[Vote] (6-49) Unique Improvement Enhancements Reworks

[Hinin]

Current : There are three tenets (meaning policies from ideologies) that boost unique improvements besides some other improvements :
- Civil Society (Freedom) : Specialists consume 2 Food less than normal (minimum 1 Food). Farms, Plantations, Camps and all unique Improvements produce +4 Food;
- Five Year Plan (Order) : +20% Production towards all Buildings. Mines, Quarries, Lumber Mill, Oil Well and all unique Improvements produce +3 Production;
- Military-Industrial Complex (Autocracy) : -33% Gold cost for purchasing / upgrading Units. Defensive Buildings, Forts, Citadels and all unique Improvements produce +3 Science.

There are 13 unique improvements within base VP :
- Brazilwood Camp (Brazil);
- Siheyuan (China);
- Château (France);
- Eki (Huns);
- Terrace Farm (Incas);
- Kuna (Maya);
- Kasbah (Morocco);
- Polder (Netherlands);
- Moai (Polynesia);
- Feitora (Portugal);
- Encampment (Shoshones);
- Hacienda (Spain).

As you know, some are built much more often than others (Eki vs Polder for example).

Hinin's proposal (6-49)

Proposal :
Make the yields given to unique improvements by these tenets scale with their rarity, from (+1 or +2 for ones that can be built en masse to +4 or +5 for those that are very rare).

Civil Society (Freedom)	Five Year Plan (Order)	Military-Industrial Complex (Autocracy)
- Brazilwood Camp (Brazil) : +4 - Siheyuan (China) : +2 - Château (France) : +4 - Eki (Huns) : +2 - Terrace Farm (Incas) : +4 - Kuna (Maya) : +4 - Kasbah (Morocco) : +3 - Polder (Netherlands) : +4 - Moai (Polynesia) : +3 - Feitora (Portugal) : +4 - Encampment (Shoshones) : +3 - Hacienda (Spain) : +3	- Brazilwood Camp (Brazil) : +3 - Siheyuan (China) : +1 - Château (France) : +3 - Eki (Huns) : +1 - Terrace Farm (Incas) : +3 - Kuna (Maya) : +3 - Kasbah (Morocco) : +2 - Polder (Netherlands) : +3 - Moai (Polynesia) : +2 - Feitora (Portugal) : +3 - Encampment (Shoshones) : +2 - Hacienda (Spain) : +2	- Brazilwood Camp (Brazil) : +3 - Siheyuan (China) : +1 - Château (France) : +3 - Eki (Huns) : +1 - Terrace Farm (Incas) : +3 - Kuna (Maya) : +3 - Kasbah (Morocco) : +2 - Polder (Netherlands) : +3 - Moai (Polynesia) : +2 - Feitora (Portugal) : +3 - Encampment (Shoshones) : +2 - Hacienda (Spain) : +2

The tenet could thus be worded like this :
- Civil Society (Freedom) : Specialists consume 2 Food less than normal (minimum 1 Food). Farms, Plantations and Camps produce +4 Food. Unique improvements produce bonus Food based on their ease of construction.
- Five Year Plan (Order) : +20% Production towards all Buildings. Mines, Quarries, Lumber Mill and Oil Well produce +3 Production. Unique improvements produce bonus Production based on their ease of construction.
- Military-Industrial Complex (Autocracy) : -33% Gold cost for purchasing / upgrading Units. Defensive Buildings, Forts and Citadels produce +3 Science. Unique improvements produce bonus Science based on their ease of construction.

This is only a first draft, and we can debate the fine details.

Rationale :
I know why these UI-enhancing bonuses were created in the first place: to make sure that the bonuses offered to improvements by tenets in order for them to be relevant in the endgame when compared to specialists and buildings don't disadvantage civilizations that must use space for their own unique improvements. This solution however, creates more problems than it solves in my opinion : it not only creates weird artificial power spikes in the endgame for civilizations lucky enough to have a spammable UI, but also warps the design balance of unique improvements around spammability in a way that is detrimental.

I once advocated for the removal of these bonuses entirely, but now I think a more elegant solution would simply to make these bonuses scale with rarity. This would be at the price of a little readibility at first, but it should be easy to change some GameText to simply add clarifications for these who don't already have EUI to access the information.

