(8-20) 4UC Inca - Tap Into City Connections, Diversify Yield Bonuses (Less Overall FOOD)

[ma_kuh]

Original proposal:

[DLL] - (8-NS) 4UC Inca

This is a thread for discussing the addition of 2 more unique components to the Inca civilization. The only change to the base kit is the change from 1:c5food::c5gold::c5science: on mountain tiles to 1:c5production::c5gold::c5science:

forums.civfanatics.com

Counter proposal:

UA - Great Andean Road
Units ignore terrain costs of Hills and Mountains. Cities, Roads and Railroads
may be built on Mountains, which produce Food, Gold, and Science, scaling
with Era. City Connections provide 50% of their gold value as Culture.

(For reference, the current City Connections formula is [0.5 in satellite + 0.06 in capital - 1])
(Ex. 1: regardless of capital population, each satellite with 6 or more provides at least 2 ; the UA would provide 1 per city, increasing by 1 every 4 )
(Ex. 2: if the capital has 17 , every connected satellite city has 50% added as gold; the UA would be adding 25% as culture to these cities at this point)


UB - Qullqa (replaces Granary & Smokehouse)
available at Pottery
65 production cost
1 maintenance
+1 Food
+2 Production (from existing version)
+2 Border Growth Points (from Smokehouse)
15% of is carried over after a new Citizen is born
Gain 25 when constructed
Gain 10 when borders expand (from Smokehouse)
+1 to nearby Wheat, Rice, Maize, and Bananas
+1 and to all nearby Bonus Resources
Allows to be moved from this City along trade routes inside your civilization
Lost abilities from existing version:
City Connection Modifier +3%. (Moved to and adjusted in UA.)
Units stationed in this city heal 5 HP every turn, regardless of action. (Unnecessary healing boost when the Chasqui provides so much Medic value.)
Excess Food in this City can never drop below 1. (This ability conflicts with the very nature of having a civ with a unique Granary and unique Farms.)


UI - Pata-Pata
available at Masonry
can be built on Hills
+1 +2 Production
+1 Food
+1 Food for each adjacent Mountain or Pata-Pata
+1 Production Food for each adjacent Mountain
+1 Gold Food to each adjacent Farm
----
Civil Service: +1 Culture
Fertilizer: +1 Production
Robotics: +3 Food


Reasoning:
I think there is an opportunity to make the Inca a premier City Connections civ, similar to but distinct from the existing Trade Route civs that we have. (Bonus points because these changes tie directly into the Machu Picchu wonder.)

Spoiler City connections :

To that end, we should move the " Gold from City Connections" from the Qullqa to the UA, adjusting it to provide a different yield from gold (similar to an early version of the ICC). By doing this, the ability will be more impactful earlier in the game. The value of city connections already scales indirectly with game time as your cities grow, it doesn't need to also scale with total number of cities. Additionally, the value of the ability can be standardized between game speeds (Quick versus Marathon would have huge differences in value from the ability, as written), which is nice but not critical.

Spoiler Qullqa as a Granary+Smokehouse :

Functionally, this Qullqa replaces the Granary, and the Smokehouse would be mutually exclusive with it, so the Inca are not allowed to build Smokehouses (I believe the 2UC Aztec work this way with regards to the Well, since their Water Wheel conflicts with it; there is precedence for it). This building becomes a one-stop-shop for food needs in Ancient, providing bonuses to any kind of bonus resource regardless of domain. As one of the enduring aspects of the Incan civilization is their food variety and food storage, this is very thematic and historical. Additionally, it applies these boosts to pasture resources which normally don't get a boost until stables, and which are not uncommon in mountain starts. Full disclosure: I believe certain luxury resources will lose ~1 production without access to the smokehouse's camp boost (Furs, Ivory, Truffles, maybe some others?). Bonus resources get the production for free, and are not affected. I don't think this will meaningfully impact the civ at all.

Spoiler Pata-Pata with diverse yields :

For the Pata-Pata I'm trying something a little different. Pata-Pata are competing directly with mines and indirectly with the farms they themselves boost. This means you basically work the ones with the biggest Food/Production numbers, no matter what. I'm suggesting we aim to differentiate the three farming elevations of the Inca that are represented by the various components: Farms, Pata-Pata, and Mountains. This would be a flavor win while also serving to broaden the types of yields the Inca are accessing, instead of just developing massive food stockpiles. Each one offers a unique bonus paired with the farm-like food yields: Farms offer gold, and during Golden Ages might make you (or the governor) switch up tile allocations; Pata-Pata offer production and later a bit of culture (probably the most generally workable in the mid-game, as it should be for your UI); Mountains offer science, growing steadily later into the game. They all are self-sufficient, feeding the citizen that is assigned to work them, and then some. Appropriate for the Incan civilization.

