building notes, weaker ones

[mystikx21]

Barracks line seems fine as is in CEP. The change in GEM was to make barracks useful anywhere through early policies (happiness in honor), not to the building itself. I suspect we could see similar policy shifts in the near future. Which is why I listed off the weaker buildings rather than worrying too much about barracks, which are just marginal. (In my view)

I would be fine with slight production unit bonuses (and changing the forge to a straight production building), but other than discipline or cover, I have a hard time seeing promotions outweighing scaling XP as the reason I might want a military building. But I can also currently get those promotions myself. I would leave the 10/20/30 alone rather than revert to 15/15/15.

 

[mitsho]

Experience instead of promotions seems better as it allows you more choice which promotions to take. So I'd be against unique promotions.

The upkeep cost prevents you from spamming the barracks, but since they provide a bonus you only want in a few places anyways, there's not much incentive to do so. The question is if the barracks aren't okay as the "once or twice" building they are now.

That said, I have nothing against making them a good policy for conquerors or whoever takes those policies into the honor tree. The happiness on them is quite worth it. Losing the upkeep cost (or providing money on them via policies) is another option. Preferably to me than culture for which there are the monuments+Great Works+City States+Barbs-to-kill.

Another option is to make them (and all experience buildings) available earlier. In CivIV if I remember right, you could build them right away leading to the interesting decision whether to build them before or not. In civ5, it makes more sense to build your rush units without diverting science and production towards a barracks first... After all, it'll be quite a while til the building is researched...

So a buff would be to put them somewhere else and/or lower the production cost. IF they need buffing, after policies, that said.

EDIT: The basic problem of the barracks is that its a one-off effect building. The xp are given out on unit creation... and that's it. If you only wanted to build one unit, you could now sell it again. This is for gameplay reasons of course, and it's hard to find a long-term effect worthwhile. There's xp-per-turn for garrisoned units, but we don't really want units to sit in cities, right? You could do a "provides promotion to x units around the city", but that's a war effort as well. You can give it unrelated economic bonuses (like happiness or no upkeep), but we don't want to make it an allrounder either... One could theoretically lower the max units limit and have the barracks raise that bar, but that's quite a radical departure.

For the moment, I think we are fine with the social policies boost (and maybe the no upkeep one, I like that since (AI) conquerors often are losing gold!

 

[mystikx21]

The max unit limit doesn't seem to be a functional limitation anyway. Unit maneuvers in the field are more functional as a limitation to how many units you need.

Could we attach no upkeep to a conquest-oriented policy? A tall-peaceful player will probably only have one or two barracks anyway (post Hero Epic), for which the one point of production (currently on it in the mod) is marginal when not producing units, but acceptable.

I could definitely see moving them in the tech tree or decreasing cost as more significant buffs.

 

[Dunkah]

Perhaps during peactime the Barracks can give a local boost to the economy. Ever been to one of these big Army/ Navy base towns?

During times of war they can trade in the gold bonus for a local happiness bonus. Troops may be deployed but they are happy the base is there.

 

[mystikx21]

I live in one of the big air force towns. I am not happy about it (but I admit I am probably an outlier as a political weirdo).

I think happiness from the social policies would be fine as a way to represent that though. You should need an underlying "culture" of military service to create happiness and economic effects from military spending.

 

[Seek]

Perhaps I didn't explain myself very well:
- Firstly, I'm not advocating a change back to 15/15/15 xp, I just forgot that it was changed in GEM. Nor am I advocating replacing the xp with promotions, rather as an addition.
- Secondly, the happiness-from-XP-buildings SP is in the Autocracy tree (I'm not making any assumptions about upcoming SP changes in CEP). I'm not crazy about that effect as an early SP because it promotes building the XP line a) everywhere (I thought we didn't want it to be a build-everywhere building) and b) *after* conquering instead of before, which seems straight up backwards to me.:/
- Thirdly, I think it would make the line much more fun, which the passive benefits that we've added in the past have failed to do. Playing the Zulu recently was a blast, not least from the special promotions they get on the UB.

 

[mystikx21]

Free promotions are useless in peacetime versus building new units generally for conquest or defence. The building adding XP to fresh units is thereby not useless as you can upgrade or replace the armies, and that's a very limited effect only desirable in only so many cities. The production currently is boring, but at least modestly useful in peacetime for that purpose. I'm not sure how a promotion adds to that versus say, the unit production bonuses being moved to the line instead, or the general XP bonus already on the building.

