Vokarya's Workshop: Buildings

[Vokarya]

That will give Shrine a very short lifespan.
Enable it for Folklore too.
I think it could upgrade to any Temple, so you will get the "bonus only without state-religion". I know it will mean some trade-off, but the upgrade still worth it.

I want there to be a reason to switch out of Folklore even if you don't have a state religion yet. Prophets is not a very good civic to switch to if you don't have a religion; you get +20% GPP in cities with your religion and +200% Missionary production (which you can't do without a religion, and can't do at all when it first comes available), and then if Revolutions is on, you get a one-time 30-point bonus for switching (which only seems to offset the anarchy penalty for switching civics) and +7% religious freedom (only slightly better than the +5% from Folklore).

Furthermore, without any other requirements, if Shrine is Folklore/Prophets/Divine Cult, it is buildable as soon as you get to Mysticism without any other restrictions. Restrictions you can always meet aren't really restrictions at all.

 

[<Nexus>]

I want there to be a reason to switch out of Folklore even if you don't have a state religion yet. Prophets is not a very good civic to switch to if you don't have a religion;

I see. In my modmod I'm going to change Prophets this way:

• 1 free Priest in every city
• -1 from Priests
• maybe remove the +20% GPP bonus too

I think this will make Prophets a good early civic but not so good when you have more Priest slots.
I'm also planning new, unique civic buildings for both Prophets and Divine Cult.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with Artists Guild. I think it's overlapping a little with the Artists Guild corporation. I'm not going to get rid of it. It does have two very strong reasons to keep it; it's a non-Wonder trick for Patronage and it provides the Artist slot for the Medieval Era. I don't have anything else ideal to replace it with.

We do need now to trim down the number of Artist specialists in the Renaissance Era. With Opera House moving from the mid-Industrial to the late Renaissance, that gives us 7 Artist slots by the end of the Renaissance (1 from Theatre, 1 from Jewellery, 1 from Artists Guild, 1 from Art Gallery, 1 from Painter's Studio, 2 from Opera House), so we need to do something there.

 

[<Nexus>]

I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with Artists Guild. I think it's overlapping a little with the Artists Guild corporation. I'm not going to get rid of it. It does have two very strong reasons to keep it; it's a non-Wonder trick for Patronage and it provides the Artist slot for the Medieval Era. I don't have anything else ideal to replace it with.

I agree, but a new name would be nice, imo
Maybe something connecting Sculpture's Workshop with Art Gallery?

 

[Vokarya]

I agree, but a new name would be nice, imo
Maybe something connecting Sculpture's Workshop with Art Gallery?

I actually want to connect Stoneworker's Hut with Sculptor's Workshop. I'm actually not completely averse to connecting Artists Guild and Art Gallery, and I'm contemplating making the prerequisite for both at least one other art building (Sculptor or Painter or Photographer).

 

[<Nexus>]

How about renaming Artist Guild to Chamber Orchestra or just Orchestra. I think that fits with Patronage enough. Maybe that could even upgrade to Opera

 

[<Nexus>]

So here's an idea:

Music is a very poor tech, it gives nothing for the second to research. So a new building for it would be most needed: Court Musician would be a little weaker than Artist Guild.
Rename Artist Guild to Orchestra with some slight changes if you think so, than tie them and Opera into a chain:
Court Musician --> Orchestra -->Opera

 

[Vokarya]

I really don't think we need any new culture buildings at this point. I'm in fact concerned with how many we do have.

BTS has exactly 6 non-religious, non-Wonder buildings that provide culture: Monument, Library, Theatre, Castle, University, and Broadcast Tower, and two of those are obsolete before the end of the Renaissance.

In AND, the equivalent culture levels are 4.8 times that of BTS. A Normal-speed game is 2.4 times longer (1200 turns vs. 500) but that still leaves a 2x modifier. So it's OK if we have more culture from buildings, but there is a limit. I count over 50 buildings that generate culture, and even though there are replacements and some go obsolete, there are still 30 building lines that generate culture.