Thanks for reading.



adan_eslavo's proposal (6-49a)
You can read pre-poll discussions about this proposal here

Rationale: balancing UIs is a difficult task. @Hinin suggested that different UIs should get different bonuses from ideology tenets, based on the frequency of appearing. But it is based and vary for every map type and settings you use in your games, so in one game particular UI can be spammed, while in other there will be not many places to put your UI on. What's more, there are only 13 of 43 civilizations in VP that have their own UIs and can get an additional bonus choosing these tenets. It's hard to balance. So, encouraged by @azum4roll (below) I would propose as follows:
View attachment 674909

Proposal: delete all UI buffs from ideology tenets (Civil Society (Freedom), Five Year Plan (Order), Military-Industrial Complex (Autocracy)).




azum4roll's proposal (6-49b)
You can read pre-poll discussions about this proposal here

Problem:
Each unique improvement has different placement rules and thus different rarity. The problem arises when a UI can be so commonly spammed that nearly every worked tile is boosted by these tenets, which may result in having to nerf the base UI yields so it stays balanced.
Taking Eki as an example:
Eki is very spammable, so it has very few tech boosts (+1 Food / Production at Chivalry, +1 Food at Fertilizer, +3 Production at Robotics). Which isn't really much - even with adjacency they aren't very workable tiles after Medieval and before ideology, usually surpassed by Villages and bonus resources. All this is holding back so that the +3 Science from a tenet (worth more than all tech boosts) doesn't make the UI broken.

Solution (proposal):
Remove the boosts from tenets, and give them to techs where they are more customizable without needing to word out.

• Civil Society (Freedom) : Specialists consume 2 Food less than normal (minimum 1 Food). Farms, Plantations, and Camps produce +4 Food.
• Five Year Plan (Order) : +20% Production towards all Buildings. Mines, Quarries, Lumber Mill, and Oil Well produce +3 Production.
• Military-Industrial Complex (Autocracy) : -33% Gold cost for purchasing / upgrading Units. Defensive Buildings, Forts, and Citadels produce +3 Science.

Tech boosts for each UI:

