City Specialization Brainstorm
- Thread starter amateurgamer88
- Start date
Certain eras need this more than others like the Renaissance era.
dylansan
Warlord
Hm. Maybe.
My thinking is that, if every city now has to skip certain buildings in order to prioritize others (assuming higher production costs), then every city will be weaker, not just late ones. And so there would have to be decent buffs to a lot of stuff. I would like to think that the strength of later buildings would make the lack of early ones less significant. Will you really miss having a monument in your modern city? Is it worth spending hammers for those yields when you could jump straight to later stuff?
Also, capture chance would probably need to be massively increased or set to 100% in many cases since you couldn't rebuild old stuff.
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My memory of vanilla is fuzzy, but I feel like there were more often cities that struggled with certain things—either difficulty growing, poor profuction, slow border growth, etc. With the VP happiness system, we're incentivizing building cities which are strong in every aspect, but that's also kind of why they're so samey. If you don't build buildings for every type of yield, you end up with huge unhappiness problems.
It makes sense to a degree. Real cities don't just ignore entire aspects of society. Even an industrial city is going to have some culture, some food, commerce.
Perhaps if the happiness system weren't as strict—if instead of median global values, the targets were lower—it would be more feasible to focus on one or two yields and let the others fall behind a little. You would still be punished for ingoring something civ-wide (e.g. you still need science to avoid falling behind), but not every city would need a library, university, etc.
Yes. Unless it's really late where yield per turn stops mattering, getting 2
per turn in one turn is a good deal compared to building an Opera House in 6 turns. You also need base Culture for Culture% to matter.
dylansan
Warlord
You're right.Yes. Unless it's really late where yield per turn stops mattering, getting 2
Later buildings would have to give significantly more base yields to be worth it.
Bryan317
Prince
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- Feb 7, 2017
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Plus events are adding to things, even the lowly monument. These are all good thoughts but I find as I'm playing i end up wanting everything haha. Conquest is nice. But you need culture too or you'll never advance in policies.
Conquest does need to be slowed though. It's the peaceful civs that should be able to build "everything." If you can be a warmonger AND build everything I think the choice is obvious.
This is off subject, but it touches on this issue because I have still not seen the value of using puppets. I Annex every time. And yes I've seen my happiness drop to as low as 34%. But given the time and careful diplomacy I can recover. In fact I'm looking at 100% now with 13 cities and two vassels. Why? Because I built everything.
Conquest does need to be slowed though. It's the peaceful civs that should be able to build "everything." If you can be a warmonger AND build everything I think the choice is obvious.
This is off subject, but it touches on this issue because I have still not seen the value of using puppets. I Annex every time. And yes I've seen my happiness drop to as low as 34%. But given the time and careful diplomacy I can recover. In fact I'm looking at 100% now with 13 cities and two vassels. Why? Because I built everything.
Yes, because ancient buildings are crazy OP compared to later ones. Almost always an older building is better than a newer one, so advancing in tech would be very punishing if it prevents you from building the best buildings.
Bryan317
Prince
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Some of this depends on the polices, events or other enhancers that can be added to the building. But yes I think my monuments produce 4 culture and 1 faith. Considering this only takes a few turns in modern times its a no brainer to build all the building in New or conquered cities. Should you build something that will take 20 turns? Or the monument that is ready in five or less and is already giving you yields?
dylansan
Warlord
Maybe it's weird that later buildings aren't particularly stronger than early ones.
If early buildings became obsolete, later ones would definitely have to be stronger.
Events are a pretty big difference here, I think. A lot of the current events interact with the early game buildings but trail off. I would caution against trying to balance around event-potential for buildings. Basically, don't treat the Monument as a 5 yield building and say it outperforms later buildings. 
I agree, lets not balance based on events. Although, monument is still the best building to build, considering what it does and how much it costs.Events are a pretty big difference here, I think. A lot of the current events interact with the early game buildings but trail off. I would caution against trying to balance around event-potential for buildings. Basically, don't treat the Monument as a 5 yield building and say it outperforms later buildings.
I was thinking, what if some national wonders would substract certain yields and convert them to other yields. Like for example oxford university would convert 10% of the citys gold to science. The current happiness system really is a limiting factor to city specialization but not sure if there is a worthwhile solution.
Bryan317
Prince
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- Feb 7, 2017
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- 433
Yes it really is the happiness system. For me the Walls are the first thing I'm really "forced" to build. I put it off as long as possible, but eventually the unhappiness modifier from the Walls must be acquired. But it makes logical sense for the time. I guess the truth is I'd like to see them disappear completely when Walls become truly obsolete with modern artillery.
A few points here were exactly correct. The ancient times production costs are not bad. But I feel the renaissance is a bit too cheap on most of them. As I'm currently in the Industrial Age I'm finding that these production costs seem about right.
An epiphany that I had is it would be nice to see buildings increase their production costs as the eras advance. If you manage to build a building during its proper era then it will receive culture bonuses as the eras advance. This would result in two realistic scenarios. Newer buildings may have better infrastructure so they will have higher production cost. But older buildings will have cultural value.
A few points here were exactly correct. The ancient times production costs are not bad. But I feel the renaissance is a bit too cheap on most of them. As I'm currently in the Industrial Age I'm finding that these production costs seem about right.
An epiphany that I had is it would be nice to see buildings increase their production costs as the eras advance. If you manage to build a building during its proper era then it will receive culture bonuses as the eras advance. This would result in two realistic scenarios. Newer buildings may have better infrastructure so they will have higher production cost. But older buildings will have cultural value.
