(5-09) Simplify Polder

[pineappledan]

Current Polder
Has base yields of 121
gives +1 to adjacent Villages

Proposal
Remove Polder's Adjacency bonus
Increase the base yield to 122

reasoning:

• You build Polders wherever they are legal to build, and they have almost no competition from any other improvement. This adjacency does not impact your decision for where to build polders, and it has minimal impact on where you build roads/villages
• They add more complexity to an improvement that is already has quite a few special things about it. It feels like an afterthought
• There are other improvements in the game that need adjacencies to feel special (eg. moai, eki), or counterbalance their placement restrictions (eg. Kasbah). The adjacency bonus on Polder only serves to make adjacencies as a whole a more common, and therefore less interesting bonus
• The base yields on the Polder itself are a bit anemic. They have little or no competition for the tile space, but they don't help a low-hammer placement, and feel lackluster when they first come out. This should more than compensate for the loss of the adjacency bonus

 

[Rekk]

The village adjacency doesn't affect polder placement, it affects road placement.

 

[pineappledan]

Yes, that’s mentioned in the OP.

It’s not a big deal, and the polder feels special because its placement is so interesting and it allows land units to cross water without embarking. The village adjacency was maybe necessary when the polder had nothing cool about it, but now it looks like an afterthought.

 

[Zuizgond]

I think we can add +1 production to the base yield without removing the adjacency bonus. Polder is already quite a weak UI.

 

[Anarcomu]

The actual bonus from polder is that it does not compete with any other improvement, ie you won't be building anything in that lake or coastal tile anyway.
The exception might be the marsh ; however there are quit some bonuses to marshes from building, and a native +1, so the polder is still relevant here.
I still agree with @Zuizgond, thought.

 

[Rosete]

I think given how late the improvement gets unlocked and how niche it is. Bumping it to 133 with no village adjacency bonus wouldn't hurt.

 

[KlHannibal2]

I think given how late the improvement gets unlocked and how niche it is. Bumping it to 133 with no village adjacency bonus wouldn't hurt.

Yes. The placement was restricted but has become more interesting than before. At the same time, yields were not changed, resulting in a nerf of the UI.

 

[pineappledan]

The yields were changed.

Back when polder could be built next to any fresh water, it gave 321. It now gives 121
I reduced the yields because marshes, lakes and ocean tiles all have higher base yields by medieval and all have more, large bonuses to terrain.

riverside Grassland tile: 2
Marsh: 3
Sea tile with Lighthouse & Harbor (same tech level as Polder): 4 1
Lake tile with Aqueduct: 51

at late medieval, sea tiles are already 21 stronger than grasslands, which get no other boosts until power plants.
In addition to the tech boosts we are keeping the same for Polder, they will also benefit from:
Seaport (1 to sea tiles)
Exploitation Policy (1 to sea tiles)
Windmill (2 to lakes and marshes)
Goddess of Purity pantheon (1 to Marshes; 1 to Lakes)

This is in addition to the Polder's own tech yield changes. and the ideology boost, of course.

Bumping it to 133 looks like overkill to me. At unlock, a coastal polder would be 543. For comparison, a Chateau on Grassland is 532, but doesn't have half as many potential boosts as the Polder does

 

[KlHannibal2]

The yields were changed.

Back when polder could be built next to any fresh water, it gave 321. It now gives 121
I reduced the yields because marshes, lakes and ocean tiles all have higher base yields by medieval and all have more, large bonuses to terrain.

riverside Grassland tile: 2
Sea tile with Lighthouse & Harbor (same tech level as Polder): 4 1
Lake tile with Aqueduct: 51

at late medieval, sea tiles are already 21 stronger than grasslands, which get no other boosts until power plants.
In addition to the tech boosts we are keeping the same for Polder, they will also benefit from:
Seaport (1 to sea tiles)
Exploitation Policy (1 to sea tiles)
Windmill (2 to lakes and marshes)
Goddess of Purity pantheon (1 to Marshes; 1 to Lakes)

This is in addition to the Polder's own tech yield changes. and the ideology boost, of course.

Bumping it to 133 looks like overkill to me. At unlock, a coastal polder would be 543. For comparison, a Chateau on Grassland is 532, but doesn't have half as many potential boosts as the Polder does

My bad then.

 

[pineappledan]

Personally, I think unique improvements boosting regular improvements is anathema. It’s fundamentally at odds with why we have a UI in the first place. I didn’t pick a civ with a UI so I could work slightly stronger regular improvements. There are civs like India and Iroquois with UBs that boost a feature or improvement so that it feels as though they have a UI, but if I have an actual UI, my attention and Citizens ought to be focused on that.

Maybe someone could counterpropose that villages boost adjacent polders, rather than polders boosting adjacent villages. That would be more agreeable to me. I still prefer what I have proposed - no adjacency is cleaner - but either change would be preferable to a UI making an ordinary improvement stronger.

 

[pineappledan]

I can sponsor

 

[Recursive]

Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.