Hi guys, thank you for taking time to respond to my criticism of your discussion in episode 193. Obviously we disagree about the GP question, and that's fine, I'm not so much going to enter that discussion again (because I think we both have said what needs to be said) but would like to add that I think part of our disagreement stems from the perspective in which we see the discussion.
Your reply made it clear that your focus was very much a "small balance patch" perspective, whereas my vision is more like an "ideal case scenario" (i.e. wish for major overhaul or even future installments of the game). I do agree 100 % with you that separating the counters of the GE/GS/GM will be disastrous for balance
if everything is left as it is otherwise. That really goes without discussion. Thus, if one envisions a world with separate counters, one would have to take meassures to prevent having one city spam scientists, another spamming engineers, and a third spamming merchants. Possible meassures to achive this could be:
- Re-scaling of the amount of GP points needed to spawn a GP and the increment between them.
- Global rather than local counters towards GP spawning.
- GM/GS/GE spawning linked more tightly to certain key buildings, similar to how GA/GW/GM are tied to artist guilds.
- Last but not least, one could address strength of Great People - i.e. perhaps have GE and GS become slightly "less great".
Point 1 is pretty straightforward and shouldn't need much explanation. This point, in combination with point 2, would make it possible to have a system where you re-balance the new system to give you roughly the same amount of GP as you get currently. Global pools will mean that you can't have three different cities spamming each kind of GP at high frequency, because increased costs will mean you'll have to put several cities to focus on the same type of person to match current rates of birth.
Point 3 is more of a lose idea than a well-formed concept. I'm not keen on how artists guilds are now the ONLY way with which you form great artists, but perhaps one could have some sort of balance where your still get GP points from wonders and specialists, but the "guild equivalents" will be a major contributor you can build in one city. Not sure this would actually be the best solution, but it's an idea one could consider ...
Point 4 is independant from the rest, and really should be done no matter what imo. Specifically, Great Scientists should be freezed at their time of birth similar to how musicians and (I think) writers work, because GS hoarding imo. is lame. Great Engineers, much as it pains me (because I
love my great engineers) probably should be rebalanced to give you a production bonus equal to 8 turns of production or something like that, rather than the massive production that will often correspond to two or three times that amount you get currently, and which imo. is a bit silly (free wonders are nice, but not that great for balance). This might also make the manufactory an actual option you'd consider ...
Finally, I would like to point out a few reasons why I think a general overhaul of the GP mechanism (including separating the counters) might actually be beneficial:
- It will encourage greater variation in the amount of GP you spawn - rather than focusing on only one type of GP (usually Great Scientist on higher levels, or Great Engineer on lower levels)
- It will remove awkward situations where spawning a GP (Great Merchant) actually hurts your empire
- It will reduce micromanagement (if global counters are added) because it will put less focus on specialist management to time GP spawning and you won't have to worry about which city you place wonders that increase certain types of GP
To say the least. The one-hundred-and-ninety-fifth episode of PolyCast, "That's a Different Argument", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with first-time guest co-host Chaz "chazzycat". Carrying a runtime of 59m59s, the summary of topics is as follows:
