[Vote] (2-20) Remove Gold Bonus From Chanceries and Make Bonuses For CS Friends and CS Allies Stack

[axatin]

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VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 20
Proposal:
- Remove the +1 Gold bonus for each City-State Friend from Chanceries.
- Change the Bonuses from Wire Services to: +1 Culture per CS Friend, and additionally +1 Science per Ally.
- Change the Bonuses from the Scrivener's Office to +1 Food per Friend, and additionally +1 Faith per Ally.
- Change Germany's UA to +2 Science per CS Friend, and additionally +2 Culture per Ally, clarification: scaling with era.

Rationale:
The gold bonus from chanceries has been mentioned as one of the reasons for the gold inflation in the mid/late game (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/gold-inflation.680257/). It is not difficult to have several city-state friends, and then chanceries generate quite a lot of gold in the cities they are built in. Chanceries will remain a useful building also without the gold bonus.

The bonuses for Wire Services etc. are currently mutually exclusive: A Wire Service gives +2 Culture for a CS Friend, but for an Ally it gives no culture (the +2 Science are given instead of, not in addition to the culture bonus). This is not intuitive, one would expect any bonus that's given for a CS friend to be given for an ally as well.

Spoiler Current Bonuses :

Chancery: +1 Gold for every City-State Friend, and +2 Production for every Ally.
Wire Service: +2 Culture for every CS Friend, and +2 Science for every Ally.
Scrivener's Office: +1 Food per Friend, and +1 Faith per Ally.
Germany's UI: +3 Science per CS Friend, and +3 Culture per Ally

Edit: Proposal amended: Changes to Wire Service added
Edit: Proposal amended again: Changes to Scrivener's Office and the Germany UA added

Spoiler Original Proposal :

Proposal:
Remove the +1 Gold bonus for each City-State Friend from Chanceries.

Rationale:
This bonus has been mentioned as one of the reasons for the gold inflation in the mid/late game (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/gold-inflation.680257/). It is not difficult to have several city-state friends, and then chanceries generate quite a lot of gold in the cities they are built in. Chanceries will remain a useful building also without the gold bonus.

 

[Dimmy]

Even the +2 production! What is the rationale? Statecraft policies and chasing city states'friendship is already a given if you want to achieve an easy game.

 

[Stalker0]

Just a reminder as I find people often do not understand how the Chancery bonus works.

Its an OR scenario. Chancery gives you +2 production for every CS ally OR +1 gold for every CS friend. Meaning that a CS ally does NOT provide you any gold. A lot of people assume that you get both with a CS ally, which is not true

 

[CrazyG]

Just a reminder as I find people often do not understand how the Chancery bonus works.

Its an OR scenario. Chancery gives you +2 production for every CS ally OR +1 gold for every CS friend. Meaning that a CS ally does NOT provide you any gold. A lot of people assume that you get both with a CS ally, which is not true

Are you sure about this? I checked in game and appear to be getting both (city lists 16 gold from city states, I have 10 friends and 6 allies)

Also would this also apply to the wire service? Because if so we should change it, an alliance shouldn't sometimes be worse than friendship.

 

[axatin]

Just checked it in my game, chanceries and wire services indeed give gold/culture only for friends, not for allies. Thanks for pointing it out, @Stalker0 !

Also would this also apply to the wire service? Because if so we should change it, an alliance shouldn't sometimes be worse than friendship.

I agree

 

[Stalker0]

Just checked it in my game, chanceries and wire services indeed give gold/culture only for friends, not for allies. Thanks for pointing it out, @Stalker0 !

I agree

Yes it works exactly the same way for Wire Services. This was done a long time ago to help better balance the buildigns. You think they are good now, imagine when wire services gave both culture and science for each CS ally!

 

[Stalker0]

If you want to nerf the chancery and make it more intuitive to the user, you might consider going with +1 gold for friend, +1 prod for ally (and both conditions stack).

 

[CppMaster]

If you want to nerf the chancery and make it more intuitive to the user, you might consider going with +1 gold for friend, +1 prod for ally (and both conditions stack).

That would be perfect!

 

[axatin]

If you want to nerf the chancery and make it more intuitive to the user, you might consider going with +1 gold for friend, +1 prod for ally (and both conditions stack).

This would make it more intuitive, I agree, but it would make the gold inflation problem I want to address even worse.

