108.3 Waterwheel weak

[Ahriman]

The Waterwheel building feels very weak these days. It gives +1 food +2 hammers for 2 gold maintenance, and it requires a river. Now that gold and hammers are almost equivalent, then the 2 gold maintenance feels too high. The net payback on this building is very very bad.

I think it needs to change, either drop the maintenance, boost the yield, move the specialist slot back (away from the wall), or some mix of these.

 

[EsoEs]

I haven't built this thing in ages. There is almost no use for it as the benefit is so small in comparison to local resource buildings and % buildings. I think if you brought back the vanilla +2 food I could MAYBE find room for it somewhere, but as it stands it really just does nothing for me.

 

[Thalassicus]

I've been balancing it off the Smithy. In a city of <10 and no specialists the Watermill is slightly more valuable and costs less, since the ratio of value for food to production is approximately 2:3.

Watermill
120 Cost
-2 Maintenance
+1
+2

Smithy
140 Cost
-2 Maintenance
+2
+10%
+1 Engineer slot

We could reduce the cost to 90, the level of library/walls/barracks.

 

[tlaurila]

I rather liked the engineer slot on the waterwheel. The reason being that the WW had a clear use, albeit somewhat a niche one: It was the way riverside cities in flatland areas, usually rich in food and gold, had a chance to get some production up and develop.

Of course the engineer slot isn't crucial for the WW to have this use. WW is almost the only thing riverside cities have going for them, and building a city at a river (as opposed to a tile away) should have things going for it. WW allowed those cities to get off the ground more quickly, creating incentive to build a city along a river, which was good both in my game experience opinion as well as historic consistency.

Smithy is a different deal since it gives a +10% bonus, which by the renaissance can easily mean 6-8 . WW doesn't scale at all, being a drop in the ocean for bigger cities, and I think as such it well fills a role: Get the city off the ground quick. But to do this, it needs to either give a very significant early bonus (+5 with engineer often easily doubled early production for me). Or it needs to be very quick to build.

As it is now, WW is about pointless, where I feel it should be pretty much a self-evident first building on a riverside city. I understand moving the engineer away so that slots are not city-placement dependent. But at the very least, the WW should then drop to a cost of 90 and maintenance of 1 .

Another nice side of the engineer slot on WW, IMO, was that it made it possible to leverage a riverside start for a Great Engineer for an ancient wonder.

 

[Bridger]

I don't know what you guys are talking about. How is it worthless? First thing I buy in any new city is WW/Smithy/Workshop if they are available. It instantly makes new cities a lot more productive for the rest of the game.

I can safely say though, that I never actually build any of these structures. It's much more efficient to buy them and build with the resulting hammers than buy a Colosseum and build a smithy.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree with tlaurila here.

There is no way that +10% hammers and an engineer slot aren't worth *way* more than +1 food. The main benefit of the smithy is the 10%, not the +2.
Reducing the cost of the waterwheel isn't enough, the thing is barely worth its maintenance cost as it is, definitely not worth the maintenance cost and any significant build time.

*edit*
@bridger
Buying a waterwheel is a horrible waste of gold.
What is it that you are getting more production up for? Better to just buy that instead.
There are many, many things I'd rather spend my money on in the early game.

 

[Bridger]

I agree with tlaurila here.

There is no way that +10% hammers and an engineer slot aren't worth *way* more than +1 food. The main benefit of the smithy is the 10%, not the +2.
Reducing the cost of the waterwheel isn't enough, the thing is barely worth its maintenance cost as it is, definitely not worth the maintenance cost and any significant build time.

*edit*
@bridger
Buying a waterwheel is a horrible waste of gold.
What is it that you are getting more production up for? Better to just buy that instead.
There are many, many things I'd rather spend my money on in the early game.

I'd rather all my cities able to produce buildings at a decent rate than spend gold buying things for them for the rest of the game. Gold isn't nearly as useful with CSD early game anyway, since it takes so much of it to bribe City-States. Without CSD I would consider spending the gold to bribe City-States instead though.

