City Development

[iWant921nooow]

I agree with stalker. I like the early engineer slot. Most of my games i go for an early watermill to get a great engineer. If im going for a specialist play then watermills> granary. Other than that id prefer a granary if there are some of the bonus resources (which i usually look for when settling). Even if there arent any granary bonus resources, the 2 gold maintanance for watermill hurts that early in the game. But it does however give an extra hammer.
I like that they are different so that we have to decide which one to build

dzx

 

[Stalker0]

Thal if you wanted to change anything about the watermill I would simply lower its hammer cost. You had already mentioned wanting to speed up early buildings (at least for purchasing). But I really do think the benefits are just fine.

 

[Thalassicus]

I do like the two buildings to have a different focus. The hardest part is giving the Watermill a clear purpose, and I think that's been achieved relatively well with the engineer slot.

Something else that's important with buildings is variety... we don't want to always or never build the Watermill first. It's most interesting if we make a careful decision each time about whether to build it, based on circumstances of the game and terrain. This is why I like resource bonuses. It's a really simple way to give a building variable importance based on terrain, and easy to balance. Let's try out the Watermill with an even more production-focused role. It already has the engineer slot, I'll add Spices/Sugar and reduce its food from 2 to 1. That should keep its overall power still better than vanilla (where it costs 20% more and has no engineer) but not too powerful.

 

[Stalker0]

I agree with your intent Thal, but I don't know if that is what is actually occurring.

So if before a 2/1 w/Engineer water mill was considered okay (based on opinions some think its fine some think its weak).

Now its a 1/1 w/Engineer, which is less worth the cost. Few people are likely build it with this bonus.

However, with a good amount of spice/sugar it becomes worth it again...but not for the production....for the bonus food.

So now the watermill is again primarily a food building, not a production building as you mentioned you were wanting to focus on.

Meanwhile, the granary has become weaker overall.

 

[Txurce]

So now the watermill is again primarily a food building, not a production building as you mentioned you were wanting to focus on.

Meanwhile, the granary has become weaker overall.

Don't underestimate the value of the engineer slot. Use it along with the +1h and you have a singular hammer (and GE) source very early in the game.

By shifting the luxuries out of the granary, I won't be building it in anywhere near as many cities. That's probably more of a good thing than a bad thing, from a game-play perspective.

 

[Seek]

I agree with your intent Thal, but I don't know if that is what is actually occurring.

So if before a 2/1 w/Engineer water mill was considered okay (based on opinions some think its fine some think its weak).

Now its a 1/1 w/Engineer, which is less worth the cost. Few people are likely build it with this bonus.

However, with a good amount of spice/sugar it becomes worth it again...but not for the production....for the bonus food.

So now the watermill is again primarily a food building, not a production building as you mentioned you were wanting to focus on.

Meanwhile, the granary has become weaker overall.

This is why when I opened the discussion I thought it would be more interesting to split the lux/bonus resources up - 2 bonus/1 lux on granary, and one each on the watermill.

However, while I still think that may be a good idea, another option that may be worth considering is to leave the resource bonuses on the granary and increase the watermill to a straight 2/2 - at 100 it would still (I feel) not necessarily be a first-build in new cities because it would take so long to complete, but it may move up the build queue for those of us who do not build it currently (pre beta 11). This would leave the usefulness of the granary untouched and make the watermill more of a production build but not overshadow potentially more powerful production buildings like the workshop or stable. Thoughts?

 

[Stalker0]

This is why when I opened the discussion I thought it would be more interesting to split the lux/bonus resources up - 2 bonus/1 lux on granary, and one each on the watermill.

However, while I still think that may be a good idea, another option that may be worth considering is to leave the resource bonuses on the granary and increase the watermill to a straight 2/2 - at 100 it would still (I feel) not necessarily be a first-build in new cities because it would take so long to complete, but it may move up the build queue for those of us who do not build it currently (pre beta 11). This would leave the usefulness of the granary untouched and make the watermill more of a production build but not overshadow potentially more powerful production buildings like the workshop or stable. Thoughts?

If you were to change the watermill to 2 prod, I would drop the food to 1 or even 0. 2 prod, with the ability to make it 4 through the specialist, is solid imo.