I don't have a strong objection to the idea with the clarifications offered, but I don't know how much value it adds. It might depend on the free promotions. Cover is very useful for example, but getting it for free as the Romans might not be all that exciting, since Legions would likely get it for free already and keep it on upgrade. It's still a good promotion to get for free, but the fun value is diminished somewhat.

The social policy changes make it more "fun" by making it have economic effects that are desirable during peace time (happiness or culture, or perhaps lower upkeep?). If you don't plan on fighting much, then the building is still basically useless, and you can choose not to take them and take more beneficial policy picks in some other tree instead.

I'm not sure I find autocracy to be all that great as a point to put the happiness in, for the same reason, it basically comes after conquering instead of before. A preference would be something like happiness FROM conquests (Roman triumphs), but that's probably overpowering toward military conquest. Putting it in an early tree, it comes before conquest while still building up. If happiness from the barracks is too powerful as a bonus (that we might desire it everywhere), then we could put a weaker effect like faster building times+culture or free/cheaper upkeep for the barracks line, and then offer conquerors happiness in some other more natural way (garrisons are an obvious one, since that's already in the game).

 

[Ahriman]

During times of war they can trade in the gold bonus for a local happiness bonus. Troops may be deployed but they are happy the base is there.

We already have this modeled through the garrison policy in the Honor tree.

I'm really really against trying to make barracks into something that you build everywhere. Leave it for your unit production cities.

Special promotions on zulu are special precisely because they aren't how regular barracks work. I think the existing experience model works fine.

 

[mitsho]

Perhaps I didn't explain myself very well:
- Firstly, I'm not advocating a change back to 15/15/15 xp, I just forgot that it was changed in GEM. Nor am I advocating replacing the xp with promotions, rather as an addition.
- Secondly, the happiness-from-XP-buildings SP is in the Autocracy tree (I'm not making any assumptions about upcoming SP changes in CEP). I'm not crazy about that effect as an early SP because it promotes building the XP line a) everywhere (I thought we didn't want it to be a build-everywhere building) and b) *after* conquering instead of before, which seems straight up backwards to me.:/
- Thirdly, I think it would make the line much more fun, which the passive benefits that we've added in the past have failed to do. Playing the Zulu recently was a blast, not least from the special promotions they get on the UB.

But again, getting xp so you can chose the promotion you want is much more fun than being given a promotion you can't chose... no?

Agree that we don't need to build it everywhere, but that is where these proposals come from, no?

 

[mystikx21]

I'm not sure the proposal is that we should build a [building X] everywhere. The question to me right now is why bother building X in the first place anywhere.

We have a good reason to build a barracks, both for the Hero Epic NW, which is quite useful for attack or defence, and because it is useful for building experienced military units. That's not the same as saying it is a building we want anywhere and everywhere (like a library or a market or monument). It's very useful somewhere. That's not in dispute. It is marginally useful when not building units, and very good when doing so.

A windmill is not very useful anywhere. A mint or forge was barely useful anywhere. And so on down the list of proposed changes (watermills, hydros, etc).

The promotion change doesn't really make the barracks line any more or less essential to that process of constructing an experienced military. It does add a little flavor to the individual buildings, but this isn't necessary to their function and doesn't make them any more or less likely to be built in the first place. It just adds a distinct bonus once you do so.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm not sure the proposal is that we should build a [building X] everywhere.

But if we start adding happiness or gold bonuses to a barracks, that's where we end up.

The barracks is a specialist building that is not unbalanced. The windmill effect is fine, its only problem is that the cost is too high.

But again, getting xp so you can chose the promotion you want is much more fun than being given a promotion you can't chose... no?

This is IMO the main reason to stick with the existing barracks design.

 

[mystikx21]

That's true, but the effect should only come from a policy if so, meaning you'd have to choose to have a policy that encourages you to build an otherwise weaker building in many places and in the process forgo policy choices that would allow for stronger military benefits or stronger economic benefits from buildings you'd already want in a broader sense (happiness on naval or commerce buildings for example).

I'm persuaded at least that happiness on a barracks-line if it exists should be a late-game ideological feature only rather than an early social policy. But I'm pretty sure there will be a social policy impact on them somewhere to do things like make it cheaper or do something else. The goal would be to make sure it's less something that encourages it to be useful everywhere and more something that makes it more useful when it already exists.

 

[Stalker0]

It's very useful somewhere. That's not in dispute. It is marginally useful when not building units, and very good when doing so.