There's not really getting around the fact that the Inca will have a food-centric list of abilities. We like that they have a special hill-Farm, we like that they have a unique Granary, it just follows that food will be their niche. And I think that's really cool, because arguably it's one of their lasting legacies on the world stage, their food variety and their road networks in impassable places.

 

[Rekk]

City Connections provide 50% more gold.

UAs don't need abilities this weak.

 

[pineappledan]

I was thinking that we should add a large connection booster to Persia, not Inca. Replace the 1/3 scaler on the satrap’s court, since city connection gold is basically the same thing as a gold scaler. This would be a good reference to the Royal Road.

Royal Road - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Anarcomu]

UAs don't need abilities this weak.

The UB double down on this by giving food based on City Connection, so these are basically worth 3 times compared to other Civs (150% gold/150% food, against 100% gold)

 

[pineappledan]

For reference here is the base city connection yield calculator:
[(city * 0.5) + (capital * 0.06)] - 1

For simplicity, a 50% bonus and adding food to city connections is slightly more than a 0.75 per scaler. This reduces the food consumption per citizen from -2 per turn to roughly -1.25

In light of this, I don’t know why you would have a fairly powerful food bonus like this AND starvation immunity on the same building. This food scaler makes it very difficult to put yourself into a situation where you can even get a city to starve.

 

[ma_kuh]

I take the point that starvation immunity and food bonuses are somewhat solving the same problem. I went with Food=Gold from connections because a) it's not production, so didn't conflict with the new ICC, and b) I have plans to suggest Machu Picchu also gain Culture/Science/Faith=Gold from connections to break it out of its mould a bit (in a future congress, of course). This would also be tripling down on the Inca = City Connections theme, which I feel is okay because their entire UA is making reference to roadsmanship.

In retrospect I'm not liking the positive feedback loop of city connections (based on population) converting to Food, it does just boil down to citizens consume less food.

 

[ma_kuh]

How exactly does the Settler Food=>Production code work? Can it easily be applied to other unit types, or would each unit basically need a unique version with that ability?

 

[hokath]

City Connections provide 50% more gold

The way you worded this it doesn't affect production from industrial city connection. Is that intended?

 

[ma_kuh]

The intent is for it to affect industrial city connections. I was working from:

ICCs provide Production in the city, scaling with the population of the city and the capital. The amount of connection given is identical to the amount of given by city connections.

• The calculation is [(city * 0.5) + (capital * 0.06)] - 1
• All policies, wonders, and abilities that increase given by city connections will also increase the Production given by ICCs (eg. Machu Picchu)

From:

[Vote] - (7-50) Industrial City Connections

This proposal was made at the behest of @KungCheops Current situation There are many weird interactions with how railroad connections work. Railroad connections don't actually require full rail connections to the capital. They just require 1 rail tile next to the city. That's too easy and...

forums.civfanatics.com

I think this works as-written, but I'm open to alternatives.

 

[hokath]

Ok cool. Maybe the wording should be City connections generate +50% yields
If you check the current Macchu Pichu wonder's wording, it mentions both types.

 

[ma_kuh]

I'll update to the more generic "yields". That makes sense to me and is more concise than listing out all yields that may be affected.

Just a quick informal poll, how critical do you feel "crossing mountains" is for Inca military units? I'm kicking around the idea of limiting it to Settlers and Workers. They can still build cities and roads on Mountains, so you can still cross them with a little bit of infrastructure, but it would limit Incan dominance in non-homeland mountain ranges, which I think might be a good thing.

And while I have your attention, what do you think of this as a UA:

UA - Mit'a
Units ignore terrain costs on Hills. Settlers and Workers can cross Mountains
and build Cities, Roads and Railroads over them. Cities working Processes
convert 100% of Food to Production but prevent growth.

It shifts the focus off of the Great Andean Road, keeping it as a promo for Settlers and Workers but focusing on the service-tax system of the Inca instead. Processes aren't particularly interesting right now, but I think there's potential of improving that in the future. The stops-growth clause would help feature the Qullqa's ability as well (there would be changes to the Qullqa as well, but I'm omitting them for now).

 

[rkkn]

yeah the starvation immunity thing should just be removed. a totally redundant bonus that, more importantly, feels bad, since you have no way to leverage it. And if you ever do manage to be using it, it means all your other zillion food bonus are currently negated. That feels bad for sure.

 

[pineappledan]

I don’t think you can make workers specifically work faster on just 1 type of improvement. The build code doesn’t work like that

 

[ma_kuh]

Hmm, okay. I'll pull it out, it's not the most important part of the idea.