 

[Txurce]

If you were to change the watermill to 2 prod, I would drop the food to 1 or even 0. 2 prod, with the ability to make it 4 through the specialist, is solid imo.

Way too solid, in my opinion. This is a second-tier Ancient tech. This buff would make it better than a Workshop for a good while. In fact, it's not far behind a Manufactory created with a GE from the Liberty tree. Why would you ever not build this right away in your capital?

 

[Thalassicus]

Remember my goal is to simply give more game-to-game variety in the buildings, not buff or nerf either one. I feel they're both already good buildings.

I don't feel the granary is much weaker with spice/suger moved off since wheat is much more common than those, and overshadows them on the building. Likewise, +3 in a city is very useful, and overshadows any changes in food to the watermill.

I normally don't build watermills, but in my current game as Washington, research was going way faster than I could keep up with building stuff, so I tossed up watermills everywhere and started using the Great Engineers to improve my production. I think this is where the building is most useful, when we need to catch up with research.

 

[Txurce]

I was thinking about pop growth with regard to what may be an occasional AI pop-growth bug, but outside of the "bug" aspect. In my current game at 100 AD (t119), I have four cities - sizes 14, 10, 6 and 1. Germany has one city, size 20. Land is a factor in how the game calculates population: I have 500K sq km, and Germany has 380K. So why would my total pop be at 2.4M, and his at 4.4?

I'm assuming this is not a "bug," but simply how the game calculates.

 

[Seek]

I'm assuming this is not a "bug," but simply how the game calculates.

Exactly.

Demographics' population grows exponentially. I'm not sure of the equation, but a 20 pop city has much more "population" than two size 10 cities - I think this is meant to represent the greater usefulness of a pop point in an already large city than a small one.

@Thal
Just curious about the reasoning behind the changes to the Seaport. If I have it right, they now require a harbor in the city, no longer yield gold and only give 1 on sea resources. Seems like a major nerf!

 

[Thalassicus]

Seaports also give +50% and +15 for naval units, while Harbors give no production bonus anymore. The harbor is for cities in general, while the seaport is more navy-focused now. I reduced Seaport base stats slightly because I feel it's more fun to have thoughtful decision-making about what cities to build it in, instead of dropping one automatically in all cities with sea resources.

Starting all ships with 2 promotions is a huge bonus because they can get the Siege promotion right away for +35% vs cities, or two tiers of Targeting promotions for a big advantage over other players' navies. Building ships faster than before also offsets the cost of the seaport itself. I always build at least 1 seaport for these reasons.

 

[Txurce]

I like b19's adjusting the NW threshold down to 75%, which aligns it with the free-cultural building SP.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hey there Thal. Of all the basic buildings in Civ5, I find the Courthouse to be the most useless to me. As a builder-not conqueror-it really serves no purpose to me, for the first time in the *entire* series. Is there any prospect of you buffing the courthouse to make it more useful outside of a conquest situation?

Aussie.

 

[Thalassicus]

The courthouse is hardcoded to be only available in occupied cities, unable to alter that without c++ access.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The courthouse is hardcoded to be only available in occupied cities, unable to alter that without c++ access.

No problem. Well I look forward to seeing changes to the Courthouse once the SDK is released (indeed, that should be happening fairly soon, I would guess).

Aussie.

 

[black213]

The courthouse is hardcoded to be only available in occupied cities, unable to alter that without c++ access.

markusbeutel (Nights mod) got it to be available in normal cities, maybe you should ask him?

 

[Thalassicus]

Does it work the same as a regular courthouse? The courthouse has only one attribute, "ends occupied unhappiness." There's no modifiers for it or anything that specifies what type of city it can be built in, so if he did something it was probably like the courthouse, possibly coded manually in lua.

 

[black213]

Does it work the same as a regular courthouse? The courthouse has only one attribute, "ends occupied unhappiness." There's no modifiers for it or anything that specifies what type of city it can be built in, so if he did something it was probably like the courthouse, possibly coded manually in lua.

He made it to grant Science.

 

[Thalassicus]

Ahh. Yeah, it's the 'ends occupation' attribute that blocks a structure from construction in non-occupied cities, so without it, the courthouse could be built anywhere. It makes sense he removed that since he changed to the unrest system.