Civ unique improvements vrs unique quarters

[peter79]

So in my current game I started and Han and picked Ming in the second age, I haven't gotten to the modern age yet. It occurred to me during my play through that I found not having to deal with 2 sets of unique quarters oddly liberating and less restrictive in terms o city building (also I just love buildings walls).

Anyone else find that picking civs that have unique improvements instead of unique quarters less restrictive for city building?

 

[CliffCo]

Being ageless they retain their benefits but i do sometimes find that unique quarters aren't always worth building depending on your situation and the victory type you're going for, and i often combine both.

 

[magicq99]

Well, I guess it depends on which unique improvement your are looking at. For example the Pairidaeza (Persia) gets +1 Happiness for each adjecent quarter (unlocked with one of the civics, if I'm not mistaken). So you have to consider this when planning your cities, if you want to get the most use out of it.

I guess the main advantage of unique improvements over unique buildings comes from the fact that you can have multiple of them and in cities as well as towns. So even if an individual unique improvement may have a not a large yield, they can add up.

Also considering the 1.2.5 patch, they do not suffer from the building cost penalty, so their cost does not increase with the number of cities you have. Which kind of buffed them a bit.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I tend to prefer a mix of UIs and UQs. UIs are great in towns, and I tend to prefer towns over cities. UQs are great in cities because they only occupy a single tile. Putting UIs in cities sucks because they clutter up a bunch of tiles if you want to get maximal benefit from them, and I feel reluctant to tear them down in order to build urban districts or wonders.

 

[Evolena]

For example the Pairidaeza (Persia) gets +1 Happiness for each adjecent quarter (unlocked with one of the civics, if I'm not mistaken).

Are the bonuses to UI from civ civics kept after age transition?

 

[MutilationWave]

Are the bonuses to UI from civ civics kept after age transition?

No

 

[magicq99]

Are the bonuses to UI from civ civics kept after age transition?

They in many cases seem to lose their adjacency bonuses, even though they are deemed "ageless". I don't know if this is intentional and I don't know if this is the case for all unique improvements. But so far I have observed that adjacency bonuses of unique improvemts only seem to apply to their age, even if the "ageless" tag to my understanding should mean that those bonuses should not be lost.

For example, the Stone Head has a base yield of 2 culture and +1 culture for each adjacent stone head. But the latter seems to get lost on age transition. Likewise, the Megalith loses its +1 food for every adjacent rural tile on age transition. Those are the unique improvments you can gain from cultural city states in Exploration and Antiquity, respectively.

 

[Evolena]

No

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Most Great People bonus are lost too, unless it's a free population or commander promotion.

 

[Evolena]

They in many cases seem to lose their adjacency bonuses, even though they are deemed "ageless". I don't know if this is intentional and I don't know if this is the case for all unique improvements. But so far I have observed that adjacency bonuses of unique improvemts only seem to apply to their age, even if the "ageless" tag to my understanding should mean that those bonuses should not be lost.

I agree, and that doesn't help the sense of retention between ages.

 

[magicq99]

Yes, the "ageless" tag makes no sense to me on the unique improvements. You can use the Megalith to boost the food yield of a town, if you place it encircled by farms. If you have a good site for this, the food yield is significant. Yet on age transition, the Megalith only retains it's base yield, making this arrangement much less valuable in the next age.

I guess the unique improvements are meant to lose some of their power and be replaced with something else in the next age. But the very fact that you can overbuild them also contradicts the "ageless" tag.

I do like the unique improvments and I think that their potential yields can easily be unterestimated. But what exaclty is "ageless" about unique improvements? To me they seem to be the exact opposite.

 

[kent77]

I'm still trying to make sense of how overbuilding, standard improvements, and unique improvements interact.

1. If I overbuild a mine with a Hidden Fortress (Bulgarian UI), I keep the warehouse bonuses of the mine, so all good. (Pretty sure this is right.)
2. But what happens if I overbuild a UI from a previous era? E.g., I conquered Xerxes Persia and now have a bunch of Pairidaezas in my settlements, which seem to be generating a bit of most everything. I've not tried overbuilding any of them yet given the user interface suggests all the yields from the Pairidaeza would be lost and I'd get just a few yields from whatever I'm squashing it with (woodcutter or what have you).

