(9-WD) Satrap's Court Tweak

[hokath]

Motivation:
I would like to use the Courthouse as a handle to give bonuses to Annexed Cities, now and in the future.
Unfortunately a problem with that is that Persia can build them in every City.
The reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that by having a Unique Courthouse you can get rid of the Empire Size scaling on Courthouse cost, keeping it at 200 Hammers, and remove the Maintenance cost of 3
It also has the effect that building the Satrap's Court in non-annexed Cities is an additional investment compared to a standard UB, since it does not replace a building you would otherwise construct there-- interesting result I didn't notice before.

I don't think this has too much merit, so I'd like to just shuffle the Persian UB over.

(I have a cool but crazy option here, but I think we should start with the more sane one.)
I chose the Garden because the new unique tile improvement, the Charbagh, is itself a Garden. Therefore we have a bit of double-up on the bubble-up here.
I think it should come forward to Philosophy (1 tech) to stay in the Classical Era appropriate.

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Proposal:

• The Satrap's Court building class changes to Garden and it gains the effects (below)
• The prereq tech does not change.
• Gold: +1
  Note: Loses 3 Maintenance on Garden, having parity with Courthouse but for all Cities
• Happiness: 1
• Merchant Slots: 1
• Local Effects:
  • +1 to Scientists
  • +1 to Merchants
  • +1 to Engineers
  • +25% Great Person Rate
  • +2 to Oasis
  • +1 +1 to Citrus
  • +1 +1 to Nutmeg
  • +1 +1 to Cloves
  • +1 +1 to Pepper
  • +1 +1 to Cocoa
  • +1 Specialist that does not produce Unhappiness from Urbanization
• Removes Unhappiness from Occupation
• Prerequisite Technologies: Philosophy
• List of possible boosts to this Building:
  • Each Population in City: +0.34

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Implementation Notes:
The ArtDefineTag = 'COURTHOUSE' would need to change to Garden on the Buildings 'BUILDING_SATRAPS_COURT' entry

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References:
Courthouses are used here

Thread '(9-40) Religion I: War Religion'

Jan 3, 2026

Motivation:
If you are a warmonger there is basically one Founder for you: Hero Worship. It has some quite wacky effects and doesn't really fit with the other Founders; it doesn't require you to spread your Faith or even have followers at all!
I think it would be more interesting to be able to choose from several options that also align with the idea that Founder beliefs are about how strong your Religion is.
Note: Founder yields are very powerful but don't tend to scale with era (although some do),
look at Holy Law with a possible 1250 Faith/Sci/Gold on Policy Unlock (roughly every...

• hokath
• Replies: 15
• Forum: Failed Proposals

• 

 

[pineappledan]

Persia also benefits from the courthouse boosts from policies in all cities, like the +3 happy on autocracy or the auto-built satrap from iron curtain. It’s a very unique mechanic that makes Persia more interesting, in my opinion. I would be sad to lose it. Indonesia already has a unique garden, and if you move the satrap’s court then we don’t have a unique courthouse. So we would lose a bunch of neat Persia-only policy synergies and bonuses (like non-scaling courthouse costs). Also as you explain you would be doubling up thematically with Persia’s own component, which is effectively a garden UI.

You can grab annexed cities by themselves without searching for courthouses. If you need to change Persia to suit your purposes then you haven’t adequately explained a good enough reason. If all you need is to find annexed cities then there is nothing that needs to change in Persia.

 

[hokath]

Unfortunately there is no way currently to grab annexed cities with existing database methods.

Also as you explain you would be doubling up thematically with Persia’s own component, which is effectively a garden UI.

What I meant was current Persia has effectively 2 Gardens. By removing Garden and adding Satrap's Court, you avoid this. So it's a positive thing.

I appreciate you can get some policy interaction near the end of the game, and that is lost with this change.

This is my preferred option

 Satrap's Court no longer buildable anywhere
   This doesn't interact well if Courthouses are given yields (here and elsewhere)
- No longer gives Gold / Pop or Gold to Specialists
- Changed to be like a "mini palace"
  - +3 Gold, +3 Science, +2 Production, +1 Culture, +2 Defense
  - 1 Science/6 Citizens
  - Strengthens Palace events by 1 turn
  - 1 Unit from each Vassal on Era change
  - 1 Urbanization ignored
- Also gains a Civil Servant Slot (instead of a Merchant)
- +25% GPP

but I've only played 1 game with it so I don't consider it ready to propose

 

[pineappledan]

I don’t think not wanting to add a simple check to the dll for a future bonus that you aren’t even proposing yet is a good enough reason to remove a very special building.

 

[hokath]

I can appreciate that, I just don't feel special=good here.
And I would argue as well that the policy interaction is not necessarily good.
The effect you mention, the +3 happy on autocracy, is not designed with this building's existence in mind.
In my current game this would give me 9 Happiness from 3 annexed cities, but if I were Persia it would give me 45 Happiness from having 15 Cities. That's not even a large amount of Cities really.

 

[pineappledan]

Lots of civs have major synergies with certain policy branches. I'm not about to turn around and say that this 1 instance of synergy is bad. It is part of the fun of this game to be rewarded for systems knowledge.

 

[Recursive]

Unfortunately there is no way currently to grab annexed cities with existing database methods.

Some new code will be added as a result of this session, just nothing revolutionary. I think good design > no new code. So that particular argument I disagree with.

 

[hokath]

I guess we can take one of two stances
1) Satrap's Court gaining policy (and other) Courthouse bonuses is problematic and we should avoid it (this proposal)
2) Satrap's Court gaining policy (and other) Courthouse bonuses is part of the charm of the building and its ok to keep it.
People can decided which is better in light of (9-50) but, having slept on it, I am more at peace with option (2) than I was yesterday

 

[hokath]

I'm going to withdraw this one, next congress we can revisit

 

[Recursive]

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