China

[Gazebo]

I suspected 25% would be too mild. Rounding down the % on GP tiles is a big deal, I would guess at 25% you actually get very few bonuses. At 50% you miss a much smaller amount of yields, but you still miss credit on odd yields, its going to be common. Tiles with 3 culture from Aesthetics immediately come to mind.

What paper maker is going to accompany this change? I would like to see the golden age synergy just dropped, and make it all about WLTED

Right now a flat 25% GPP rate buff and 1S per 4 citizens (buffing base science to 2 from 1). Since China needs GPs for the GWs, a flat steroid either allows you to run progress and skip the 25% in tradition or double-down on tradition.

I'm also considering making it an artist instead of a scientist (or giving it flat artist points) to accelerate early GWs.

G

 

[tu_79]

+25% Yields from Great Person Improvements during "We Love the Empress Day" in a City. The creation of Great Works begins "We Love the Empress Day" in all Cities. Duration scales with the number of owned Cities.

Artists slot in the Paper Maker.

As I see it, the UA is shouting Tradition. If you take Progress or Authority you'll miss several GP, as large civs are usually unhappy and that doesn't work well with working many specialists. Going Tradition, capital has many specialist slots, specialists are cheaper and GPTI yield 1 extra food, IIRC. But in my experience, when going full GP, I end up working just a few (4-6) food tiles in each city. Even Academies are ignored in favor of food tiles (mostly Towns, Holy Sites and fish). You can opt for just growing for a time, but then you get less GP, and if you keep working specialists and your empire small, the city doesn't grow as much as its happiness might allow.
Also, tiding WLTED with Great Works is pushing China towards a cultural victory, as GW become more important. The Artist slot is pushing in the same direction. And, as we said before, +25% only works for yields greater than 3, so in practice that's an extra couple of yields in 4-6 tiles in some cities, at most. Hotels can multiply the tourism on those extra culture yields, so I see it even more geared towards culture victories.

If you insist on theming China around GP (which can be thematic, but I don't really know too many great people from this country, other than Confucio and Lao Tse), I'd suggest to change that +25% to yields for a flat +2 food (growth without food is not that useful), WLTED or not (WLTED synergizes with food already, so no need to make it work only during that event). The main reason for not working those GPTI is the lack of food for smaller civs and the lack of happiness to run specialists for larger civs.
When going wide, having some GPTI should help with unhappiness, though, as the city yields will improve significantly. With a focus on GP, most unhappiness will come from specialists. Paper Maker can help here reducing unhappiness from all specialist (specialists produce half unhappiness in the city, for example).

Another idea for reducing unhappiness from the Paper Maker is to yield +1/2 GP Point for each GPTI (Paper Maker yields +2 Great Scientist Points for every Academia worked in the city, same for Towns, Factories and Holy Sites), so cities won't need to work specialists slots to have a few more scientists, merchants and architects. This can be a counter for the focus on creating Great Works, not railing the civ towards a culture victory.

If that's too powerful, make GPTI bonus just +1 food at any time. Half of the city yields will come from extra pop size, anyway.

 

[CrazyG]

I do think the great person tiles boost might force tradition. Not just because tradition gets more Great People to plant, but also a smaller empire can maximize the impact of those tiles. Every time you found a city it effectively reduces the science and culture from existing GP tiles by 11% and it takes a really long time for newer cities to get earn their own great person. If I have a 200 pop progress empire, even if I never unworked specialists I don't see my GP tiles being that significant

An artist slot instead of a scientist is probably a nerf. I really think that is going to be bad for progress/authority because I work my libraries a lot, its a great source of culture and science. Because of the philosophy buff, scientists are really powerful at that time, artists are not. Adding an artist point would be more interesting. I think that both progress and tradition into either Piety or Aesthetics can get enough great works to use the UA well, even without bonus artist points somewhere.

The thing is, if China has to pick tradition, has extra great people from its UB, more yields for GP tiles, and extra science, it sounds an awful lot like a certain other civ from East Asia

 

[Funak]

The thing is, if China has to pick tradition, has extra great people from its UB, more yields for GP tiles, and extra science, it sounds an awful lot like a certain other civ from East Asia

Arabia isn't East Asian, silly you

 

[Funak]

Anyways guess I'll give this a go and drop a suggestion.


