[DLL] (8-NS) 4UC Inca - Make Terrace Farm A Common Improvement and Other Changes

[Hinin]

Current : Pineappledan's version of 4UC Incas can be checked here.

Proposal :

- Make the Terrace Farm (currently name Pata-Pata within the Incan kit) a common improvement working like follows :

Improvement - Terrace Farm (unlocked at Masonry)
Improvement time - 900 (1,5 the time of a Farm)
Must be built on a Hill, and not adjacent to another Terrace Farm
Same land type restrictions as the Farms

No base yield
+1 Food per adjacent Mountain
+1 Food per two adjacent Farms
Counts towards adjacencies for Farms

Tech bonus : same as Farms
Policy bonuses : same as Farms
Building bonuses : same as Farms

- Within the Incan kit, replace the Pata-Pata with the Tambo, a unique Caravansary :

UB2 - Tambo (replaces Caravansary)

Unlocked at Currency
200 Production cost

+1 Gold
+1 Science
+1 Culture

Completing Land Trade Routes targeting other Civilizations triggers a Historic Event.

+1 Food and Gold for every 2 Desert or Tundra tiles worked by the City.
+3 Gold and +50% Range to Land Trade Routes
+3 % Gold from City Connections in the Empire
+2 Tourism to Civil Servants in the City
+4 Tourism to Courthouse in the City

1 Civil Servant

+2 Gold to Truffles worked by the City
+1 Production and Culture to Cottom worked by the City
+1 Gold and Production to Furs worked by the City

Grants the "Chasqui Training" promotion to Recon Units trained in the City (+1 MP)

- Replaces the Chasqui with the Pakayok, a unique cheap Tercio replacement

UU2 - Pakayok (replaces Tercio) => art by Leugi from this mod

Unlocked at Machinery (instead of Gunpowder)
220 Production cost / 350 Faith cost (-80 / -50)

26 CS (+1)
2 MP / 2 Vision

Discipline
Formation I
Sentinel - +2 Vision ; +10 max HP

- Tweaks to the Qullqa :
"+3 % Gold from City Connections in the Empire" moved from the Qullqa to the Tambo
"+1 Food and Culture to Terrace Farms worked by the City" added to the Qullqa

Rationale :

Right now, the Incas are the only non-custom civs that can live within a moutain biome without being severely impered. It is especially sad knowing how many civilizations have lived next to mountain chains and thrived there despite the challenges. In my opinion, the key is the monopoly the Incas have on Food within mountainous biomes, and thus the fact that they are the only civilization with access to the Terrace Farm, despite the fact that numerous communities in Eurasia have also used terrace farming to their advantage.

My solution is to simply remove the Terrace Farm from the Incan kit and make it a common improvement. Although severely weakened compared to its UImprovement status, it would be meant to provide a good rockbed foundation to mountain cities. On the other hand, I think the Incas should be the best with terrace farming, hence the bonuses added to the Qullqa (which would only be felt a few tech tiers later) instead of the city connection bonus, transferred to the Tambo.

Mixing this idea with another one I had to remove the Chasqui which is, despite the quality of its model, difficult to integrate as a military unit (being a imperial courrier before all), I decided to give the Tambo as a unique Caravansary instead. The Chasqui would be still there as a unique promotion for Incan recon units, and the Tambo would serve as a good building to give a bonus to city connections. For the rest, since the Incas are a good wide civ with the ability for some conquest, I wanted to add another aspect about the cultural impact they had on the region and the efficiency of their administration, hence the tourism on civil servants and courthouses that allows the civ to play a good "wide tourism" playstyle with some conditions attached.

Finally, the removal of the Chasqui as a unique unit create space that must be filled. Fortunately, there exists another very well-made unit made by Leugi. In my original tweaks, I made it an early ironless Longswordsman replacement, but now the Jaguar holds that niche. Instead, knowing the time during which the Incan empire expanded, I propose an early version of the Tercio that has much lower production cost and acts as a warden with high vision and health, but not much strength compared to other unique Tercios.

As always, thanks for reading.

 

[azum4roll]

Tercio is already melee.

