(9-06c) Border Expansion Yields Rework II

[redrum68]

Motivation
Border Blob is defined as going full Authority tree and dipping 2 policies into Tradition to get Sovereignty. This combines the following 2 policies to create very high border expand yields that continue throughout the entire game:

• Imperium: Cities gain 20 Production and Gold when their borders expand, scaling with Era (40 if all Authority policies are adopted).
• Sovereignty: Culture cost of tiles reduced by 20% (exponentially) in all Cities.

So the idea here is to change both pieces of this OP combination so that it no longer is so strong. This proposal focuses on Imperium and the base border growth exponent. The border expand yields from Authority are quite high (40 Production and 40 Gold scaling with Era) compared to other border expand yields from Civ UAs and other sources so this is decreased a bit to be more inline with those. The final change is to decrease the base border expand exponent a bit to be more in between what taking Tradition would give (1.08) and not taking Tradition (1.35). This mostly just makes it so cities can still gain some tiles mid/late game without Tradition so that existing border expand yield bonuses aren't so dependent on taking Tradition to be decent.

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Proposal Summary

• Imperium
  • Reduce border expand to 15 Production/Gold from 20 Production/Gold (30 instead of 40 if all Authority policies are adopted) (aligns better with other border expand yields)
• Border Growth Formula
  • Reduce base border expand exponent to 1.30 from 1.35 (splits the difference a bit between the current Tradition 1.08 and not taking Tradition 1.35 so that cities gain tiles at a reasonable rate mid/late game for border expand bonuses)

Current Imperium

• Cities gain 20 Production and Gold when their borders expand, scaling with Era (40 if all Authority policies are adopted).
• Receive 40 Science and Culture when you found or conquer Cities, scaling with Era. Conquest bonus also scales based on City population.

Proposed Imperium (Changes in Bold)

• Cities gain 15 Production and Gold when their borders expand, scaling with Era (30 if all Authority policies are adopted).
• Receive 40 Science and Culture when you found or conquer Cities, scaling with Era. Conquest bonus also scales based on City population.

Current Border Growth Formula

• 20 + (15n) ^ (1.35 * (1 + exponent mod)) * city state multiplier * (1 + sum of border cost modifiers) * game speed modifier

Proposed Border Growth Formula (Changes in Bold)

• 20 + (15n) ^ (1.3 * (1 + exponent mod)) * city state multiplier * (1 + sum of border cost modifiers) * game speed modifier

 

[pineappledan]

Well this yield decrease on Authority certainly doesn't seem necessary if you're also going to ransack Sovereignty.

 

[redrum68]

Well this yield decrease on Authority certainly doesn't seem necessary if you're also going to ransack Sovereignty.

Compare the Authority border expand yields (40 Prod, 40 Gold) to other sources like Russia (20 Science) or Spain (10 Gold, 4 Faith). It dwarfs them for a early game tree vs an UA which should be stronger and relevant all game.

 

[FPXI]

Ya, I think Imperium is overtuned and could use a nerf, so I'm in favor of this, but I think base border growth change could stand on it's own.

 

[redrum68]

Ya, I think Imperium is overtuned and could use a nerf, so I'm in favor of this, but I think base border growth change could stand on it's own.

Yeah could possibly separate this in 2. The Imperium nerf is a bit based on lowering the base border growth but I guess in theory either alone is probably still a good change even if I think its better together. We'll see what others think. I'm still figuring out how large vs small to make proposals.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I'd love to find a sweet spot where border blob and policy mixing is not OP but still viable. There is already the opportunity cost of missing tree finishers or delaying next era trees.

I find that the authority finisher retroactively boosting specific policies is weird, only happens exceptionally in this specific case. I'd replace that with something else, so you can dip to imperium without feeling the need to finish authority. And thus you don't reach this crazy amount of gold and production concentrated on one condition. I'm not sure about the replacement (if any) for the finisher.

I don't know if sovereignty is OP by itself without the full version of imperium. If the rationale is that this specific combo is OP, I don't understand all the bad rep that sovereignty is getting. Is tradition Russia or tradition Epona OP without authority?

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I'd love to find a sweet spot where border blob and policy mixing is not OP but still viable. There is already the opportunity cost of missing tree finishers or delaying next era trees. There is a slight trend to hunt down every play that the AI can't do, which is understandable but has drawbacks on creativity.

I find that the authority finisher retroactively boosting specific policies is weird, only happens exceptionally in this specific case. I'd replace that with something else, so you can dip to imperium without feeling the need to finish authority. And thus you don't reach this crazy amount of gold and production concentrated on one condition, at the end of authority. I'm not sure about the replacement (if any) for the finisher so I don't counter propose for now ..

I don't know if sovereignty is OP by itself without the full version of imperium. If the rationale is that this specific blob combo combo is OP, I don't understand all the bad rep that sovereignty is getting. Is full tradition Russia or full tradition Epona OP, without authority?

 

[FPXI]

Current Sovereignty is just very unintuitive. It's a weird policy.

And as much as I love tree-mixing as design space and player fantasy, we've got a pretty impossible triangle--the AI needs to know how to do it, the tree finishers still need to be satisfying and substantial, tree mixing would need to be good enough in some situation to compete with finishers. This necessitates some cross tree synergy, but any synergy that's really viable generally will be problematic. Pretty tough to balance.

 

[redrum68]

I'd love to find a sweet spot where border blob and policy mixing is not OP but still viable. There is already the opportunity cost of missing tree finishers or delaying next era trees. There is a slight trend to hunt down every play that the AI can't do, which is understandable but has drawbacks on creativity.

I find that the authority finisher retroactively boosting specific policies is weird, only happens exceptionally in this specific case. I'd replace that with something else, so you can dip to imperium without feeling the need to finish authority. And thus you don't reach this crazy amount of gold and production concentrated on one condition, at the end of authority. I'm not sure about the replacement (if any) for the finisher so I don't counter propose for now ..

I don't know if sovereignty is OP by itself without the full version of imperium. If the rationale is that this specific blob combo combo is OP, I don't understand all the bad rep that sovereignty is getting. Is full tradition Russia or full tradition Epona OP, without authority?

Sovereignty itself is too strong and very unintuitive. You just don't notice how strong until you have some border expand yields like Authority.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

Current Sovereignty is just very unintuitive. It's a weird policy.

And as much as I love tree-mixing as design space and player fantasy, we've got a pretty impossible triangle--the AI needs to know how to do it, the tree finishers still need to be satisfying and substantial, tree mixing would need to be good enough in some situation to compete with finishers. This necessitates some cross tree synergy, but any synergy that's really viable generally will be problematic. Pretty tough to balance.

But I'm not sure I see the need for the AI to be able to do everything a human player does? I get it if it's a very defining play, like idk being able to invade another continent, but I don't see the difficulty in having a reasonable border blob strat that the AI can't do. Maybe the current proposals reach that level, I'm just wary of nerfing sovereignty if the issue is the interaction with full effect imperium. And the basis of my concern is that a policy that is buffed by the finisher is very exceptional so maybe that could be the nerfing direction?

However I agree with anything related to intuitiveness, assuming same power level ...

 

[hokath]

-- Border growth cost
UPDATE Defines SET Value = 20 WHERE Name = 'CULTURE_COST_FIRST_PLOT';
UPDATE Defines SET Value = 12 WHERE Name = 'CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER';
UPDATE Defines SET Value = 1.35 WHERE Name = 'CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT';

 

[redrum68]

I sponsor this.

 

[Recursive]

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