Unique Improvement (Civilization)	Base yields and Existing tech boosts	Added tech boosts
Brazilwood Camp (Brazil)	Base: 1 Gold (Brazilwood resource also +1 Gold) Physics: +2 Culture Acoustics: +2 Culture Radio: +2 Culture	Industrialization: +2 Production Brazilwood Camp is actually already very good (the Brazilwood resource itself also gets boosted elsewhere). Despite rare, it only competes with Lumber Mill + its adjacency bonus, so a +2 Production should make it still always worth working.
Siheyuan (China)	Base (during WLTED): 2 Production / 2 Gold / 2 Science Civil Service: +2 Culture Architecture: +1 Production / Science Electricity: +1 Gold / Culture	Electricity => +3 Gold / 1 Culture Occasionally spammable, has high yields, and already has a boost close to the time you usually take those tenets. Doesn't need that much more.
Chateau (France)	Base: 3 Food / 3 Gold / 2 Culture Printing Press: +1 Culture Flight: +2 Gold / Culture	Fertilizer: +3 Food As a naturally high yield improvement, it doesn't really compete with anything. Giving it some food to ease the food+production drain by working these "luxury" tiles.
Eki (Huns)	Base: 1 Food / 1 Production / 1 Culture +1 Production per 2 adjacent Eki Chivalry: +1 Food / Production (-build time) Fertilizer: +1 Food Robotics: +3 Production	Gunpowder: +1 Food / Gold Fertilizer => +1 Food / Production / Culture Robotics: removed The boost on Robotics is weird and so late that it almost never takes effect. The added boosts should let it keep up with Villages and improved luxuries better.
Pata-Pata (Inca)	Base: 1 Food / 2 Production +1 Food per adjacent Pata-Pata or mountain Civil Service: +1 Food Fertilizer: +1 Food Robotics: +3 Food	Civil Service => +1 Food / Production Fertilizer => +1 Food / Production Ballistics: +1 Production / Science (this is when everyone else can walk on mountains) Robotics: removed Pata-Pata follows the tech boosts of Farms, but doesn't get the same on policies that boost Farms. It's time to decouple them, especially now that they aren't named Terrace Farm. This also makes Incan bare hills no longer stuck at 4 Production Production forever.
Kuna (Maya)	Base: 1 Science / 2 Faith Mathematics: +2 Science Astronomy: +2 Science Archaeology: +2 Science Flight: +2 Culture	Archaeology => +1 Production / 2 Science Flight => +1 Production / 2 Culture As mini Academies in forest/jungle, Kuna misses Production most, but is otherwise very strong throughout the game.
Kasbah (Morocco)	Base: 1 Food / 2 Production / 2 Gold / 2 Culture Architecture: +1 Gold / Culture Radio: +1 Culture	Military Science: +1 Production / Gold They go for this tech for their UU. This should balance out the top (Culture) and bottom (Production + UU) path for Morocco.
Polder (Netherlands)	Base: 1 Food / 2 Production / 2 Gold Chemistry: +1 Culture Economics: +1 Production / Gold	Biology: +1 Culture Refrigeration: +1 Production / Gold Polder is not competing with any improvements for space, but still need to have higher yields than other improvements to be worth working. All of its boosts are currently in Renaissance, so some yields are added later in the game to let it stay above normal improvements.
Moai (Polynesia)	Base: 1 Production / 1 Culture / 2 BGP +1 Culture if adjacent to city +1 Culture per adjacent Moai Engineering: +1 Production Astronomy: +1 Culture / -1 BGP Architecture: +1 Culture / -1 BGP Flight: +1 Gold	Replaceable Parts: +1 Gold Flight: removed Atomic Theory: +2 Gold Another victim of low lategame yields due to expected tenet boost. Moai at least has a unique yield in Culture and is theoretically always worth working. Basic yields are added lategame to ensure its workability.
Feitoria (Portugal)	Base: 3 Production / 4 Gold Printing Press: +2 Science Astronomy: +2 Gold Industrialization: +2 Production	Radio: +1 Gold / Science High yields, but destroys adjacency and is hard to mass. Gaining a fraction of a tenet boost should be enough for them.
Villa (Rome, unimplemented)	Base: 3 Production / 1 Gold / 1 Culture +1 Gold / Culture per 2 adjacent Farms/Pastures/Plantations Printing Press: +1 Production / Science Electricity: +1 Gold / Culture	None. I'm just listing this here for reference. Need actual playtesting to know how balanced this is, and what needs to be added.
Encampment (Shoshone)	Base: 2 Food / 1 Production / 1 Culture Drama and Poetry: +1 Production Gunpowder: +1 Food / Culture Rifling: +1 Production / Science Advanced Ballistics: +1 Food / Science	Ballistics: +2 Food / 1 Science Advanced Ballistics: removed This is fine (finally after all the previous buffs), but Advanced Ballistics is too late, so I'm moving the boost earlier and giving it a slight buff to compensate the loss of tenet boosts.
Hacienda (Spain)	Base: 1 Culture +3 Food per adjacent bonus resource +3 Production per adjacent strategic resource +3 Gold per adjacent luxury resource Architecture: +2 Culture Fertilizer: +1 Food / Production / Gold	Corporations: +1 Food / Production / Gold We just passed a proposal on this, so pre-Industrial balance should be good. Adding another round of basic yields as tenet compensation. Also finally we can put something else on the Corporations tech. Merge FTW!

Database Changes

 

[Stalker0]

MAGI: We need the bonuses from the other two tenents listed out as well.

 

[Rekk]

The Ordo isn't a unique improvement. It is a feature of Mongolia's UU, and is a GPTI. It is not, and should not be affected by these tenets as if it were a UI. It is affected by tenets/policies as a Citadel.

 

[Solic]

Is it possible to have a catchall fallback, so not every modmod with a unique improvement breaks with this?

 

[Rekk]

Is it possible to have a catchall fallback, so not every modmod with a unique improvement breaks with this?

Every modmod with a UI already has to add an entry for these tenets, so they're already defaulted to 3 yields. It will be up to the modmod owner as to what value their UI should have.

 

[Anarcomu]

Is it possible to have a catchall fallback, so not every modmod with a unique improvement breaks with this?

I think it add bonuses to improvements directly, so as a default behavior it wouldn't add anything to UIs from mods.

 

[azum4roll]

Modders can always add e.g.

INSERT INTO Policy_ImprovementYieldChanges
    (PolicyType, ImprovementType, YieldType, Yield)
SELECT
    'POLICY_FIVE_YEAR_PLAN', Type, 'YIELD_PRODUCTION', 3
FROM Improvements
WHERE SpecificCivRequired = 1;

to the end of their mod currently. It'll be more work to figure out specific values.