CHINA 2.0

Unique ability
+50% growth during golden ages and WLTKD
Whenever a new citizen is born gain X <yield> scaling with era
(Maybe make the yield scales with the pop of the city instead, so bigger cities provides more yields on birth than smaller ones?)

This is imho a fairly tree-neutral approach, compact civs is going to get more out of the yields gained and the growthbonus while wide civs are going to proc the birth-bonus more often

Unique Building
Replaces Library
WLTKD lasts 50% longer
Reduced unhappiness from all sources by X%
(Maybe replace the scientist with another specialist? although that would probably be more of an annoyance in the long run)
(Probably slightly higher base yields?)

Helps make up for the negative side of the out of control growth, longer WLTKD seems unique enough and has some synergy with the UA. The thought was that this building doesn't necessarily need to help China win the game, it is here to back the UA up. Also makes balance easier as you can just bump up the UA number.

Unique Unit
Chu-ko-nu
Generally the same as it was before
(Maybe add something fun to it, like gaining culture for every unit it kills?)
(In general I just think this unit is fairly late into the game for just having one promotion, I mean a slinger upgraded to a crossbow is arguably better than the CKN because chance to withdraw from combat is better than +1 CS)

 

[tu_79]

Anyways guess I'll give this a go and drop a suggestion.


CHINA 2.0

Unique ability
+50% growth during golden ages and WLTKD
Whenever a new citizen is born gain X <yield>

This is imho a fairly tree-neutral approach, compact civs is going to get more out of the yields gained and the growthbonus while wide civs are going to proc the birth-bonus more often

Unique Building
Replaces Library
WLTKD lasts 50% longer
Reduced unhappiness from all sources by X%
(Maybe replace the scientist with another specialist? although that would probably be more of an annoyance in the long run)
(Probably slightly higher base yields?)

Unique Unit
Chu-ko-nu
Generally the same as it was before
(Maybe add something fun to it, like gaining culture for every unit it kills?)
(In general I just think this unit is fairly late into the game for just having one promotion, I mean a slinger upgraded to a crossbow is arguably better than the CKN because chance to withdraw from combat is better than +1 CS)

I like this. For the X yield, I prefer production. Perhaps a small quantity for all city yields, like that belief. For the X reduced unhappiness, let's start at 20% and adjust later.
EDIT. For Cho-Ku-No, I don't know, there's already too many civs with bonuses per killings. If you want them doing something different, let it have a non-heritable siege promotion against cities, so China can ignore Field Cannons for a while.

 

[Starrynite120]

I like this. For the X yield, I prefer production. Perhaps a small quantity for all city yields, like that belief. For the X reduced unhappiness, let's start at 20% and adjust later.

Why production? China has never been in the production role.

And 20% less unhappiness from every source? That sounds a little ridiculous, especially at that point in the game. 10% would be more reasonable.

 

[tu_79]

Why production? China has never been in the production role.

And 20% less unhappiness from every source? That sounds a little ridiculous, especially at that point in the game. 10% would be more reasonable.

China has always been the factory of the world. Only in Industrial Revolution did western countries a little better.

Jealousy unhappiness is not the only source, you can still suffer from religion, ideologies, specialists and war weariness. EDIT. Perhaps we are thinking of different unhappiness. If the reduction is to them all, then I agree with you.

 

[Legen]

Anyways guess I'll give this a go and drop a suggestion.


CHINA 2.0

Unique ability
+50% growth during golden ages and WLTKD
Whenever a new citizen is born gain X <yield> scaling with era
(Maybe make the yield scales with the pop of the city instead, so bigger cities provides more yields on birth than smaller ones?)

This is imho a fairly tree-neutral approach, compact civs is going to get more out of the yields gained and the growthbonus while wide civs are going to proc the birth-bonus more often

Unique Building
Replaces Library
WLTKD lasts 50% longer
Reduced unhappiness from all sources by X%
(Maybe replace the scientist with another specialist? although that would probably be more of an annoyance in the long run)
(Probably slightly higher base yields?)