I completely agree here. I build barracks, not all the time, but always in a few places. I don't really need to see it strengthened.

 

[Ahriman]

That's true, but the effect should only come from a policy if so

We have that already in an Autocracy tenet, no? Isn't that what Militarism does? I think it's fine there.

 

[BroOfTheSun]

Barracks is not a happiness building. It is not a gold-producing building either. Please don't turn this militaristic building, into an economic one. We already have plenty of economic buildings.

Barracks is a militaristic building, and if you want it to help with the economy, I think there are some creative ways you can do that. Rather than producing gold, you can make barracks lower maintenance on units, so it is saving gold.

Ideas (on top of the + XP for new units):
- Each barracks lowers the maintenance of units.
- Barracks provides free maintenance for X units.
- 0 maintenance for garrisoned units (like the garrisoned unit is staying in the barracks, and now the barrack maintenance is used to represent total maintenance for unit + building. Also have to change the Tradition policy if you do this).

 

[Babri]

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.

I really like your idea of unique promotions. I also think such slight promotion sort of bonuses could be given to defence buildings as well because currently there is literally no point of building defences after castles from fun point of view. (except the SP bonuses for them).

 

[Babri]

Experience instead of promotions seems better as it allows you more choice which promotions to take. So I'd be against unique promotions.

Nobody here suggested that unique promotions would replace XP bonuses. They would be there just for some extra flavour. And a cover promotion for example would be useful all around.

The upkeep cost prevents you from spamming the barracks, but since they provide a bonus you only want in a few places anyways, there's not much incentive to do so. The question is if the barracks aren't okay as the "once or twice" building they are now.

Hammers act as an opportunity cost. Why are you going to waste hammers on a thing which will provide no benefit to most of your cities. Coupled with this barracks add an additional financial load on the early warmonger without enough payback. Many times I just build another unit instead of barracks so that I can rush better.
Either remove maintenance from barracks or give them a unique promotion to make XP buildings more worthwhile.

IMO XP line buildings can have unique promos as Seek suggested, they'll retain maintenance cost (unique promos will balance it out). Heroic Epic should be changed however to like it was in cIV (high experienced unit needed to construct it). This will make a lot of sense as barracks is not something you should be spamming everywhere to just get a freaking National Wonder.

And the Legion/Armoury overlap could easily be fixed by changing armoury to give a unique promotion named armour that only works against non-gunpowder units.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Since the discussion is focusing on 'Barracks' at the moment, I'll chime in.

It seems to me we only really build 'Barracks' in cities with good so as to be able to pump out units in a timely fashion. Yes?
There is no need to add economic or happiness bonuses to this building. Its function is production of greater than normal units (XP wise).

Military style players will have a few cities with them whilst peaceful players may only have 1 or 2.
The only possible changes that could be considered with 'Barracks' are those that relate to either attack or defence.
The attack looks to me to fine as it is.
Maybe 'Barracks' might provide a small defence bonus to the city strength or attack values. Simulating a better trained militia inside the city. Maybe.
Then all players might find 'Barracks', and their upgraded versions, to be useful in outlying regions. In a similar, but weaker, manner to 'Walls etc.'

Just a thought, not pushing for it.

 

[mystikx21]

The other buildings are pretty straightforward. I probably shouldn't have even mentioned the barracks for my part. It appears to be a separate issue (but not even one that attracts very much interest for a considerable change).

I think walls are fine as distinct from barracks. Mixing them too much doesn't really add much to either.

 

[Seek]

Perhaps I'm alone here, (or, alone with Babri) but I don't build the Barracks or Armory until late game in conjunction with the Military Academy (both in unmodded games and GEM). As Babri said, the opportunity cost is sufficient to dissuade me since the first two promotions come so quickly - two attacks for a melee unit gets it to the first promo, six for the second. It's only once I can get three promos (or close to it as in unmodded games) that it seems worth constructing these buildings; building units if I need them gets a much better return on my hammers. Early rushes especially suffer from this issue, I find that building an extra unit is always a better use of hammers than building the Barracks, and if I'm playing peacefully (ie, I only need units for defense) I never build this line of buildings.

As I said, I really enjoyed rushing with the Zulus, I think it's great design. I was shocked at how I pushed to get an Ikanda out asap, and before building up my army. I think it's worth considering extending this to the generic Barracks as well - I'm honestly surprised at the cool response, I am very excited about the possibilities here and really think this could make the building line more fun.