 

[adan_eslavo]

@Hinin How do you assess the frequency of showing up for particular improvements? Was it compared between human and AI?

 

[andersw]

This would make sense if they were equally good to start with.
edit: but there is also the issue that terrain and maptype will make available spots for these improvements to vary a lot.

 

[pineappledan]

All UIs have tech yields that are set individually for each of them and account for this +3 yield bump at ideologies. This solves nothing, and indeed will require a new round of rebalancing.

 

[Rekk]

To reiterate more clearly:

It is assumed that a civilization with a UI will take one of these tenets, and therefore the yield increase these UIs get in modern/atomic take these tenets into account.

If we change these tenets, we will also have to change the tech increases.

Any assumption that a UI is under/over-benefiting from one of these tenets actually needs to have their tech yield increase checked.

 

[azum4roll]

Taking Eki as an example:
Eki is very spammable, so it has very few tech boosts (+1 at Chivalry, +1 at Fertilizer, +3 at Robotics). Which isn't really much - even with adjacency they aren't very workable tiles after Medieval and before ideology, usually surpassed by Villages and bonus resources. All this is holding back so that the +3 from a tenet (worth more than all tech boosts) doesn't make the UI broken.

There are 2 ways to handle it: one is this proposal, and the other is removing UI from tenet boosts and giving them carefully balanced tech boosts instead.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Taking Eki as an example:
Eki is very spammable, so it has very few tech boosts (+1 at Chivalry, +1 at Fertilizer, +3 at Robotics). Which isn't really much - even with adjacency they aren't very workable tiles after Medieval and before ideology, usually surpassed by Villages and bonus resources. All this is holding back so that the +3 from a tenet (worth more than all tech boosts) doesn't make the UI broken.

There are 2 ways to handle it: one is this proposal, and the other is removing UI from tenet boosts and giving them carefully balanced tech boosts instead.

I think second would be better.

 

[pineappledan]

But then you won’t have different yields on your UI depending on what ideology you take. It will be the same every time. That’s a vote to make the game more samey

 

[adan_eslavo]

But then you won’t have different yields on your UI depending on what ideology you take. It will be the same every time. That’s a vote to make the game more samey

Do we really need this for unique improvements? Only 13 civs of 43 have them. It's a bit unfair that tenets buff them and make UIs even stronger while other civs can only watch with envy.
And do not get me wrong, I don;t want to make all civs have UIs. It would be stupid approach. I only say that tenets shouldn't buff UIs. Other improvements, available for all civs, yeah.

 

[Legen]

It's a bit unfair that tenets buff them and make UIs even stronger while other civs can only watch with envy.

Other civs get enhanced generic improvements with those tenets, and the extra yields are synergistic with the other effect of the respective tenets. You don't need an UI to fully benefit from those tenets; if anything, not having UIs benefitting as well would make those three tenets unfun for the civs that do have UIs, as they allocate less citizens to generic improvements.

That's especially true for Freedom's Civil Society, since that tenet (and the ideology as a whole) pushes you to use more specialists (and indirectly, GPTIs) than usual. There's an argument to be made for Autocracy's, since forts aren't an improvement that you usually work for yields, but chances are that the Autocracy player went for Imperialism anyways, which also boosts forts.

 

[pineappledan]

It’s simply not true that it is unfair.

Furthermore, if you look at the win stats by civs, you will see that civs with UBs consistently outperform UIs as a group. It’s “unfair”, and yet UBs are consistently better.

 

[azum4roll]

You don't have to take one of these tenets. By forcing UI yields on these tenets, you're forced to take one of them or your UI is screwed since they're balanced with these yields in mind. All spammable UIs currently suck in Industrial because of this.

 

[Hinin]

MAGI: We need the bonuses from the other two tenents listed out as well.

Fixed.

The Ordo isn't a unique improvement. It is a feature of Mongolia's UU, and is a GPTI. It is not, and should not be affected by these tenets as if it were a UI. It is affected by tenets/policies as a Citadel.

Fixed, although this concept in itself isn't harmonized between base VP and modmods it seems : 4UC for example grants bonus yields from tenets to the Kraal (a replacement to the Citadel built by expending the unique Zulu GGeneral). So what do we do ?
@pineappledan.

 

[pineappledan]

I treat all UGPTIs as both unique improvements and GP tile improvements. Thus, they get all bonuses from both