building notes, weaker ones

[Hawawaa]

I'm fine with leaving stable and moving all trade bonuses to market type buildings.

 

[Teholb]

The current implementation of the Aqueduct (3.1.9) is extremely weak. It's on the level of the Mint, unless you happen to have a lot of the resources it gives +1 for.

 

[Ahriman]

Windmill cost dropped to 150 (was 250). (270 in mod instead of 450).
Watermill upkeep dropped to 1, food to 1, production increased to 2
Mints effect gems (don't currently in mod) Cost reduced to 75 (was 100, 140 instead of 180 in mod).
Stadium and zoo add +1 happiness. (stadium is only 3 happiness in mod, zoo is probably fine at 3. Stadium is really expensive for 3).
Temple faith increased to 3. (probably paired with some increases to faith cost deltas?)
Drop aluminum requirement on hydro plants (watermill instead?)
Forge +1 production, +20% land units.

Fine for starters, except that mint needs to go to +2 gold as well as adding gems.

The current implementation of the Aqueduct (3.1.9) is extremely weak.

I haven't noticed, what has changed? The 40% food saving effect is very powerful.

 

[mystikx21]

Aqueduct is definitely very nice. I thought the change in 1.13 GEM to 50% was unnecessary. The food bonus is just for flavor.

It's the Med Lab that looks off (costs more and adds only 25% to the existing 40%).

Mint is at +2. It's the text that says +1, but if you watch the silver/gold mine, it goes up +2 in-game (xml should still be at +2 as well).

 

[EricB]

I second the +2 gold for the mint on silver, gold, copper, and gems.

+3 faith for the temple is good too. Remember that can go to +4 faith with a social policy. I also suggest increasing faith costs all around. I'd like it if great prophets were about as common as great merchants, engineers, or scientists. Missionaries should cost more too and be more powerful. Religion should spread mostly passively and through trade routes, not missionary spamming. The pace of purchasing missionaries should be around 1 missionary per every 3 technologies researched if you have a decent amount of faith production.

 

[mystikx21]

I think early faith costs are fine for pantheons and religion founding. The cost could rise for enhancing (2nd or 3rd Prophet) or GP buying. That would be about when temples kick in anyway. Cost isn't really a factor for the first Prophet for me anyway as either Piety or Liberty is a religion.

Missionaries/inquisitors could be a little more expensive, and raise the piety SP to 25% reduced faith costs.

 

[Teholb]

Aqueduct is definitely very nice. I thought the change in 1.13 GEM to 50% was unnecessary. The food bonus is just for flavor.

It's the Med Lab that looks off (costs more and adds only 25% to the existing 40%).

Mint is at +2. It's the text that says +1, but if you watch the silver/gold mine, it goes up +2 in-game (xml should still be at +2 as well).

Playing on 3.1.9, the Aqueduct in my game lists +1 to four resources (can't remember which in particular), it doesn't mention the 40% anymore (it was for me in 3.1.8). I had assumed it was an intended change? I think I'm going to have to re-install, I'm having a lot of weird little things that on their own wouldn't be a big deal, but something is definitely wrong.

Or maybe it's a mod conflict, but all I have other than CEPBasic is InfoAddict and Really Advanced Setup. I'll try deactivating those tomorrow morning and seeing what happens. I'd normally agree that the Aqueduct is awesome

 

[mystikx21]

It's a text error (like the mint). There wasn't any change to the 40% effect in the game itself. If your cities don't keep some food post-aqueducts, then yes. They're not very good then.

 

[Teholb]

Oh, my mistake, then. Still might have to follow through with re-installing, though, as my Great Musicians don't produce any music.

What is the text error of the Mint? There is more beyond the +1gold to x resources? Nevermind, just read it

 

[Seek]

Initial easier proposals then:

Windmill cost dropped to 150 (was 250). (270 in mod instead of 450).
Watermill upkeep dropped to 1, food to 1, production increased to 2
Mints effect gems (don't currently in mod) Cost reduced to 75 (was 100, 140 instead of 180 in mod).
Stadium and zoo add +1 happiness. (stadium is only 3 happiness in mod, zoo is probably fine at 3. Stadium is really expensive for 3).
Temple faith increased to 3. (probably paired with some increases to faith cost deltas?)
Drop aluminum requirement on hydro plants (watermill instead?)
Forge +1 production, +20% land units.

Major changes to trade routes, eliminating buildings, and any changes to spy buildings could wait. Those above could done immediately.

