of terrain. I believe it would be too difficult to balance terrain if these bonus resources gave anything other than small basic yields like food and production.
It's a very difficult situation to untangle. On the one hand, I like terrain-dependent bonuses... but on the other hand, happiness is exceedingly challenging to balance. It's hard to accomplish both these goals simultaneously.
One thing I'd like to point out is with the recent changes to happiness buildings, new cities can now break even at 6
, Liberty policies, a Publishing House, and the Commerce finisher. This means expansion is profitable again in the midgame.
Ahriman
Tyrant
I still find quarries underpowered, particularly given how often they end up being placed on desert tiles. I'd put in another shout-out for bonus resources to increase at the same rate as other resources, rather than some bonuses being awesome (grain) and others being modest.
A circus is way better than a stoneworks.
A circus is way better than a stoneworks.
A circus is typically more limited and costs more (in upkeep). Horses and Ivory are less common than stone/marble (I think. Horses typically come in 2-3 batches on one tile rather than spread out as bonus resources are). I think that's fine it's better as a result. It's way better however with no happiness on the stone at all.
Ditto on quarries, and later on oil wells.
Ditto on quarries, and later on oil wells.
mitsho
Deity
Circuses are usually negative in gold as well, only providing the happiness whereas stoneworks gives production. There for different situations. I think comparing them is difficult.
As you brought up Oil, why don't we have a late game building that boosts that tile. There is one for every other ressource but oil (or am I missing any? perhaps truffles?). A refinery that boosts oil tile yields with and gives a % of would be worthwhile and realistic, with all this oil wealth in the world today. (But of course, we're trying to reduce gold now I know 
)
As you brought up Oil, why don't we have a late game building that boosts that tile. There is one for every other ressource but oil (or am I missing any? perhaps truffles?). A refinery that boosts oil tile yields with
and gives a % of would be worthwhile and realistic, with all this oil wealth in the world today. (But of course, we're trying to reduce gold now I know )Truffles are boosted by 1) Markets (like other luxuries) and 2) Aqueducts. Oil and aluminum and uranium aren't boosted by any buildings. Alum and Uranium are boosted by mine techs and policies though. Wells aren't impacted by anything.
I could see putting a boost on stock exchanges for oil (1-2 gold). I don't think it's boosted on water either by anything. Seaports or warehouses could do that. Alternatively, there could be a tech effect on oil wells at some point to provide some gold, science, or more production (around where plastics were?).
I'm not sure if anything should boost alum/uranium. Maybe factories. A better case is for boosting pastures and plantations and camps more generally than worrying about those two. They still provide bonus production anyway. Oil wells are often useless tiles relative to the alternatives. Platforms are probably okay.
I could see putting a boost on stock exchanges for oil (1-2 gold). I don't think it's boosted on water either by anything. Seaports or warehouses could do that. Alternatively, there could be a tech effect on oil wells at some point to provide some gold, science, or more production (around where plastics were?).
I'm not sure if anything should boost alum/uranium. Maybe factories. A better case is for boosting pastures and plantations and camps more generally than worrying about those two. They still provide bonus production anyway. Oil wells are often useless tiles relative to the alternatives. Platforms are probably okay.
Yeah, I build more stoneworks than circuses (probably a function of how common the resources are). I also will build stoneworks over circuses in many cases, since the stoneworks gives a passive hammer + happy while circus costs more to build, costs more in upkeep, and requires you to work the horse to get anything more than the happiness (which tends to be on crappy terrain). I am much more likely to build a circus if it's for more than one tile, if the tile is a decent elephant, or if I already have stables built (improving horse tiles) and I have nothing else to build, after which I will actually work the horse tile.
mitsho
Deity
Aluminium and Uranium profit from mines so it's less of an issue there. Oil is special since it's got its own (two) improvements. But I could see slight benefits for Aluminium and Uranium on factories. These late game ressources deserve their own boost. Especially oil, I'd guess the Stock exchange is fine, but we could also put it as well on the Factory if we don't want a Refinery extra building.
But yes, evening out pastures and plantations versus farms and mines is probably more important
But yes, evening out pastures and plantations versus farms and mines is probably more important
@Mitsho
I'm glad that you liked the idea and appreciate your thoughts upon it, and I agree with the craftsman buildings per-see. We don't really need anymore building creep added to the game, even though the idea was to only allow one building within each city. It wasn't my most well thought out part of the proposal.
