Ancient Ruins Rewards Changes

[TwoPodRay]

After some discussions on Discord, I attempted to capture those changes into a proposal. So far there has not been any dissenting comments in Discord. I am not moving that proposal here for a further round of review using the same was/is notation for changes.

Rationale: Some AR rewards are too powerful at the times they are given. These changes attempt to prevent ARs from being too powerful while also leveling the playing field between rewards, providing better design flexibility/options. Percent increases for AR rewards now more valuable as they apply to more rewards. Also, many of the text descriptors for rewards reference a "tribe". Is the Ancient Ruin an actual, old ruin? Or is it discovery of a tribe of people at the AR site? Need to clarify the wording there.

Spoiler Current AR Reward :

When collecting Ancient Ruins, one of the following rewards is randomly given (or selected, if Shoshone)

• Convince the remaining population to join one of your cities: +1 Population in nearest city
• Use this contact with the lost tribe to enhance your Culture: +X Culture Points in nearest city
• Trade with the lost tribe for Gold: +X amount of Gold
• Study their tools to discover a new technology: +1 Free technology
• Supplies for Production in your nearest City: +X Production in nearest city
• A tribe that gives you land around your nearest City: +X number of free tiles in nearest city
• Use equipment around the tribe to upgrade your unit: Unit Promotion (Pathfinder to Scout)
• (unsure of trigger condition) Relics for Golden Age Points: +X Golden Age Points
• (unsure of trigger condition) Discover experience: +X amount of unit XP
• (unsure of trigger condition) Discover a map: X number of nearby tiles revealed
• (unsure of trigger condition) Study the lost tribe's religion: +X Faith Points
• (only given on easier difficulties, per the Civilopdeia) Survivors: +1 free Worker or Settler

Spoiler Proposed AR Rewards :

When collecting Ancient Ruins, Recon units will receive a small amount of unit XP and one of the following rewards is randomly given (or selected, if Shoshone)

• Learn about new, edible foods: +X amount of Food
• (Wording change only) Discover unique cultural artifacts: +X Culture Points
• (Wording change only) Find buried treasure: +X amount of Gold
• Study tools to discover new technologies: +X Science Points
• (Unchanged) Supplies for Production in your nearest City: +X Production
• (Removed) A tribe that gives you land around your nearest City: +X number of free tiles (A worse version of gaining Culture Points that may impact natural Border Growth)
• (Removed) Use equipment around the tribe to upgrade your unit: Unit Promotion (Promotes Pathfinder to Scout, etc., too strong)
• (Removed) (unsure of trigger condition) Discover experience: +X amount of unit XP (XP amount reduced and moved to always being rewarded upon AR collection)
• (Wording change only) (unsure of trigger condition) Discover relics for Golden Age Points: +X Golden Age Points (Need to clarify trigger condition)
• (Slight possible change) (unsure of trigger condition) Discover a map: X number of nearby tiles revealed (if this does not currently reward Recon unit XP for tiles revealed, then also provide bonus XP to Recon unit)
• (Wording change only) (unsure of trigger condition) Study ruins of religious artifacts: +X Faith Points (Need to clarify trigger condition, need to add info to Civilopedia)
• (Unchanged or Removed) (only given on easier difficulties, per the Civilopdeia) Survivors: +1 free Worker or Settler (Need consensus on keeping unchanged or removing)

Spoiler Additional Reward Ideas (credit to SolutionIt) :

- Free worker but it has prisoner of war promotion. Prevents it from being too strong early on.
- Reveal some resources in your vicinity that are locked behind a tech. Obviously not Uranium or Coal. It allows you to slightly beef up tile yields and give you a better idea of where to send the next Settler.
- Increase the influence of the nearest city-state. I don't know what the explanation would be though.
- Reveal nearby barbarian encampments and ruins. Replace this with the current map reveal in such a way it reduces the free exp given to the pathfinder or just doesn't give it at all, but in exchange you know what areas to avoid and what ruins to grab more effectively.
- Free luxury resource in a similar manner to what expending a Great Admiral does.
- Unique promotion similar in function to Treasure Hunter for non-recon units. +1 movement and improved ruins rewards for a warrior wouldn't be too strong I think.

