OneHundredBears
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2011
- Messages
- 11
Good idea.Ahriman said:We could put it down to 1 scientist, but give the Wonder itself a beaker yield of ~+4 beakers.
That way, it still gives a nice science boost, but doesn't give so many GPPs, so doesn't allow the Academy building so fast (via great scientist).
Anything in the 60-80 hammer range strikes me as balanced. At 60 hammers, Ixian quads are slightly less effective at taking cities than bladesmen and very powerful in the open against someone with only infantry. At 80, even non-Ixians will occasionally want to use quads in games where enemies invite pillaging or barbarians are particularly plentiful. Where to put quads in the 60-80 range depends on whether they should be a core unit or a specialized one. In any case, I wouldn't decrease the cost of the trike below 75: the ability to outmaneuver opponents in their own territory is devastating.Ahriman said:Maybe 70 hammers would still be sufficient to prevent massing?
Deliverator said:Guild Research Facility can give 1.5 beakers per spice if we want
I think that this would be enough. However, everyone would still want to build the Facility. Even a Paradise player should be able to manage 15 spice in a +100% science city, giving 45 beakers/turn so .06 bpt/hammer. Building a university in a midgame science city (let's say 40 base bpt, a good yield in my experience) gives a lower .05 bpt/hammer and then there's the denial aspect. Thus for anyone, getting the Facility is at least on par with building a university in a science-oriented city, usually a wise thing to do.
This follows the trend that DW wonders that are worth building in more than a few corner cases are often worth building almost all of the time. It feels like a return to Civ II and SMAC, where wonders were more of a reward for being able to build them first rather than a strategic choice, built in specific situations and usually only with the right resource. This approach to wonders isn't necessarily the wrong way to go, but it seems worth mentioning.
The yield for the Chamber of Visions might do well with a similar reduction, but when it comes to espionage, I'm still wrapping my head about the implications of being able to annex cities, and don't even know the abilities of half the factions.
Ahriman said:Would also significantly weaken spice silo building, if the same mechanic was used for both (ie both were immune to multipliers).
There's no reason not to keep the current mechanic for silos, even if the spice commerce income doesn't go through multipliers. Leaving silos as they are encourages more specialization (silos and gold multipliers in the same cities) and there's little risk of the silos being overpowered: someone would need 14 cities with silos just to match the CHOAM headquarters spice income, and with standard player density, someone with that much land and infrastructure is probably winning anyway.
For the University, I'm partial to the national wonder approach, just so it doesn't become a bone of contention in multiplayer.
Ahriman said:my worry is that you over-estimate how much of the spice value comes from the Spice civic, and how much spice you can still get with Paradise.
I hadn't considered a hybrid Paradise spice-heavy strategy. After reading this, I played a game with that approach, I'd guess that after the spice wonders are balanced, the Paradise civic itself would be competitive with Spice. The Reservoir of Liet is still pricey, though. After removing hills (which I've never seen terraformed, so I assume don't change), desert tiles and tiles already terraformed, there just aren't enough remaining tiles to justify the combination of a 300-hammer cost, water penalty and still considerable terraforming time. The large moisture radius hurts spice production, too. Perhaps reservoirs are worthwhile when going for the victory condition, but someone controls enough terraformable tiles to win that way has enough of an economy to win other ways too. I'll try tweaking my games to halve the reservoir cost and drop the required tiles for the paradise victory by 20%, and see how that plays out.
I've run across two more weak things in further games. One worker per city has been enough both to avoid working unimproved tiles and put harvesters on available spice in my games: thus it's cheaper and more productive to pump out 5 workers than build the Sandworkers' Union. Mercantile also is lacking. I've never seen a DW trade route have more than 2 base income, and it's usually 1 or 1.2 until the endgame. Thus someone with four equal-sized trading partners (I doubt that one can do better than this on most standard maps) will average at most an extra four commerce per city from the trait, and much less than that for most of the game. By the time that a Mercantile leader is getting a mere two commerce per city from the trait, an Expansive leader might well have an extra population in most cities from the increased health, a Philosophical leader can pop multiple extra great people and an Industrial leader is able to save hundreds of hammers and possible win the race to a wonder that would otherwise be lost. The many buildings that Mercantile builds quickly are presumably meant to make up for this, many of them aren't worth building in most cities without the Mercantile bonus, unlike libraries, universities and water caches.
I'm also worried about the effect on multiplayer. People usually aren't willing to trade with someone who gets a better deal, having the ironic effect that a Mercantile player will find it harder to get open borders than other players. Tuning the balance for Mercantile in single player games is unlikely to be hard (increase the bonus, apply it to domestic trade routes, or add some other benefit), but I don't see any easy way to remove this issue from multiplayer.