Dear Devs: Buff Forts

[Novntis]

A fair question. So we know that 1 culture also provides 1 border growth, so its less than 1 culture. How much less?

I would say even less than 1/2, as the main reason I get culture is for policies not for border growth, so perhaps 1/4 or 1/3 of a culture. So something like 3 border growth = 1 science.

Well, it's worth maximally 1/2 culture if we're just summing the number of yields, but theoretically, the border growth to instayield exchange rate gets worse as you claim more tiles, so its probably even worse than that. Early game, 1 point is a bigger impact than the monument -25% reduction to tile cost, but less than half a whole monument, and 1/3 of the free per city generation of Epona prior to the Celts UB. I don't think that's OP at all, especially when you consider arguments that early border growth is probably not a great thing because it prevents you from accruing the higher yield, later era per plot instayields.

Though if we want to understand how border growth intrinsically converts to usable yields we'll have to model the tile claim yields under various conditions (i.e. just authority, authority + GoTE, authority + sovereignty + GoTE, Celts with Epona, and so on) with some culture / border growth point per turn game data over a full game to see if its too strong or weak. I suspect it will be a decent boon for authority/border growth strats especially on higher difficulties as it gives the option to purposefully drive your expansion rate in your expands to secure more yields (especially if you build one fort that can be worked by multiple cities).

If it's too strong of an impact but we like the idea of forts making border growth, I think we could also pull on border growth yield and border growth rate levers a small amount to find a happy balance. We've been discussing in another thread the strangeness of the current border growth formula (-% reductions should be multiplicative not simple subtraction from 100 to avoid a forced floor), so it may be a reasonable opportunity to tweak the math there as well if we're fine with potentially destabilizing border growth for a version or two. The multiplicative proposal is a nerf to border growth cost reduction and border growth overall so that may help counter balance any additional yields we put on tiles.

 

[tothePAIN]

Forts right now are silly. They get too much science. They're like mini Kunas.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Agreed, forts are way too strong now, so I'm avoiding building them or at least working them. I still think the solution is not increased yields on forts, but improved functionality for defensive purposes (enemy expends all moves upon entering a tile with a fort, dealing 5 damage to adjacent enemy units, plus 5hp when healing to stationed units, building them adjacent to another fort) so we'd have more incentive to build them, but less incentive to work them.

 

[tothePAIN]

Agreed, forts are way too strong now, so I'm avoiding building them or at least working them. I still think the solution is not increased yields on forts, but improved functionality for defensive purposes (enemy expends all moves upon entering a tile with a fort, dealing 5 damage to adjacent enemy units, plus 5hp when healing to stationed units, building them adjacent to another fort) so we'd have more incentive to build them, but less incentive to work them.

Agreed. I build forts for the defense. They're very useful that way. On Deity, against the eave of units, the bonus to defense is essential.

But there's a point where forts are like +5 science and they're stronger than jungles with universities and rationalism...

 

[stii]

Even mid game +3s is better than +2f off a farm which seems rather silly. You shouldn't want to replace all your farms with forts.

 

[Stalker0]

Is it possible to make a fort generate a "passive yield" (aka you don't need to work it to get it, kind of like goddess of nature with mountains). If they can generate passive border growth, and then maybe a small science yield (nothing major), I think that would be a really good way to use them.

 

[Novntis]

Agreed, forts are way too strong now, so I'm avoiding building them or at least working them. I still think the solution is not increased yields on forts, but improved functionality for defensive purposes (enemy expends all moves upon entering a tile with a fort, dealing 5 damage to adjacent enemy units, plus 5hp when healing to stationed units, building them adjacent to another fort) so we'd have more incentive to build them, but less incentive to work them.

Just as a comment on the adjacency, it's annotated in the file that sets that behavior that we removed the ability to build adjacent forts because it helps the AI which I assume are generally unaware that a cluster of forts on a chokepoint is a good idea. I don't think we'll be getting that functionality back unless the AI can be trained to aggressively fortify their borders like a player would.

Is it possible to make a fort generate a "passive yield" (aka you don't need to work it to get it, kind of like goddess of nature with mountains). If they can generate passive border growth, and then maybe a small science yield (nothing major), I think that would be a really good way to use them.

It probably is, but will minimally require some new DLL code based off that logic implemented into a function that is always called by the base border growth calculations, not conditionally like the pantheon. I think the easiest implementation would probably look like a blend of the logic from improvement based pantheons and goddess of nature, where forts can double count if in range of multiple cities which feels theoretically fine given the non adjacency of the improvement.

It will also require implementing a new DLL function/modifying an existing one supporting a tooltip in the UI explaining that source of border growth, as to my knowledge the goddess of nature faith is handled by city religion aggregating functions, not terrain. In the end that doesn't really matter though, as right now the Border Growth Point/local_culture/YIELD_CULTURE_LOCAL resource has all sorts of UI issues, so we need new code anyway. For example, there isn't any UI handling of Border Growth Points' contribution to tile acquisition (the calculations in the tooltips are wrong and the tooltips only show BGP's from specific sources, not all), though they do actually contribute in the background.

I reported this to github earlier this week and am will take my own stab at fixing some of it once I can get a handle on editing/building the DLL and shake the rust off my C++ knowledge.

 

[azum4roll]

Forts having the old yields plus some border growth points is good enough.