Spoiler Moving AR Rewards :

If it is feasible, consider moving rewards moved to Capital instead of closest city, as that's where major, ancient discoveries likely would be taken. Could make Capital focused strategies too strong, but could also be a balance point.

 

[Rekk]

• (unsure of trigger condition) Discover experience: +X amount of unit XP

• (unsure of trigger condition) Discover a map: X number of nearby tiles revealed

At the moment, these two are mutually exclusive. If a recon unit finds the ruin, they will reveal the tiles (and get the requisite XP). If a non-recon unit finds the ruin, they just receive XP.

(unsure of trigger condition) Study the lost tribe's religion: +X Faith Points

Trigger is turn 35 along with the culture ruin. If you already have a pantheon, this is instead "Discover a lost prophet" and you receive a larger amount of faith.

 

[Rekk]

The main goal is to remove or change ruins so that they all benefit from the recon unit's Treasure Hunter promotion. If the promotion can be altered to make a ruin benefit from the promotion that would be fine as well, eg. the promotion could cause the map reveal to increase the number of tiles revealed.

 

[pineappledan]

I would like to see all ruin types be boost-able by treasure hunter, personally. Ideally, I would have levels of identical ruin rewards that are phased in/out every 25 turns for each of the basic yield types: and Border Growth. These yields would be available from Ruins at turn 0, and then get a slightly bigger reward amount every 25 turns (5 levels total).

I would then have Faith and GAP ruins could unlock at turn 50 and scale until turn 100 (3 levels total).

Then it can just be era scaling after that. The idea would be that we would have minute control over the yield balance on all the ruin types, and so that Treasure Hunter is actually a decent bonus.

If it is not feasible to make free XP and tile reveals scale with Treasure Hunter then I would just drop them.

 

[TwoPodRay]

I would have levels of identical ruin rewards that are phased in/out every 25 turns for each of the basic yield types: and Border Growth. These yields would be available from Ruins at turn 0, and then get a slightly bigger reward amount every 25 turns (5 levels total).

Is there a way to make that a bit smoother than every 25 turns? I wouldn't want to stand near a ruin or few for some number of turns to wait for turn 25/50/75/etc to get the better rewards. Ideally, a very small per-turn increase.

 

[pineappledan]

each scale increase is a new database entry, so having them scale minutely by yield would be a lot of work and explode the size of the database for very little practical reason. scaling every 20 turns or something might be preferable, I don't know, but we're probably talking small difference in yields, at most maybe 10 per level etc.

 

[TwoPodRay]

each scale increase is a new database entry, so having them scale minutely by yield would be a lot of work and explode the size of the database for very little practical reason. scaling every 20 turns or something might be preferable, I don't know, but we're probably talking small difference in yields, at most maybe 10 per level etc.

Perhaps as long as that is clearly conveyed in game to be obvious to the player, that would be fine.

 

[azum4roll]

Standing near a ruins doing nothing has the cost of not exploring and the risk of the ruins being claimed by others. I'd say it's fine.

Not every reward has to benefit from Treasure Hunter. As long as you still want to claim ruins with recon units (the AI doesn't seem to care) it's good enough.

The upgrade ruins should stay imo, but should only appear after turn 40.

 

[TwoPodRay]

What if you just picked the bonus based on total empire averages. That way, you both get a predictable amount of return on reward but also don't give a game breaking amount. It shouldn't be hard to calculate, given things like Info Addict already track this kind of stuff.

For example: You collect a ruin that rewards production. Reward = (0.25 * AverageProduction(Civ1:CivX)); (25% used here as an example, could be whatever percent is balanced)

This can serve as a catch up mechanic for those behind the average and doesn't overly snowball those Civs that are already well above the average. Of course, whoever gets the most ruins then stands to gain relative to the average, but this seems like a fair and dynamic way to reward ruins. Let each game decide the rewards based on how everyone is doing vs. setting it to a flat amount that might be meaningless in some games and too strong in others.

 

[chicorbeef]

If we're doing turn scaling, why not make it scale every 10 turns and then stop scaling after turn 50? It seems smoother and I don't think ruin scaling would matter much after turn 50.