 

[pineappledan]

Oh you’re also proposing to put the scaling Back onto mountains. So Inca goes back to giving:
on mountains,

On hills,

on hills next to mountains

on farms next to hills.

and you want to add a large / scaler to that. Yuck.

 

[Chinag]

Iunno why it's so tempting to give Inca so much food bonuses. Is it because of their UI being farms?

I don't really know much about Incan history, but this rework feel like it's pushing the food theme too strong compared to other historically farm-heavy civs such as Egypt and China.

I do like the city connection idea, but there's definitely better rewards to give to them.

 

[ma_kuh]

After thinking about this some more, I realize my original vision of trying to force the HIGH FOOD paradigm to serve a secondary role seems like more work than just reducing the overall incoming food in favor of alternative yields. I'm still interested in trying the City Connections focus (and the +3%/granary in the current 4UC Qullqa is just too late to be interesting, and forgettable by the time it's strong), but I want to maybe leave some space for alternate flavors of this mechanic to crop up in other places (Persia being the mentioned example).

So with that in mind, here's my next cut at an Inca soft-rework:

UA - Great Andean Road
Units ignore terrain costs of Hills and Mountains. Cities, Roads and Railroads
may be built on Mountains, which produce Food and Science, scaling
with Era. City Connections provide 50% of their gold yields as Culture.

UB - Qullqa (replaces Granary & Smokehouse)
available at Pottery
65 production cost
1 maintenance
+1 Food
+2 Border Growth Points (from Smokehouse)
15% of is carried over after a new Citizen is born
Gain 25 when constructed
Gain 10 when borders expand (from Smokehouse)
+1 to nearby Wheat, Rice, Maize, and Bananas
+1 and to all nearby Bonus Resources
Allows to be moved from this City along trade routes inside your civilization

UI - Pata-Pata
available at Masonry
can be built on Hills
+1 +2 Production
+1 Food
+1 Food for each adjacent Mountain or Pata-Pata
+1 Production Food for each adjacent Mountain
+1 Gold Food to each adjacent Farm
----
Civil Service: +1 Culture
Fertilizer: +1 Production
Robotics: +3 Food


Notes:
Great Andean Road -

The main draw here is that City-Connections are uniquely powerful for the civilization renowned for their road network. As your cities grow you begin producing more and more culture. The values are low early in the game, meaning there should be little if any culture acceleration through early policies, but later on there's a bit more insurance against Tourism, especially since the Inca tend to develop pretty wide in the games I've had them in. Mountains continue to maintain their food instead of production because they tie-in to the Pata-Pata (see below) as a farm-like aspect, and they don't need a third scaling yield, especially when the second yield is a decently powerful science boost.​

​

Qullqa -

Functionally, this building replaces the Granary, and the Smokehouse is mutually exclusive with it, and the Inca are not allowed to build Smokehouses. This building becomes a one-stop-shop for food needs in Ancient, providing bonuses to any kind of bonus resource regardless of domain. As one of the enduring aspects of the Incan civilization is their food and food storage, this is very thematic and historical. Additionally, it applies these boosts to pasture resources which normally don't get a boost until stables, and which are not uncommon in mountain starts. Full disclosure: I believe certain luxury resources will lose ~1 production without access to the smokehouse (Furs, Ivory, maybe some others?). I don't think this will meaningfully impact the civ at all.​

Pata-Pata -

Here I'm trying something a little different. Pata-Pata are competing directly with mines and indirectly with the farms they themselves boost. This means you basically work the ones with the biggest Food/Production numbers, no matter what. I'm suggesting we aim to differentiate the three elevations of farm that are represented by the various Incan components: Farms, Pata-Pata, and Mountains. This would be a flavor win while also serving to broaden the types of yields the Inca are accessing, instead of just developing massive food stockpiles. Each one offers a unique bonus paired with the farm-like food yields: Farms offer gold, and during Golden Ages might make you (or the governor) switch up tile allocations; Pata-Pata offer production and later a bit of culture (probably the most generally workable in the mid-game, as it should be for your UI); Mountains offer science, growing steadily later into the game. They all are self-sufficient, feeding the citizen that is assigned to work them, and then some. Appropriate for the Incan civilization.​

 

[axatin]

As far as I see the only DLL changes here are the culture from city connections and the +1 movement when starting in friendly territory for the unit. I sponsor this.

 

[hokath]

Implementation note:
There is also the double replacement on the UB. If this replaces the Granary... this will lead to it not getting the effects of anything that buffs Smokehouse (Tradition policy).
This is the same conundrum we had with the Polish UB that replaces Castle and Armory.
Therefore, following that discussion, the solution is for it to give a free Smokehouse upon construction instead.

 

[Recursive]

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