For comparison, in BTS, a fully tricked out city at the end of the Modern Era can generate +12 culture from buildings alone (+2 from Library, +3 from Theatre, +3 from University, +50% from Broadcast Tower). In AND, we could get up to +99 culture (+6 from Art Gallery [includes +2 from Modern Art], +2 from Casino, +3 from City Park, +2 from Library, +4 from Metropolitan Administration, +2 from Monument, +1 from Museum, +5 from Movie Theatre, +3 from Naval Academy, +3 from Opera House, +2 from Photographer's Studio, +1 from School, +4 from Stadium, +3 from University, +4 from Vacation Resort, +2 from Zoo, +10% from Advertising Agency, +10% from Museum, +10% from Press Agency, +30% from Communication Tower, +50% from Convention Center). Again, this is not counting religions, Wonders, or specialists.

There are two things I would like to do: reduce Scriptorium to +1 culture (it's currently +2) and do something to rein in Naval Academy. Yes, Military Academy provides +3 culture, but it's also extremely limited in that you have to sacrifice a Great General to get one. Naval Academy has no such limit, and I think it provides too large a bonus for an unlimited building. It not only provides +3 XP, but also Navigation I, and the free promotion doesn't count towards increasing the XP requirement for the next promotion, so it's a minimum of +5 XP. I'd like it if Naval Academies were only buildable once per Military Academy, but that can't be done in the XML; since building scaling applies to every non-Wonder building, going up to Huge size means you need 2 Military Academies per 1 Naval Academy and that is too high a barrier.

I agree that Music is on the weak side as far as technologies go. I'm considering moving Tavern up from Monarchy to Music. Monarchy has 6 tricks and could spare one.

 

[Noyyau]

Should Naval Academy even provide any at all?
It's not a building each coastal city should have in my opinion, only those devoted to military shipbuilding.

 

[Rezca]

I always felt the large number of culture buildings was intentional, to balance out AND's much harder Cultural Victory conditions and (I could be wrong) the higher culture levels. But +99 without using the slider or specialists is.... Is quite a lot even with that in mind. Moving Scriptorium down to just +1 sounds good to me, and I don't think Naval Acadamy really needs any culture at all. If it has to, I'd say keep it at +1.

 

[Arakhor]

I agree with Rezca, I think.

 

[Vokarya]

I always felt the large number of culture buildings was intentional, to balance out AND's much harder Cultural Victory conditions and (I could be wrong) the higher culture levels. But +99 without using the slider or specialists is.... Is quite a lot even with that in mind. Moving Scriptorium down to just +1 sounds good to me, and I don't think Naval Acadamy really needs any culture at all. If it has to, I'd say keep it at +1.

I think that the higher culture levels are practically mandatory with having more stuff, and I am comparing the Legendary levels because that is the final level in both cases. Once you start adding religions and World Wonders, more culture practically flows out of those alone, unless you go very outside the box, which is much harder to do. So you have to raise the cultural level threshold or it becomes too easy to spread borders and win a culture victory by focusing on those. But then, to make non-religious cultural victory still possible, you have to add culture from other sources. So we do need to have more cultural buildings than just BTS. Also, there are only so many XML elements that we can juggle without delving into the DLL to add more abilities. You have to use all of them to avoid having too many buildings be the same.

My real objections are more to having too many buildings just splashing culture bonuses alongside their other functions (Walls and Arena give culture in AND, but don't in BTS) and having non-artistic buildings generate more culture than artistic ones (Naval Academy is the biggest offender here; Castle Keep also provides a lot, but it's limited like Cathedrals).

 

[Vokarya]

As far as keeping Naval Academy in check goes, I think deleting the culture bonus completely and adding a requirement of Shipyard or Drydock or Naval Yard would be the best. All three of the Shipyard chain buildings have -1 health, so that's going to put them low on the priority list for cities that aren't going to focus on military shipbuilding. You also have to start with a Harbor chain building before you can build a Shipyard chain building.

Counting buildings the way Cathedral counts Temples won't work, at least if I remember correctly; we had a problem with Circus Maximus counting Stables that meant Knight's Stables would lock you out of CM and it was never fixed. All the buildings in the Harbor chain and in the Shipyard chain upgrade and the upgrades are on both sides of the Naval Academy, so that isn't an option.

 

[<Nexus>]

I really don't think we need any new culture buildings at this point. I'm in fact concerned with how many we do have.

Well, if you don't want to do it, than I will

In my next version I will include 2 new specialists. One of them is the Doctor but I don't really want to include a new great person type so they generate great scientist points. Although their number is very limited I fear it will ruin the fine balance of you set up. Iirc you had some spreadsheet about specialist counts. Do you still have it? Could you share it with me, please? Would be a great help to keep my modmod in line with the main mod.

 

[Vokarya]

Well, if you don't want to do it, than I will

In my next version I will include 2 new specialists. One of them is the Doctor but I don't really want to include a new great person type so they generate great scientist points. Although their number is very limited I fear it will ruin the fine balance of you set up. Iirc you had some spreadsheet about specialist counts. Do you still have it? Could you share it with me, please? Would be a great help to keep my modmod in line with the main mod.

When I get done with finishing the artwork changes, I am going to update a bunch of my spreadsheets and then post them. I don't want to do an update before I finish all of the artwork changes, but there are going to be a lot of other little tweaks.

 

[<Nexus>]

When I get done with finishing the artwork changes, I am going to update a bunch of my spreadsheets and then post them. I don't want to do an update before I finish all of the artwork changes, but there are going to be a lot of other little tweaks.

THX
No need to hurry

 

[Vokarya]

I was looking at Press Agency and I have a question. Does Press Agency need to give Science when it upgrades from Printer?

I want to remove Publishing House on the grounds that we have enough buildings in the Industrial Era already. This leaves Press Agency as the only upgrade from Printer. Printer currently gives a flat +5 Science. The rule has been that a building upgrade shouldn't penalize you, but I think in this case there are enough additional bonuses on the Press Agency that it's still a benefit to upgrade.

Aside from the Science, these are the bonuses from upgrading Printer to Press Agency.

• Increase from flat +3 culture to +10% culture
• Increase from flat +3 espionage to +20% espionage
• Add -10% War Weariness
• Add +10% espionage defense
• Add +2 happiness when running Personality Cult

I think this adds up to enough to outweigh the +5 science from Printer. I also think it might be a good thing if we slow down science a little in the Industrial Era. If necessary, we can also use <TechCommerceChanges> to hand out some small bonuses to existing buildings (especially University) to make up for this loss.

What do you think?

 

[nionios]

I agree for removal of Publishing House.

 

[Samson]

To me this upgrade path seems particularly complicated when trying to work out the value in upgrading. The steps are:

School of scribes + Scriptorium 4R + 3C + 1 Scientist + 1 Priest
Printer 5R + 3C + 3E (No Specialists)
Press Agency 10%C + 20%E + -10% WW + +10% esp. defense + +2H with PC (No Specialists)
Press Agency + Publishing House 10%C + 20%E + -10% WW + 7R + 4C + +10% esp. defense + +2H with PC (No Specialists)

So if you are maxed out on specialists you do not want to build a printer until Sci method, and if you are producing less than 12 * current espionage percentage the upgrade from Printer to Press Agency reduces espionage, and generally looks pretty weak.

With other upgrades it is mostly spend a load of hammers to get a building that does what this one does but better. This seems to be changing a lot.

 

[Vokarya]

I think the specialists coming and going is balanced by additional specialists from other buildings in the same era. I re-balanced specialists so that you get about 1 slot/era up to the end of the Renaissance. For Scientists, it's actually 5 by the end of the Renaissance (1 from Library, 1 from University, 1 from Observatory, 1 from Laboratory, 1 from Museum). Losing a Scientist from School of Scribes upgrading is matched by adding two Scientist slots from Observatory and Museum.

Priest specialist slots almost directly correlate with religion spread rather than era. You get 1 Temple and its Priest specialist slot per religion, plus 1 for Scriptorium once you have any religion. Cathedrals give 2 Priest slots but are restricted to 1 Cathedral per X Temples which are scaled by game size without scaling the number of Priest slots, so it winds up averaging to less than 1 slot per city. I think you would have enough religions by the end of the Renaissance to have an equal Priest specialist count compared to other specialists.

So I'm not too worried about losing specialist slots as long as we have enough other buildings to keep the total count on track.

Maybe we should also scrub the espionage bonus from Printer. We actually don't have too many more espionage buildings than in BTS; we have Town Watch/Police Station, Brothel, and Press Agency. I do not know if anything has been done to increase the cost of espionage missions, but as long as any adjustments are proportionate to the total bonuses from all sources, we don't need to have too many sources.