Helps make up for the negative side of the out of control growth, longer WLTKD seems unique enough and has some synergy with the UA. The thought was that this building doesn't necessarily need to help China win the game, it is here to back the UA up. Also makes balance easier as you can just bump up the UA number.

Unique Unit
Chu-ko-nu
Generally the same as it was before
(Maybe add something fun to it, like gaining culture for every unit it kills?)
(In general I just think this unit is fairly late into the game for just having one promotion, I mean a slinger upgraded to a crossbow is arguably better than the CKN because chance to withdraw from combat is better than +1 CS)

This UB looks a lot like what part of Brazil's UA is doing, could as well call it "Carnaval district". Instead of trying to reduce unhappiness, why not just use the Equality model from Progress:

"1 Happiness for every X citizens in the city"

It is more in line with what China is trying to do: grow a lot and benefit from it. Perheaphs it would work better as part of the UA, or with the UB being an early national wonder, if needed to deal with rounding. But I'd rather avoid making it look too much like what another civilization already has.

 

[Txurce]

China has always been the factory of the world. Only in Industrial Revolution did western countries a little better.

Seeing as how factories essentially didn't exist pre-Industrial Revolution, and China remained agrarian until some time during Mao's reign... what are you talking about?

 

[Starrynite120]

China has always been the factory of the world. Only in Industrial Revolution did western countries a little better.

Jealousy unhappiness is not the only source, you can still suffer from religion, ideologies, specialists and war weariness. EDIT. Perhaps we are thinking of different unhappiness. If the reduction is to them all, then I agree with you.

Changing China to a production Civ would be a huge change. Its a growth Civ, moving it to growth and production would be odd. I think it should stay the same purpose it has now, just a bit different implementation. Adding production in would be too drastic a change, and we already did that for America, we don't need something else with production added now.

I meant only unhappiness from jealousy. No buildings affect any of the other sources. If we were to do -X% all unhappiness from jealousy, anything more than 10% would feel too good, especially considering how early the building is. But I'm not sure that's a good idea at all to begin with.

 

[CrazyG]

Arabia isn't East Asian, silly you

I meant Korea, but I'm trying to avoid discussing him any more in this thread.

For that 2.0, I would like to see the golden age synergy just dropped from China. I feel like boosting for 2 different conditions means the civ has to be powerless outside of those times to be balanced, which results in China have a massive win-more problem. Getting something for citizen births is alright, I wouldn't want production. It would be really strong but production is a really rare thing in UAs and I sort of like it that way. China produced a lot of stuff throughout history just because it has so many people, not because the people are more productive than others. I like having something to trigger the WLTED

The biggest threat to a growth civ happiness wise is usually missing Cathedrals and getting swarmed with poverty. 1 happiness per X citizens sounds better to me. Or you could put the gain X yield on this building, I like that more than the UA having it

Maybe give the Chu-ko-nu the faster great generals promotion, culture on kills seems wrong. China really does not have a culture of warfare, but it does have some legendary generals. I would suggest making it available earlier (because that would really help address it weaknesses), but then its so similar to the H'wacha. Maybe we could move it to civil service? As China I usually want that farm buff early.

China has always been the factory of the world. Only in Industrial Revolution did western countries a little better.

China produces a lot of stuff throughout history because it had a huge population. Generally the population hasn't been any more productive than other nations though. Compared to Europe its per citizen production was (and still is) awful

 

[Funak]

This UB looks a lot like what part of Brazil's UA is doing, could as well call it "Carnaval district". Instead of trying to reduce unhappiness, why not just use the Equality model from Progress:

"1 Happiness for every X citizens in the city"

It is more in line with what China is trying to do: grow a lot and benefit from it. Perheaphs it would work better as part of the UA, or with the UB being an early national wonder, if needed to deal with rounding. But I'd rather avoid making it look too much like what another civilization already has.