Can anyone confirm my interpretation of #1 and does anyone know what happens if I do #2? (I could actually check, of course, but thought I'd ask first...)

 

[MutilationWave]

I'm still trying to make sense of how overbuilding, standard improvements, and unique improvements interact.

1. If I overbuild a mine with a Hidden Fortress (Bulgarian UI), I keep the warehouse bonuses of the mine, so all good. (Pretty sure this is right.)
2. But what happens if I overbuild a UI from a previous era? E.g., I conquered Xerxes Persia and now have a bunch of Pairidaezas in my settlements, which seem to be generating a bit of most everything. I've not tried overbuilding any of them yet given the user interface suggests all the yields from the Pairidaeza would be lost and I'd get just a few yields from whatever I'm squashing it with (woodcutter or what have you).

Can anyone confirm my interpretation of #1 and does anyone know what happens if I do #2? (I could actually check, of course, but thought I'd ask first...)

I was able to overbuild paradeizas I captured with Dai Viet's water garden or whatever. They kept their yields and got the extra food from the garden. However other UIs do not seem to work the same way, they are overwritten. I did some save/load testing but I don't have the time or patience to figure the system out. It could be civ UI versus UI from an IP. It could be UI from previous age versus new age.

Different combinations yield different results for me.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm still trying to make sense of how overbuilding, standard improvements, and unique improvements interact.

1. If I overbuild a mine with a Hidden Fortress (Bulgarian UI), I keep the warehouse bonuses of the mine, so all good. (Pretty sure this is right.)
2. But what happens if I overbuild a UI from a previous era? E.g., I conquered Xerxes Persia and now have a bunch of Pairidaezas in my settlements, which seem to be generating a bit of most everything. I've not tried overbuilding any of them yet given the user interface suggests all the yields from the Pairidaeza would be lost and I'd get just a few yields from whatever I'm squashing it with (woodcutter or what have you).

Can anyone confirm my interpretation of #1 and does anyone know what happens if I do #2? (I could actually check, of course, but thought I'd ask first...)

If you overbuild one UI with another UI, you lose previous UI bonuses and replace them with new UI bonuses. Base yields and warehouse bonuses stay the same.

 

[magicq99]

I'm still trying to make sense of how overbuilding, standard improvements, and unique improvements interact.

1. If I overbuild a mine with a Hidden Fortress (Bulgarian UI), I keep the warehouse bonuses of the mine, so all good. (Pretty sure this is right.)
2. But what happens if I overbuild a UI from a previous era? E.g., I conquered Xerxes Persia and now have a bunch of Pairidaezas in my settlements, which seem to be generating a bit of most everything. I've not tried overbuilding any of them yet given the user interface suggests all the yields from the Pairidaeza would be lost and I'd get just a few yields from whatever I'm squashing it with (woodcutter or what have you).

Can anyone confirm my interpretation of #1 and does anyone know what happens if I do #2? (I could actually check, of course, but thought I'd ask first...

If you overbuild one UI with another UI, you lose previous UI bonuses and replace them with new UI bonuses. Base yields and warehouse bonuses stay the same.

Yes, this seems to be the mechanic. In fact you can only build an unique improvment by overbuilding a warehouse improvement (like a farm), you cannot build it on an empty tile at all. And when you do this, the yields from the warehouse improvement (for example the food yield from the farm) is kept.

The total yield of a unique improvement is therefore the sum of the base yield of the tile itself (from the terrain and any features like woods), the warehouse bonus of the underlying improvement and the unique improvement itself.

One fact that also should be kept in mind ist that many unique improvements to not require a specific warehouse improvement. For example, you can build the Pairidaeza on an improvment that yields food, like a farm, or one that yields production, like a woodcutter. In the former case you get a Pairidaeza with a food yield in the latter with a production yield.

So when buidling the unique improvment you should maybe see it more like an upgrade or enhancement of the underlying warehouse improvement and not a strict replacement. But when overbuilding another unique improvement, you are in fact replacing the unique improvment (while still keeping the warehouse bonus).