 

[TameFroggy]

I think the Terrace Farm could at least get a base yield of 1 production; Pata-Pata is currently 1F, 2P
would the Agribusiness and Harappan Reservoir (or any other building that gives yields to farms that may exist) provide yields to Terrace Farms as well?

 

[Hinin]

I think the Terrace Farm could at least get a base yield of 1 production; Pata-Pata is currently 1F, 2P
would the Agribusiness and Harappan Reservoir (or any other building that gives yields to farms that may exist) provide yields to Terrace Farms as well?

I mean, a Mine gives +1 Production as a base yield, so I don't think the Terrace Farm should go that way. It is a common improvement, first and foremost, so its base yields should be quite low.

As for bonuses from buildings, I do think that the Terrace Farm should indeed get the same bonuses from Buildings as the Farms.

 

[ma_kuh]

+3 % Gold from City Connections in the Empire

I don't think this works as an ability on such early buildings. It suffers from the double-whammy of applying in too few cities in Classical, along with too few citizens. It starts to become a real ability much later in the game, but that's the building-equivalent of UU's whose unique promos are better on their upgrades than the UU itself.

Also it makes the balance of the civ harder to get right between different map sizes. We should learn from the Babylon example that per-city scaling has outsized impact on slower gamemodes.


I really like the idea of making terrace farms a general improvement. It's not a deal breaker, but I don't know that they need no-two-adjacent. And by "same land type restrictions as Farms", does that mean building them on Tundra Hills would require Freshwater? Seems like it might be too limiting, but I could be wrong.

 

[Rekk]

What's the difference between "Incans should be the only ones with a terrace farm improvement" and "It's only really worth it for Incans to build the terrace farm improvement"?

 

[hokath]

I know there's a subset of people who want the Terrace Farm for everyone -- you can even see this in base Civ V mods -- but personally I am dead against. Doesn't look right to me for starters.

 

[pineappledan]

now ALL your games can have those ugly things, and not just the ones with this 1 civ in it.

 

[Gizmoman]

now ALL your games can have those ugly things, and not just the ones with this 1 civ in it.

It's fine, they're barely worth building, so there will be no problems

 

[Nightmare Dusk]

While i'm down with turning the terrace farm into a common improvement, i am definitely not a fan of the tambo. The +3% on city connections is a very minor amount of gold when built, which for a UB to not be a massive immediate jump in your civ feels...off. the bonus tourism from courthouses and civil servants goes against, what in my mind, is a heavy science expansionist civ, to more warmongering and tourism civ. While i kind of want to see a warmonger civ kit that wins a culture victory through warmongering, incans aren't the civ i would want to make into that

 

[ma_kuh]

What's the difference between "Incans should be the only ones with a terrace farm improvement" and "It's only really worth it for Incans to build the terrace farm improvement"?

That's misleading though. For instance, Indians have "the best farms" but they aren't the only ones who build farms. Having a building-based boost to a common improvement doesn't make that improvement bad for everyone else. Just like farms, you'd rather work anything other than a terrace farm, but if you're losing tiles to mountains and need food, currently you have no recourse, whereas with a common terrace farm you would have at least a few food tiles.

Actually, weren't vanilla farms buildable on hills? So this is a partial reversion to that. Which solves the same problem I suppose, but makes use of the existing farm improvement instead of specialized terrace farms for hills only.

I'm not going to die on the hill that terrace farms should be common or not, but it's not really fair to say one civ has the best ones so no one else should bother having them.

 

[Rekk]

I'm saying that the base terrace farms aren't worth building. People hate Sheep Pastures, and this is a worse version of that.

 

[hokath]

I'm not going to die on the hill

Good one

Actually, weren't vanilla farms buildable on hills?

iirc if they were next to fresh water? In Civ IV we had the late unlocking windmill improvement for hills, I always miss their cute little sprites.

 

[ma_kuh]

Why do people hate Sheep pastures? They seem perfectly on-par with Cattle pastures. Is it just (non-strategic) pastures compared to other bonus resource improvements? Farms and Camps seem at best equal to pastures.

 

[hokath]

MAGI:
Seems both the DLL requirement of the base mod are gone so this is just database @azum4roll

 

[Recursive]

No, the Qullqa change requires DLL and wasn't sponsored.

 

[Recursive]

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