I see three options here to address both issues:
Option 1:
Keep the bonuses as they are, but make them stack, and introduce a cap on the number of city-states that are counted (like max. 5 city-states)
Option 2:
Remove yields for friends altogether. Chanceries give +2 prod per ally, wire services give +1 science, +1 culture per ally.
Option 3:
Make the bonuses stack and give a larger bonus for allies than for friends: Chanceries give +1 prod per friend, and additionally +1 prod per ally. Chanceries give +1 culture per friend, and additionally +1 science per ally

 

[nekokon]

I prefer keeping the current yield, but put a cap on the maximum number of CS friend/ally (ex max 20-25% the total number of CS in game). We need the bonus to be high enough to make befriending/allying CS worthwhile even for non-statecraft civ (so they would create some competitions against statecraft civs), but we need a cap to prevent easy free yields for everyone (just being friend) or some specific civ getting snowballed from a bunch of early CS (I had games where I was allied with 10+ CS around mid game and chancery is among the very first building to build due to 20+ production right off the bat)

 

[AndreyK]

I think we don't need artificial caps, it's going to be strange when you have a lot of influence (more than anybody) but you are not even a friend. There are many CS quests that you complete anyway and you can liberate CS or get SoI.

 

[Rekk]

it's going to be strange when you have a lot of influence (more than anybody) but you are not even a friend.

I don't understand what you mean by this. No one is suggesting that you can only have X City State friends, just that Chanceries have a cap on the yields they give.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't understand what you mean by this. No one is suggesting that you can only have X City State friends, just that Chanceries have a cap on the yields they give.

reading nekokans note, I understand the confusion. it really does look like the suggestion is to limit the number of friends entirely, not just for chancery purpose.

 

[balparmak]

I didn't know they don't stack, that should absolutely get fixed. We could switch gold and production's places, but then the ally yield would be weaker (and this may cause production inflation). So while I don't like hard caps, I don't see anyway of keeping the current yield distribution without it, so capping friend bonuses to half of CS seems like most practical solution for now, ally bonuses should remain uncapped of course.

 

[Stalker0]

I didn't know they don't stack, that should absolutely get fixed. We could switch gold and production's places, but then the ally yield would be weaker (and this may cause production inflation). So while I don't like hard caps, I don't see anyway of keeping the current yield distribution without it, so capping friend bonuses to half of CS seems like most practical solution for now, ally bonuses should remain uncapped of course.

I think reducing the ally production bonus to 1 and then letting them stack is a much more elegant solution. Artificial caps feel artificial by nature, it reduces the production glut people are concerned about, it removes the uncertainty.

Its also important to note that there are already proposes around gold, such as increasing the maintenance of several buildings....so we already have alternative means to address gold glut.

 

[Rekk]

I have no problem with Friend and Ally yields not stacking.

 

[ma_kuh]

Just throwing this out there, you can also boost the floor and flatten the scaling to achieve a similar effect to a soft cap, while keeping the calculation simple for the player.

E.g. Reduce gold from 1/friend to 1/3 friends, and give +3 gold if you have at least 3 friends or allies.
Old: 6 friends: 6 gold; 12 friends: 12 gold
New: 6 friends: 5 gold; 12 friends: 7 gold.

 

[nekokon]

@Stalker0 @AndreyK Sorry I indeed meant to cap the yields so that you get the maximum benefits after befriending/allying 1/4 or 1/5 the total amount of CS in game.
Soft capping like ma_kuh suggested would also be fine, even though it might be hard to explain the yield calculation in the description.

 

[KlHannibal2]

I like chanceries how they are now. They also cost 3 gold in maintenance. So to make them worth building, I would want at least 6 CS friends or at least 3 friends and a quest for chanceries. Why 6 friends? You need 3 friends just to pay for the upkeep. But you also want a return on the production you invest. Markets give 2 gold and a merchant slot, and boost some resources. So in comparison, I would want to get at least 3 gold net income to even consider building chanceries (who cost more production than markets). And 6 friends is quite a lot for non statecraft civs, especially war mongers who often end up at war with several of their CS friends.

 

[axatin]

I have amended the proposal and added a change to wire services to make the bonuses stack.

If you want to nerf the chancery and make it more intuitive to the user, you might consider going with +1 gold for friend, +1 prod for ally (and both conditions stack).

@Stalker0 if you prefer this idea, feel free to make a counterproposal. The same applies to anyone who prefers the idea of capping yields.

I will sponsor this proposal and all counterproposals (within scope) that will be made to it.