(8-37b) 4UC Shoshone Buffalo Pound Alternative/Buff

[EndGoodSmith]

(8-37) 4UC Shoshone

This is a thread for discussing the addition of 2 more unique components to the Shoshoni civilization. Unlike other threads, the Shoshone are due to go through a rework, so I cannot post a preview of the new base VP kit

forums.civfanatics.com

With or without 4UC I think that the Shoshone are underpowered (bottom 5 in AI games). The buffed UA will help but I don't think it will be sufficient on its own, therefore I propose buffing the UB in a way that further emphasizes the Shoshone kit.

UB - Buffalo Pound (replaces Well/Watermill):
Available at Military Strategy
can be built anywhere
110 Production Cost
1 Gold Maintenance
+2 Food and +3 Production
+1 Food for every 4 tiles owned by this City
+1 Production for every 4 Citizens
+1 Gold from Camps and Pastures.

Benefits from tiles owned helps provide a material advantage to the blob strategy of the Shoshone and further differentiates the building from the floating gardens (which may or may not exist in a post-4UC world). This benefit is very tunable, and if it turns out to be too much can easily be reduced.. Gameplay wise I dislike the food benefit to these bonus resources, since this just increases the overlap these tiles have with encampments at the stage of the game where this is built, so the (mainly flavor) benefit to these has been moved to an economic one.

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Changelog

UB - Buffalo Pound (replaces Well/Watermill):
Available at Military Strategy
can be built anywhere
110 Production Cost
1 Gold Maintenance
+1 Food and +2 Production
+1 Food and +1 Production for every 4 tiles owned by this City
+1 Gold from Camps and Pastures.

Available at Military Strategy
110 Production Cost
1 Gold Maintenance
can be built anywhere
+1 Food and +1 Production
+1 Food and +1 Production for every 4 tiles owned by this City
+1 Food to Sheep, Cattle, Deer and Bison
+1 Gold for each Encampment, Camp and Pasture on a tile owned by this City

UB - Buffalo Pound (replaces Well/Watermill):
Available at Military Strategy
110 Production Cost
1 Gold Maintenance
can be built anywhere
+3 Food and +3 Production
+1 Food and +1Production for every 4 tiles owned by this City
+1Food to Sheep, Cattle, Deer and Bison
+1 Gold for each Encampment, Sheep, Cattle, Deer and Bison on a tile owned by this City

 

[pineappledan]

Rather than mix both resources and improvements, why not give the gold bonus for encampments, camps, and pastures, Or some mixture of those? That would halve the amount of new code.

Replacing the well/watermill with a building that scales with the number of owned tiles rather than population is a really cool and interesting idea. I like it a lot. It would also create a disincentive for backfilling cities and encourage Shoshone to space cities out as far as they can. I think this fits really well.

I would reduce/remove the base yields though. With The UA, you already have a guaranteed 13 tiles, equal to +3 / on settle.With the base stats listed that’s +6 on construction, minimum. Pop scaler buildings don’t come online that fast.

 

[azum4roll]

It doesn't need to scale with both encampments and tiles. Both are the same idea, depending on whether you want them to benefit from hilly terrain too.

 

[EndGoodSmith]

Rather than mix both resources and improvements, why not give the gold bonus for encampments, camps, and pastures, Or some mixture of those? That would halve the amount of new code...
I would reduce/remove the base yields though. With The UA, you already have a guaranteed 13 tiles, equal to +3 / on settle.With the base stats listed that’s +6 on construction, minimum. Pop scaler buildings don’t come online that fast.

Both of these changes seem reasonable. Done.

It doesn't need to scale with both encampments and tiles. Both are the same idea, depending on whether you want them to benefit from hilly terrain too.

They are definitely adjacent requirements but i think they are distinct enough, especially after the change to pastures and camps. You get the production and food for "free" but then have to settle in the correct location (very little benefit from an island settle) and put in the additional work of actually constructing improvements to get the gold which is non trivial for the Shoshone until later in the game. I think without an additional benefit somewhere the Shoshone will still feel deficient. Gold on border growth would be an alternative, but would not feel very unique. The problem could be addressed with encampment yield changes, either adding gold and scrapping the benefit, or adding an additional food and the buffalo pound increases production and gold instead. This would be a more complex proposal, however and I would rather keep the counterproposal straightforward.

 

[pineappledan]

I think adding multiple improvements weakens the idea overall. The scaling yields per X tile owned and +1 yield per encampment only would be more than enough.
Drop the resource bonuses, drop the base yields.
IMO I would keep the gold maintenance.

I think given optimal conditions you will see the tile ownership scaling get out of hand if it’s 1 Per 4 tiles.

Here’s what I would suggest:

UB - Buffalo Pound (replaces Well/Watermill):
Available at Military Strategy
110 Production Cost
1 Gold Maintenance
can be built anywhere
+1 Food and +1 Production
+1Production for every 4 tiles owned by this City
+1 Food for each Encampment on a tile owned by this City

Significantly weaker than your proposal, but I think it would still be close to an acceptable power level

 

[Rekk]

It doesn't need to scale with both encampments and tiles. Both are the same idea, depending on whether you want them to benefit from hilly terrain too.

Agreed.

 

[pineappledan]

Coming back to this. It occured to me that you can tech to buffalo pound without unlocking encampments, and that having a UB that depends on the UI to scale without you necessarily having the UI is probably bad form.

I still really like the idea of the Buffalo pound scaling on owned tiles and removing the scaler. I think it would be better if the UB could stand alone, without needing the Encampment to function though.

UB - Buffalo Pound (replaces Well/Watermill):
Available at Military Strategy
110 Production Cost
1 Gold Maintenance
can be built anywhere
+2 Food and +2 Production
+1Production and Food for every 5 tiles owned by this City

 

[EndGoodSmith]

I did update the proposal based on discord feedback and reflecting on the power level (but didn't bump the thread). azum4roll made the objection that in some scenarios the buffalo pound could be worse than the base well/watermill. I personally don't think these scenarios are realistic (especially once the Lebensraum rework is implemented) but having experienced the horrors of the vanilla loghouse I understand the issue. We both have thought there is potential for it to be too strong and centralizing if the production also scaled off of tiles. Upon reflection i think the oppotunity cost of having to settle far apart and raze any forward settles is very big (not sure how i feel about this being an incentivied gameplan for the Shoshone) and it would be worth trying at least. Would like to hear more peoples thoughts about this.

I think it would be better if the UB could stand alone, without needing the Encampment to function though.

My current proposal just has gold on camps and pastures which helps to differencate these tiles from encampments and provide a little gold to slightly compensate for the reduction in villages built, as well as retain the flavor of the building. No benefit to encampments.

 

[axatin]

I can sponsor this.

 

[Recursive]

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