 

[Ahriman]

But +2 hammers from the waterwheel isn't going to let you get buildings at a "decent rate". It will, for example, take 60 turns to give you a 120 cost building. You'd be better off just buying the other building with the gold that you were going to spend on the waterwheel, and saving 2 gold per turn maintenance costs.

I don't use the extra CSD mod, I don't like it.

But even failing that, I'd rather use my early-game gold to buy a worker, or a library, or (depending on nearby resources) a granary or temple or even a stable sometimes (if there are lots of pasture tiles).

 

[learner gamer]

Have to say I agree with @Ahriman and @tlaurila on this one. As big a fan of building infra as I am, I find the watermill (WM) is weak, both in absolute and relative terms - and so very rarely build it. IMHO, the key issue here is opportunity cost: IMHO, there are simply too many other things I need my hammers and gold for in the early game, such as settlers to nab city sites, workers to improve tiles and military units to defend my cities. The piece of infra that is worth building meanwhile IMHO &#8211; the library &#8211; has a value way above the WM because it can unlock the NC. Against this backdrop &#8211; and given that I can get 2H (edit: H=hammers) in every city (and not just in cities where I build a WM) thanks to an early meritocracy &#8211; means I need a real big incentive to build the WM, which, at the moment, isn&#8217;t there IMHO.

So what to do? IMHO, there are a few choices:
(i) Add an extra food back to the WM &#8211; this would mean that building the WM would provide the food necessary to run an engineer specialist provided by the smithy, creating some kind of (admittedly weak) synergy between the two buildings.
(ii) Move an engineer slot back to the WM, giving you the option to obtain an early GE &#8211; in effect, this becomes the reward you get by forgoing all the other builds mentioned in the first paragraph, in favour of building a WM.
(iii) How about adding a food (or perhaps better yet) hammer bonus to the WM, dependent on resources in the city? @Thalassicus: Are there resources which tend to be placed closer to rivers that could be boosted by a WM in the same way that a granary boosts the food yield of grains?
(iv) Cut the WM&#8217;s hammer cost and / or maintenance. Stoneworks provides at least 2 hammers and 1 happiness, all for a cost of 90 hammers and 1 maintenance. Against this, the WM&#8217;s 120 hammer cost and 2 maintenance for 2 hammers and 1 food looks rather expensive IMHO.

 

[Sneaks]

Watermill has gone from being THE early production building for me to the one I build only after Stables, Stoneworks, Walls, and Smithy (and even sometimes Forge).

Also, I hate to say it, but I pretty much loathe the fact that I can just build everything in every city. I think this mod has come full circle from buffing tiles to make city location important to buffing buildings and GP improvements so much than city location no longer matters.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the best solution would be to increase the yield by either +1food or +1hammer.

Also, I hate to say it, but I pretty much loathe the fact that I can just build everything in every city. I think this mod has come full circle from buffing tiles to make city location important to buffing buildings and GP improvements so much than city location no longer matters.

This is something I'll have to think about. I'm not sure, but I see your point in that hammers have become much more common (eg: mines 1h->2h) but costs haven't changed, and so it is much easier to get lots of buildings everywhere.

Boosting yields from specialists has also been a step in making city location matter much less.

But I worry about making changes that would reduce this; I think the happiness changes have meant that wide empires are weak compared to tall empires. How would making buildings less accessible affect this?

I can't see any easy fix here. Any changes to overall production or buildings this will have a massive effect on the entire game.

 

[Thalassicus]

I understand moving the engineer away so that slots are not city-placement dependent.

This is what I'm thinking about. In the discussions about Great Merchants, it came up one reason they were not highly valued is because they were only available on Lighthouses in the early game, and Watermills are about equally available as Lighthouses. I'm revisiting if my original idea about luck/mapgen dependent great person availability was a good idea. It might be better to find other ways to buff the Watermill like reducing its cost.

This is something I'll have to think about. I'm not sure, but I see your point in that hammers have become much more common (eg: mines 1h->2h) but costs haven't changed, and so it is much easier to get lots of buildings everywhere.

Costs went up 20% when that change was introduced.