Bernd-das-Brot
Prince
Basically, I want production and gold to have roughly equal value (so as to have meaningful decisions about which tiles to work, which specialists to get, which improvements to build, which social policies to adopt), but different strengths and weaknesses.
Production has many weaknesses: it requires pre-planning for you to know what you want (you don't get it for several turns, and you have to commit - can't retroactively switch what you were working on and credit it to something else); you can't start building until you have the tech so your infrastructure will lag tech, it can't easily be pooled or spread across cities
It's only real advantage is that it's basically the only way to get wonders.
Gold has many advantages: it gets you want you want instantly, it requires no pre-planning, it has huge flexibility, it can be used for lots of purposes (buying units or buildings, gifting city states, spending on opportunities, upgrading units, buying tiles, paying upkeep). It can be accumulated and shared across cities.
It has so many different advantages and uses, it really needs a downside.
So production *has* to be more efficient in order for it to be meaningful as a resource. Otherwise it is just second tier to gold.
Further things that complicate the relationship are that:
a) villages have higher yields than mines or mills, both as a base (1 gold 1 science vs 1 production) and gets earlier/more bonuses from techs or policies.
b) gold multipliers (banks, etc.) are larger than production multipliers.
In terms of fun: I think Teirusu is on the right track. It's fun to feel like you're gaining an efficiency advantage from delaying gratification, from really investing in something rather than just pushing a "buy now" button. If I am willing to put up with all the downsides of production, that ought to get me something.
I couldn't agree more to everything Ahriman wrote.
Gold > production and the connected village > mine problem are heavy balance issues.
Just take a look at the modifiers for gold and production:
Gold:
Market +20% (tier2)
Mint +30 % (t4)
Bank +50% (t7)
=+100 % gold on t7 (early rennaisance)!
Production in comparison gets:
Smithy (t5) +20%
Blast furnace (t5) +20% only on units
Work Shop (t9) +20% only buildings
Factory (t10) +25% needs coal
S-Plant (t13) +25% only desert
A-Plant (t14) +50% needs uranium
That's only a general +45% after late industrial. (The prod-buildigs get +x hammers extra, but doesn't make mines more valuable.)
So every gold piece gets way earlier doubled in value than every hammer gets even 150% of it's worth. Add protectionism and perhaps Big Ben and buildings are easier/cheaper to buy than build. And buying has many advantages over building.
I think the buying modifiers (x3 for military, x2 for most buildings) are really good, but there should be some changes to the way gold and prod get created. Some suggestions:
- An earlier/extra SP for mine-boni
- remove extra yield from village
- change one of the early gold buildings (mint I would say) away from modifier to something else (extra gold on ressources or rivers or from trade so its usefull even for production-economy like stock exchange) or move it to the later game (there is a huge gap between bank and stock exchanges)
- +50% from banks seems really strong for an early midgame building
- add a tier 2/3 prod building with +x%, workshop on t8 and better or more general
- add science to mines and villages with the knowledge-SP
Goal: Gold is way more variable than prod and faster/better at getting "stuff" so it should always be much more expensive to buy thinks.