As for your concern in number 2, this would at least tilt things more in the favor of founding a new city, verse just letting the capital or older cities to grow. Consider the following scenarios:
Lets say you have a capital of 5 citizens and you've run out of bonus/luxury resource tiles around the capital to work. The current option is to either start working the normal tiles around the capital, or start making settlers to found new cities that have better resources to work. Now, both options come with a happiness penalty, but citizen B founding a new city incurs extra unhappiness over citizen A in the capital. Moreover, even though citizen A is working a normal tile around the capital, he's probably (nearly) just as productive as citizen B working a resource tile in a new city because of the capital's bonuses.
Now consider the scenario where at least the bonus resources give 1 happiness: Citizen B would now become nearly happiness neutral, and so would addition citizens in the new city, until it ran out of workable resource tiles. This would at least give the new city a leg up until it could start making local happiness buildings on its own. This may seem, perhaps, unbalancing to have new-ish cities being almost happiness neutral, but remember, you still have to defend this new city and improve the resource tiles around it to get the happiness bonus which incurs a cost of its own.
As for number 3: Just because you have a smaller army then a conquest empire, doesn't mean they're less experienced. Typically, my smaller armies are fairly experienced, they've been fighting more battles and have more promotions then a newly churned out invasion force. Moreover, being the defender, you have the advantage of friendly territory and defensive bonuses.
More still, the attacker had to put up a high cost to support his large army by really pushing for happiness. Now if your going Tall and on the defensive, most likely you have a large surplus of happiness as well. There's no reason why you can't buy a few units temporary to help in your empire's defense while the war is going on.
@Thal
Thanks for the warm welcome and your thoughts on the subject.
One thing I'd like to point out though.. terrain generation and where/when we settle cities are two related, but disjointed things! I don't look at a whole map and say, 'Well, the yield allocation looks balanced.. so, I'll just settle cities with a regular pattern and spacing, things -should- average out. ..Right?' No, of course not, that would be a silly thing to do.
You, I, and even the AI do our most to find the 'best' spots on the map and plant a flag there. I know at least for myself, those spots tend to include at least a few of these bonus resources and/or a river. A blank area with few or none of these resources tends to go in the 'Why bother?' column for me. Generally, it'll take forever to grow or produce anything, because bonus resources help get the new city get off the ground and running faster because that tile is more productive. And, I'll certainly go to the trouble of plopping a new city 'just right' to over-lap as many of these bonus resources within its working radius, within reason.
So, even if the placement of bonus resources isn't exactly equal across the map, I'd imagine how we plop down our cities tends to give them an 'average' amount of bonus resources within their radius anyway. Some where between 2 and 4, depending upon the map. Moreover, bonus resources don't exist solely in bad terrain, they just occur less frequently, and I suppose it would just make for a better reason to plop down on bad terrain in the first place.
In any case, I've thought about my proposal a little more since my last post. Instead of just rebalancing all the resources, we could just leave luxuries alone, as they are. After all, part of the fun is the race towards them and you can still trade duplicates for others that you don't have. Instead, just give the bonus resources a token of happiness when improved and worked. I feel this would be a bit more dynamic and engaging then the current building solution and certainly better then the lump sum of happiness we had in the past.
Also, since this idea would produce much less extra happiness per-city, you could axe out the idea of military units producing unhappiness. Instead, to soft-cap expansion a bit, you could tweak the amount of unhappiness produced from the number of cities, having it subtly ramp up with increasing number of them. So, as an example, the first one could cause 2 unhappiness, the next 3, then 4, etc. But certainly not to that extent. Basically, like how polices currently work, you could even add a policy to the Liberty tree that could lessen the effect.
I'm glad that you liked the idea and appreciate your thoughts upon it, and I agree with the craftsman buildings per-see. We don't really need anymore building creep added to the game, even though the idea was to only allow one building within each city. It wasn't my most well thought out part of the proposal.
As for your concern in number 2, this would at least tilt things more in the favor of founding a new city, verse just letting the capital or older cities to grow. Consider the following scenarios:
Lets say you have a capital of 5 citizens and you've run out of bonus/luxury resource tiles around the capital to work. The current option is to either start working the normal tiles around the capital, or start making settlers to found new cities that have better resources to work. Now, both options come with a happiness penalty, but citizen B founding a new city incurs extra unhappiness over citizen A in the capital. Moreover, even though citizen A is working a normal tile around the capital, he's probably (nearly) just as productive as citizen B working a resource tile in a new city because of the capital's bonuses.
Now consider the scenario where at least the bonus resources give 1 happiness: Citizen B would now become nearly happiness neutral, and so would addition citizens in the new city, until it ran out of workable resource tiles. This would at least give the new city a leg up until it could start making local happiness buildings on its own. This may seem, perhaps, unbalancing to have new-ish cities being almost happiness neutral, but remember, you still have to defend this new city and improve the resource tiles around it to get the happiness bonus which incurs a cost of its own.
As for number 3: Just because you have a smaller army then a conquest empire, doesn't mean they're less experienced. Typically, my smaller armies are fairly experienced, they've been fighting more battles and have more promotions then a newly churned out invasion force. Moreover, being the defender, you have the advantage of friendly territory and defensive bonuses.
More still, the attacker had to put up a high cost to support his large army by really pushing for happiness. Now if your going Tall and on the defensive, most likely you have a large surplus of happiness as well. There's no reason why you can't buy a few units temporary to help in your empire's defense while the war is going on.
@Thal
Thanks for the warm welcome and your thoughts on the subject.
One thing I'd like to point out though.. terrain generation and where/when we settle cities are two related, but disjointed things! I don't look at a whole map and say, 'Well, the yield allocation looks balanced.. so, I'll just settle cities with a regular pattern and spacing, things -should- average out. ..Right?' No, of course not, that would be a silly thing to do.
You, I, and even the AI do our most to find the 'best' spots on the map and plant a flag there. I know at least for myself, those spots tend to include at least a few of these bonus resources and/or a river. A blank area with few or none of these resources tends to go in the 'Why bother?' column for me. Generally, it'll take forever to grow or produce anything, because bonus resources help get the new city get off the ground and running faster because that tile is more productive. And, I'll certainly go to the trouble of plopping a new city 'just right' to over-lap as many of these bonus resources within its working radius, within reason.
So, even if the placement of bonus resources isn't exactly equal across the map, I'd imagine how we plop down our cities tends to give them an 'average' amount of bonus resources within their radius anyway. Some where between 2 and 4, depending upon the map. Moreover, bonus resources don't exist solely in bad terrain, they just occur less frequently, and I suppose it would just make for a better reason to plop down on bad terrain in the first place.
In any case, I've thought about my proposal a little more since my last post. Instead of just rebalancing all the resources, we could just leave luxuries alone, as they are. After all, part of the fun is the race towards them and you can still trade duplicates for others that you don't have. Instead, just give the bonus resources a token of happiness when improved and worked. I feel this would be a bit more dynamic and engaging then the current building solution and certainly better then the lump sum of happiness we had in the past.
Also, since this idea would produce much less extra happiness per-city, you could axe out the idea of military units producing unhappiness. Instead, to soft-cap expansion a bit, you could tweak the amount of unhappiness produced from the number of cities, having it subtly ramp up with increasing number of them. So, as an example, the first one could cause 2 unhappiness, the next 3, then 4, etc. But certainly not to that extent. Basically, like how polices currently work, you could even add a policy to the Liberty tree that could lessen the effect.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Resources closely follow a pattern of 1 yield unimproved, 2 improved, and 3 with a building. The bonus resources are:
|unimproved|improved|building
banana|1|3|4
cow|1|2|3
deer|1|2|3
sheep|1|2|3
stone|1|2|3
wheat|0|2|3
Luxury yields also match this pattern, with an additional +1 from markets. I did overlook the modern strategics. How about +2 late resource yields (oil, aluminum, uranium) from factories?
Bonus and luxury resources also get +1 gold in deserts. I didn't give strategics that bonus because it would reveal there's a resource on the tile for anyone who hasn't discovered the resource.
@Teirusu
I could see giving resource tiles happiness as part of a policy in an expansionary tree. The main reason I haven't done so is the AI. I'm still figuring out how to get it to recognize happiness on terrain.
banana|1|3|4
cow|1|2|3
deer|1|2|3
sheep|1|2|3
stone|1|2|3
wheat|0|2|3
Luxury yields also match this pattern, with an additional +1 from markets. I did overlook the modern strategics. How about +2 late resource yields (oil, aluminum, uranium) from factories?
Bonus and luxury resources also get +1 gold in deserts. I didn't give strategics that bonus because it would reveal there's a resource on the tile for anyone who hasn't discovered the resource.
@Teirusu
I could see giving resource tiles happiness as part of a policy in an expansionary tree. The main reason I haven't done so is the AI. I'm still figuring out how to get it to recognize happiness on terrain.
albie_123
Modding In Secret
Why are bananas so good? I mean, yeah, they taste incredible, but isn't wheat more historically important for growth?
(Although apparently bananas are quickly becoming the staple food in many areas in the world becoming hotter as of late.)
(Although apparently bananas are quickly becoming the staple food in many areas in the world becoming hotter as of late.)
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