In this way the unique improvements are fundamentally different and stronger than they are in Civ VI, because unlike in Civ VI you have not to decide if you want a farm or the unique improvement on a tile, but you get the benefit of both. In Civ VI you often had much limited choice for the placement of unique improvements, because you had to give up a farm or a mine for each of them.

That is also why I think many players coming from Civ VI underestimate the potential yields from the unique improvements. When evaluating the power of the unique improvements, you always have to add the yields of the underlying improvement on top, which was not the case in Civ VI. Therefore, the base yield in the description of the unique improvement is a bit misleading.

Or from an economics point of view, the opportunity cost of the unique improvments is lower than in Civ VI, which makes them more effective.

I like this new concept in general. But one downside is with the Han and Ming Great Walls, in my opinion. Since you have to build them on top of an exisiting improvement, you are much more restricted in their placement than you were in Civ VI. Maybe there should be some way to build those improvements outside of a settlement for defenive purposes but in this case without any warehouse yields.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, the UI yield is a pure bonus for the tile. So like in my current game I can put a Caravanserai down on top of a tile, I pay my 312 gold with whatever discounts I have to purchasing, and it gives me +5 or +7 or whatever gold on the tile. But as mentioned it can only be placed on top of a tile, so the towns that I want them in, I need them to grow a little more than I would sometimes otherwise. Because you need to grow out to a tile, and then put the UI on top.

The big differences to me is that since UI can go in towns and cities normally, they tend to be more about spamming out. Sure, sometimes they are limited (like the CS festival grounds which is one per settlement), but they're still meant to go wild on. And you can still build over them with a regular district if you want, but you do often need some real reason (sometimes it's only when you get the 2nd building on a tile that you see an improvement in yields). UI also have the advantage in that they are maintenance-free, and with the changes in 1.2.5, they don't increase the cost of other buildings.

I like both at different times. UB/UQ are nice because they stay as quarters the next era, and do often give you other bonuses (resource slots or something) that you can't get otherwise. I do think occasionally their adjacencies come in a little weak, but at the same time, if you get the right bonuses, you can chain them nicely. Because they count as a building type, if you have like a "+2 food on culture buildings" policy card from your civ, you can make use of that from turn 1 in the new era. And they're pretty much just a bonus - if you have a culture UB, that's some culture that no other civ that era has access to, and will keep giving culture in the next era too.

 

[Evolena]

Something that I've tested - a UI still counts as a Farm, Mine, ... for the Farming or Mining Town Specializations.

 

[magicq99]

But as mentioned it can only be placed on top of a tile, so the towns that I want them in, I need them to grow a little more than I would sometimes otherwise. Because you need to grow out to a tile, and then put the UI on top.

I don't think that this is a big downside however, because I usually place the unique improvements on tiles which I want to work anyway.

But an important thing to keep in mind is that the unique improvement should maybe not be build on a tile which will eventually become an urban district. This of course makes them more straightforward in towns and a little bit less so in cities, because in some cases you will eventually want to urbanize some of the potential tiles.

That being said, there are some unique improvements that seem to be designed to be used in cities primarily, for example the Pairidaeza. Those need a little bit more planning imho to get the most use from them.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Something that I've tested - a UI still counts as a Farm, Mine, ... for the Farming or Mining Town Specializations.

Yeah i can corroberate that. The Russian UI gives bonuses to adjacent Research Institutes and Open Air Museums, if those are built on top of Farms.

 

[magicq99]

Something that I've tested - a UI still counts as a Farm, Mine, ... for the Farming or Mining Town Specializations.

Yes. And I think this shows why one should see the unique improvements not as overbuilding a standard improvement, but rather stacking it on top of another. So they work more like a "rural quarter" containing two rural improvements, for example the farm/mine and the unique improvement.

The only overbuilding that occurs with unique improvements is when you replace one unique improvement with a different unique improvement. But in this case, the base improvement is still there, again similar like quarters work.

Thinking about it, both the terms "overbuilding" and "ageless" are misleading with regard to the unique improvements. They neither overbuild something obsolete (like buildings do) nor do they keep all their yields after age transition (like ageless buildings do)