Most of these proposals sound good to me, with the exception of:
1) I'd prefer Temple maint cost dropped to 1 rather than increasing faith
2) Aluminum on Hydro is fine, I don't see a reason to change this, and adding an Aluminum req for Water Mills seems .. odd at best
3) Increasing the happiness on Zoo and Stadium devalues happiness SPs/tenets so it doesn't need to be changed - the happiness balance is quite good in BNW imo. These buildings are there for when you *need* happiness, thus they don't scale (kind of like how the high-tier gold buildings shouldn't be better than the market - they're there for when you need to buff your economy)

 

[mystikx21]

No, not aluminum requirement for hydro plants or water mills. You would need to build a water mill to build a hydro plant, as in GEM. I find the upkeep and production cost is sufficient to deter building it on short river cities without the need for a resource based trade-off. With the resource, it's as useless as watermills are in vanilla.

The problem with the stadium is that it costs about 2.5x the colosseum plus more upkeep, which means it really doesn't have much "need" involved. If you "need" happiness, you get a social policy or tenet on things you already have, or soon will (banks or lighthouses or granaries or barracks/walls). You don't build this at all. It means the buildings are basically worthless as you can get happiness on things you would already build.

I'd be fine with either approach on the temple, but I'd prefer seeing faith costs scale up a little more and give the temple some room upward to be more useful.

 

[Ahriman]

One more thing: the observatory shoud revert to GEM, where it was a smaller bonus but needed a mountain within 2 tiles, not 1.

 

[Ahriman]

Given that coal is now a rare strategic resource, the factory probably needs a significant cost reduction or boost to its effect. [I'd probably do the former.]

 

[mystikx21]

One more thing: the observatory shoud revert to GEM, where it was a smaller bonus but needed a mountain within 2 tiles, not 1.

Seconded.

 

[Zaldron]

Aqueduct is definitely very nice. I thought the change in 1.13 GEM to 50% was unnecessary. The food bonus is just for flavor.

It's the Med Lab that looks off (costs more and adds only 25% to the existing 40%).

The number looks much smaller, but recall the way this works: With an aqueduct you need 60% normal food to grow, while with med lab too you only need 35% of full food amount to grow. The med lab is not quite doubling your city's growth rate even with the relatively small number.

 

[Ahriman]

With an aqueduct you need 60% normal food to grow, while with med lab too you only need 35% of full food amount to grow.

This is not quite how it works. We had a long thread last year about exactly how these buildings work: the short version is that they are effectively a % multiplier on excess food.
They do not work like the granary in Civ4, which always started you off at half food production.

So in effect with an aqueduct you have +40% of excess food and with both you have +65% excess food.

 

[Babri]

How about making mint much cheaper but it's cost increases (slightly) with the number of precious metals in that city's range? This would make it more appealing for the player to build.

Regarding barracks I think they shouldn't have any maintenence cost. Early warmongering is already very expensive.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[mystikx21]

Why would a mint costing more when it was potentially useful encourage building them?

 

[Seek]

Regarding barracks I think they shouldn't have any maintenence cost. Early warmongering is already very expensive.

This seems like a good idea!

I've been trying to think of ways to make Barracks (and Armories) more appealing for a while. A couple years ago I suggested adding production to them, which was added to GEM, but that only worked mildly well. Another idea that wasn't implemented was a straight unit-production buff on them, similar to the Stables (which I still think could be worth trying).

A new idea is to give special bonus promotions from each building in the XP line (which is now possible given the Zulu's UB and afaik wasn't previously). Some suggestions to this end:
Barracks: Units receive "Discipline" (change/remove Discipline in Honor?) or "Better Fortification" (increases fortification bonus by 50%) promotion and 15 XP. (Units are better trained)
Armory: Units receive "Cover I" promotion and 15 XP. (Units have better armor vs ranged attacks)
Stables: Mounted units receive "No Movement Cost To Pillage" or "+1 Movement" or (my favorite) "Ignore Enemy ZOC" promotion?
Military Academy: Units receive "March Lite" promotion (works like March but only heals 5 HP/turn) and 15 XP.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

Regarding barracks I think they shouldn't have any maintenence cost. Early warmongering is already very expensive.

I've found that if you try and do it with peaceful policies then yes, but if you go allout for the Honor tree you can self sustain early conquest. I like this very much as it rewards you for the more risk you put into it by investing so heavily.