Better RoM: Improvement Balancing

[Iceciro]

My comment: If you're going to change things, that's fine - though I like the idea of say, Farms actually doing something before late game. My current run-through, you can see the areas I settled versus the areas the AI settled because they have farms and I do not.

Trade Posts could make a good middle-of-the-road improvement, in my opinion, increasing commerce (slower and to a lower maximum than Cottages) without consuming food like the cottage proposal here does. And an irrigated farm needs to provide at least 2 food, flat, for it to be worth much of anything, ESPECIALLY if the farm reduces hammers too. A growing city is great, but a tile that just provides two food does nothing but support a citizen, which doesn't actually help production or commerce.

The real issue with Flood Plains isn't that they're too strong - you should try to found cities on them in ancient times for a reason. The problem is that they are too COMMON. Not every tile next to a river needs to be a flood plain.

On Windmills and Watermills: Why, oh why, do they stop producing as much food and being very effective middle-of-the-road improvements at electricity? If I wanted an industrial improvement I would BUILD INDUSTRY. I hate that the entire purpose for the things changes around when you pick up a tech. That should actually be used as a blueprint from the changes. An improvement's purpose should not change as you go up through the tech tree.

To be honest I'm not sure how I feel about everything subtracting hammers/food. For example, it's now just as good to put a cottage on plains as it is on grassland, because eventually the cottage will grow to a level where it will eat all the food on either. Grasslands should still be prime property to slap things down.

EDIT: And all of this needs to be a module.

 

[Elucidus]

Flood plains (are supposed to) only occur on desert and is one of the few things that turn deserts into something usable.

I always hated that, I lived by some flood plains in Alabama and I can tell you they weren't desert.

Edit: Sorry, a bit off topic.

 

[NBAfan]

I play mostly on Marathon/Huge, but then I only have Windows XP, so my 4 Gb of RAM does have its limtations

I play on the same, except I have 8 Gb of RAM on 64 bit Windows 7.

Further, we need a very rigid trichotomy. 1 improvement needs to focus on food alone; one commerce alone, and one for production alone.

We need to make sure we have this.

 

[os79]

Marathon/Huge here.... Plan on going bigger map someday. Never really see the appeal of slower speed than Marathon except for my N00b days here on RoM .

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Snail/Huge here, everything happens way to fast on marathon.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Snail/Huge here, everything happens way to fast on marathon.

Yeah marathon is much too fast.

 

[vincentz]

On Windmills and Watermills: Why, oh why, do they stop producing as much food and being very effective middle-of-the-road improvements at electricity?

Because windmills and watermills where used to grind grain. Thats their reason for giving food in the first place. After electricity they change role and become :

and

Not much food production there

 

[Elucidus]

That didn't happen at the advent of electricity though, it came later.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Because windmills and watermills where used to grind grain. Thats their reason for giving food in the first place. After electricity they change role and become :

and

Not much food production there

So doe the rest of the land suddenly become unused? I always wondered.

 

[vincentz]

So doe the rest of the land suddenly become unused? I always wondered.

Nope, both improvements still give +1 which is still too much IMO.
Problem is that only 1 improvement can be placed at each tile and rivers are in the middle of two tiles. I would love it if there actually was a River Tile. Would open up for a couple of River Boats as well. Unfortunately it looks like they're continuing the same way in Civ5

That didn't happen at the advent of electricity though, it came later.

But it's were Civ4 originally put them. Certainly open for debate whether they should move tech.

 

[vincentz]

Flood Plains:
First off, Flood Plains , it will give 2.

Nice. couldn't agree more.


Here are my proposed changes to them:

And here is mine

Farm:
Suggestion : remove production (-1). The result will be that grassland is better than plains and swamps for farms, which would make perfectly sense to me.

Cottage:
I'm still going to keep the all in one improvement, but remove a lot of the boni from techs/civics

Village:

• +1 commerce with Printing Press

I never understood this one???

Further, the unhealthiness penalty exists regardless of whether the town is worked or not; which will discourage spamming them.

I like the unhealth. How about make a sidepath of cottage-town, so if you have slavery, caste or similar, they'll become Slum (+ a lot of unhealth) instead of village/town. And if they are next to a city a Town would become a Suburb.

Other changes:

The groundwater well is now a tool to irrigate the desert. If you have irrigation on desert tiles, you will be able to build farms on them.
Groundwater Well:

• Requires Desert

Why only a dessert? I had plenty of games where I would have loved to "feed" my grassland farms with groundwater.


Hybrid Forest:

• Requires Environmental Economics
• +1 food
• +2 commerce
• +0.5 health
• +0.25 happiness
• Upgrades to Hybrid Forest

I think you mean Tree Farm.



Improvements Removed from the Game:

• Soylent Green Facility
  Reason: WHY!?
• Waste Refinement Facility
  Reason: Redundant with Industry

Thank you.


Feedback would be appreciated.

And it's hereby given

 

[Iceciro]

Alright, but perhaps the change in whether I want the windmills/watermills to become power generating, non-grain grindy machines should be under my control as differing improvements, not crammed down my throat the moment I research a tech that, quite frankly, I need to have to do much of anything in the modern time.

 

[Elucidus]

I agree a very good idea. It should be an option.

 

[os79]

I agree a very good idea. It should be an option.

Play without Better RoM if you don't want these discussed tweaks . Personally, I like 99.9% of Better RoM and can live with .1% .

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Play without Better RoM if you don't want these discussed tweaks . Personally, I like 99.9% of Better RoM and can live with .1% .

For me its more like 80% I like and 20% I put up with for the sake of the 80%. Although, I did dislike a manditory AND feature so much in one release that I dropped AND for awhile. But that feature disappeared and I am back playing with AND.

 

[Afforess]

IDK if I will be changing improvements at all, after all the feedback, I've come to appreciate improvements the way they are right now...

If changes do come, it will be slowly and incrementally.

 

[Elucidus]

Play without Better RoM if you don't want these discussed tweaks . Personally, I like 99.9% of Better RoM and can live with .1% .

Wait! What? Because I agreed with someone and thought it would make a good option, you tell me what to play with or without? I figured that out already, thought I would voice some support for an idea I thought was good, but thanks for playing.

 

[os79]

Wait! What? Because I agreed with someone and thought it would make a good option, you tell me what to play with or without? I figured that out already, thought I would voice some support for an idea I thought was good, but thanks for playing.

Then it was misunderstanding on my part. I thought you meant to insist that Better RoM: Improvements be a separate option . Excuse me .

 

[Elucidus]

Sorry I am cranky today. Forgive me.

 

[Iceciro]

I would like to insist that Better RoM: Improvements be a separate option, I don't necessarily agree with everything posted here. One of the things that makes me love AND is the modularity of the installer. And since all of these things would affect the Improvements xml file, it shouldn't be too much of a pain to add Though that decision rests with Afforess, who seems to have decided to backburner it (which is fine with me, I want him to fix Vassalage first )