I really don't see the connection to Brazil at all (other than the part of the Chinese UA that I left untouched, which from what I remember inspired the Brazilian UA in the first place).
I chose reducing all needs because it's an existing easy mechanic, happiness/X pop is really clunky as it does nothing between the X's. I recently played around a bit with a custom civ that Enginseer reworked for VP, and it had one of those reduce all unhappiness/needs mechanics and I thought it was kinda nifty and worked pretty well, figured it would be a good fit for a civ focused on growth as growing tend to cause a lot of unavoidable unhappiness.

As for yields, it doesn't necessarily need to be limited to one yield, although using too many might make the ability feel too spread.
The yields I'd like to avoid in this case are: Food (Weird interaction with growth, and besides the UA already focuses on growth), Faith (we really don't need another religious civ) and Tourism (Not really sure why, just don't like it).

I meant Korea, but I'm trying to avoid discussing him any more in this thread.

For that 2.0, I would like to see the golden age synergy just dropped from China. I feel like boosting for 2 different conditions means the civ has to be powerless outside of those times to be balanced, which results in China have a massive win-more problem. Getting something for citizen births is alright, I wouldn't want production. It would be really strong but production is a really rare thing in UAs and I sort of like it that way. China produced a lot of stuff throughout history just because it has so many people, not because the people are more productive than others. I like having something to trigger the WLTED

The biggest threat to a growth civ happiness wise is usually missing Cathedrals and getting swarmed with poverty. 1 happiness per X citizens sounds better to me. Or you could put the gain X yield on this building, I like that more than the UA having it

I know you were talking about Korea, I was just making a joke

As for dropping golden age synergy I could definitely see that.
I was playing with the idea of just having something like all yield scaling from the UB maybe like 1 of every yield per 10 pop (kinda like God-King) but it just feels too all over the place. Besides I'd really prefer to have to power in the UA and let the UB deal with the weaknesses, not really sure why but it seems more fun that way.

 

[Starrynite120]

I'm not sure the yield from births is a good idea. There are already so many of those around. Production happens from chancery, gold from progress, science from council, not to mention the pantheon beliefs. I don't think another one of those is a good idea.

 

[ElliotS]

Honestly civ does China such a disservice in how they ignore most of Chinese history and all of the warring nations that existed in Asia. Hell, the idea of a unified China wasn't even really there before Genghis Khan's son.

I'd like to see more respect paid to that. What about a UA that would spawn rebels every time you go into a new era or complete a policy tree, but upon beating them you get +1 pop in all cities and a random great person?

 

[Starrynite120]

Honestly civ does China such a disservice in how they ignore most of Chinese history and all of the warring nations that existed in Asia. Hell, the idea of a unified China wasn't even really there before Genghis Khan's son.

I'd like to see more respect paid to that. What about a UA that would spawn rebels every time you go into a new era or complete a policy tree, but upon beating them you get +1 pop in all cities and a random great person?

That sounds like it has too much potential to screw you over. I would never play a civ with that ability. Its also just really strange. I don't see why it has to be something super creative, or even why it has to stray from what it has been for awhile.

 

[Txurce]

I don't see why it has to be something super creative, or even why it has to stray from what it has been for awhile.

It probably won't. But for some, part of the fun of these forums is to creatively speculate. That's why there's so much back-and-forth along the lines of how many angels could fit on the head of a pin: it stimulates.

 

[tu_79]

The fact remains that China sold manufactured goods to the rest of Asia, Europe and partly Africa. Precious metals went the other way.

 

[Strigvir]

So you are saying China was abusing its slaves for bling?

 

[ElliotS]

The fact remains that China sold manufactured goods to the rest of Asia, Europe and partly Africa. Precious metals went the other way.

I'm just saying: Define China.

Are you talking about the people's republic of China? Ming? Qing? Do you include Tibet?

Because historically China has a very complex and violent geopolitical history, similar to Europe. China has been more-or-less unified since Genghis Khan's Yuan dynasty in finished conquering the Song Dynasty in 1279, but not as a single concurrent government. We've seen the change from Qing->Republic of China->People's republic of china in the last 100 years alone.