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

[Recursive]

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).

---

VP Congress: Session 6, Proposal 49
Discussion Thread: (6-49) Make The Yields From Unique Improvement-Enhancing Tenets Scale With Their Rarity
Proposer: @Hinin
Sponsor(s): @N.Core

Proposal Details
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.

---

VP Congress: Session 6, Proposal 49a
Discussion Thread: (6-49a) Delete UI Buffs From Tenets
Proposer: @adan_eslavo
Sponsor(s): @azum4roll

Proposal Details
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:

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

---

VP Congress: Session 6, Proposal 49b
Discussion Thread: (6-49b) Delete UI Buffs From Tenets, Then Add More Tech Boosts To Each UI
Proposer: @azum4roll
Sponsor(s): @azum4roll

Proposal Details
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!

 

[azum4roll]

What happened to the icons in my proposal?

 

[adan_eslavo]

What happened to the icons in my proposal?

Copy-paste civfanatics thing.

 

[pineappledan]

6-49 will create a text nightmare
6-49a removes all the yields with no compensation. In many cases this will make base improvements stronger than UIs. UIs, as a group, are already weaker than UBs, so this is unfathomably destructive.
6-49b is the only one of these proposals which even seems tenable, but even then all it manages to do is make these ideology tenets less interesting.

The balance of the UIs already factors in the boost from ideologies. This is not a balance concern. Any vote other than May is, at minimum, a vote to flatten and homogenize UIs.

 

[rkkn]

Any vote other than [Nay] is, at minimum, a vote to flatten and homogenize UIs.

How can you seriously say this? Giving each UI its own boosts (b) is just objectively less homogeneous than giving every UI +3 science (current, via tenet)

Anyway I voted for both a and b. B is of course the best. A is worse for balance, but it's still a step in the right direction for design, leaving room for future proposals to fix the balance.

 

[pineappledan]

The different yields that different ideologies give your UI might affect your decision about what to adopt. Different tenets means different yields on the UI, which means you can have different yields on the UI in different playthroughs of the same civ.

Civs with UBs already get different boosts from policies and beliefs. At minimum this makes UIs interact with policies in a novel way that UB civs take for granted.

 

[Stalker0]

I still don't see what we are fixing here. I can't think of any civ that we are intentionally propping up or holding back because of these tenants.

 

[rkkn]

I still don't see what we are fixing here. I can't think of any civ that we are intentionally propping up or holding back because of these tenants.

It's not a balance fix but rather a design fix. The UIs have to be balanced around the fact that they can get a big boost from tenets. For some UIs this means that they have to be weak without that tenet. This also means those civs can be more or less forced to take the UI booster tenet.

 

[Stalker0]

It's not a balance fix but rather a design fix. The UIs have to be balanced around the fact that they can get a big boost from tenets. For some UIs this means that they have to be weak without that tenet. This also means those civs can be more or less forced to take the UI booster tenet.

so the last statement to me is a non-issue, there are lot of policies that are highly optimized for certain civs. If you are a warmonger playing without authority, that's suboptimal. A trade civ without statecraft/industry, suboptimal. A UI focused civ without taking a UI boosting tenent...suboptimal.

Now to UIs themselves, do we have any actual UIs that are intentionally underpowered because these tenents exist? I can't think of any.

 

[azum4roll]

The balance of the UIs already factors in the boost from ideologies.

Which is bad, since there's no way to make UIs workable in late Renaissance/Industrial. It's a timing problem.

Now to UIs themselves, do we have any actual UIs that are intentionally underpowered because these tenents exist? I can't think of any.

Just look at how sad Eki/Pata-Pata (and to an extent, Moai) yields are.

 

[pineappledan]

I agree with @Stalker0 on this, and will refer you back to his post. It is acceptable — desirable — to me that there are some must-have tenets for some civs. That’s just good, synergistic design.

 

[CppMaster]

It is acceptable — desirable — to me that there are some must-have tenets for some civs.

Doesn't that mean that those tenents would be "no-brainers", so it's not really a strategic choice?

 

[pineappledan]

The strategic choice is at the level of what ideology you want to take, and I think that’s fine.

 

[Stalker0]

Just look at how sad Eki/Pata-Pata (and to an extent, Moai) yields are.

The super culture moai tiles are now "bad"? When the heck did that happen?

And if people want to boost the Eki, GO AHEAD. The huns are 4th from last, even with these "terribly OP" tenents boosting the Eki. You want to make it stronger, these tenents aren't holding you back. Just put in a proposal and do it.

 

[Stalker0]

Doesn't that mean that those tenents would be "no-brainers", so it's not really a strategic choice?

At the end of the day, there will always exist optimized choices for certain civs. If your playing the Zulus and not taking Authority....I mean sure you CAN play without authority, but your certainly handicapping yourself. That's just the nature of any game. The goal is not to remove all no-brainer choices for a civ, that will always exist, the goal is to ensure there are enough strategic choices to still provide a good game.

 

[adan_eslavo]

The super culture moai tiles are now "bad"? When the heck did that happen?

And if people want to boost the Eki, GO AHEAD. The huns are 4th from last, even with these "terribly OP" tenents boosting the Eki. You want to make it stronger, these tenents aren't holding you back. Just put in a proposal and do it.

And we did. First me, then @azum4roll. I think he did a good research and the change will be the first step towards further balancing "without" the tenet bonuses.

There's no reason to yell at anyone because he has different opinion.

 

[Stalker0]

There's no reason to yell at anyone because he has different opinion.

My caps were meant for emphasis not yelling, but I apologize if anyone thought otherwise.

 

[ma_kuh]

This is the same to me as saying "UBs of a certain class gain the policy benefits applied to that building, therefore we should remove the free yields the UB gets from the policy, and bake it into the building itself".

Are those policies also no-brainers? Do you always pick Mercantilism (Markets, Caravansaries, Customs Houses, Banks, and Stock Exchanges gain science and culture) if you're Arabia, Egypt, Germany?

And when you pick the Tenet is also important, it competes with other choices even within its own ideology.

 

[adan_eslavo]

This is the same to me as saying "UBs of a certain class gain the policy benefits applied to that building, therefore we should remove the free yields the UB gets from the policy, and bake it into the building itself".

Are those policies also no-brainers? Do you always pick Mercantilism (Markets, Caravansaries, Customs Houses, Banks, and Stock Exchanges gain science and culture) if you're Arabia, Egypt, Germany?

And when you pick the Tenet is also important, it competes with other choices even within its own ideology.

The main difference is, that all other civilizations have "base" versions of these buildings, that also get boosts, while they surely do not have the base version of the improvement. So, when you pick up a policy it doesn't matter if you have UB or not, you always get the bonus.

 

[ma_kuh]

But these tenets all also boost other improvements. You are getting a bonus to the "base version" of tile improvements. That tile could have been something that isn't your UTI, and it would have benefited from the tenet as well (assuming you picked the right tenet).

So I guess I agree with you, that's my point.

Building, UB both get the boost.
Farm/Mine/Lumber Mill/.../Forts/Citadel, UTI all get a boost.

It's not out of place to me.