England

[pineappledan]

Perfidious Albion is a reference to England's dealings with mainland Europe and is not an expression of their colonial adventures.

 

[Omen of Peace]

I would:
- weaken the early spy - though I fear it'd be new code
- weaken the White Tower (both the culture it gives out and the instant yields)
then see where we stand. Ships of the Line could be looked at later - they're undeniably very strong.

 

[Gazebo]

The hangman's noose comes for England...

 

[telelavoro]

The hangman's noose comes for England...

First Brexit, and now this?! Poor us...

 

[BiteInTheMark]

First Brexit, and now this?! Poor us...

I am for an additional effect for the english UA:
After researching the Internet, you gain 3 unhappiness per turn
If you stay 10 turns very unhappy, a third of your empire separate from you as own country, you permanently loose 20% of your food supply and economic power, nobody wants to trade with you anymore and the leader screen is replaced with the first picture entry your google finds under the words "slimy ugly person".

 

[Stalker0]

The hangman's noose comes for England...

All England's abilities stay the same. But add in...

Brexit: England cannot score victory conditions.


Perfectly balanced

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

All England's abilities stay the same. But add in...

Brexit: England cannot score victory conditions.


Perfectly balanced

Wouldn't change anything for me, I never actually win any games, I just declare victory whenever it is inevitable

 

[Gidoza]

I am for an additional effect for the english UA:
After researching the Internet, you gain 3 unhappiness per turn
If you stay 10 turns very unhappy, a third of your empire separate from you as own country, you permanently loose 20% of your food supply and economic power, nobody wants to trade with you anymore and the leader screen is replaced with the first picture entry your google finds under the words "slimy ugly person".

Nah, I'm quite happy with Brexit.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

In my completely honest and unbiased opinion : England UA i.e starting with a spy will always be one of the strongest if not the strongest one and will always be an over performing civ in human hands unless it gets a complete rework which is far from being likely or even open to discussion.
SOTL losing logistics is fine by, i never liked units starting with logistics anyway and SOTL was by a big margin the strongest naval unit in the game thanks to both logistics and +1 movement from UA.

 

[pineappledan]

Why isn’t the white tower an ironworks replacement? It currently replaces an information era wonder unlocking in medieval; how could it not be too strong?

Any bonuses to spying would then be its own, and not replacements for a wonder that, at its base, gives all spies a free level, hundreds of science on soy actions, and a free spy. I don’t know how that was ever expected to translate to a medieval wonder.

 

[PapaRockett]

Why isn’t the white tower an ironworks replacement? It currently replaces an information era wonder unlocking in medieval; how could it not be too strong?

Any bonuses to spying would then be its own, and not replacements for a wonder that, at its base, gives all spies a free level, hundreds of science on soy actions, and a free spy. I don’t know how that was ever expected to translate to a medieval wonder.

I agree it's too strong. When playing on large maps you have around 9 spies with statecraft. Rigging elections is too easy and gives a boat load of science/gold with all those additional spies.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Just bring back the steam mill; White tower is just ridiculous at machinery.

Why isn’t the white tower an ironworks replacement? It currently replaces an information era wonder unlocking in medieval; how could it not be too strong?

Any bonuses to spying would then be its own, and not replacements for a wonder that, at its base, gives all spies a free level, hundreds of science on soy actions, and a free spy. I don’t know how that was ever expected to translate to a medieval wonder.

 

[CrazyG]

I think the base police station isn't ideal in its design. The only reason you don't see it discussed more is because it comes so late in the game.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

Why isn’t the white tower an ironworks replacement? It currently replaces an information era wonder unlocking in medieval; how could it not be too strong?

Any bonuses to spying would then be its own, and not replacements for a wonder that, at its base, gives all spies a free level, hundreds of science on soy actions, and a free spy. I don’t know how that was ever expected to translate to a medieval wonder.

That sounds better than bringing in a late game National Wonder and moving it half the Tech Tree earlier.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't play with England enough to comment on overall balance, but I am noticing in discussion a split, and I think its important to ask where the discussion should focus:

1) The UA is "broken". Aka it doesn't matter what the White Tower is....having a spy at the beginning is simply not balancable.

2) The UB is "broken". If its fixed, the civ can be balanced.

If the problem is number 1, than discussion on number 2 doesn't really help all that much. So what are people's thoughts on that?

 

[PapaRockett]

I don't play with England enough to comment on overall balance, but I am noticing in discussion a split, and I think its important to ask where the discussion should focus:

1) The UA is "broken". Aka it doesn't matter what the White Tower is....having a spy at the beginning is simply not balancable.

2) The UB is "broken". If its fixed, the civ can be balanced.

If the problem is number 1, than discussion on number 2 doesn't really help all that much. So what are people's thoughts on that?

I think the UA is fine, the tech progress seems to be on par with other civs like Russia, Portugal, Babylon.

Having more spies from policies/era really adds up to the total yields you get from rigging CS elections and it is almost always a success every ~15 turns

 

[azum4roll]

Since spy numbers scale with city state number which scales with map size (and inversely with warmonging) we should just discuss the standard 8 civ + 16 CS scenario. How exactly is the number of spies determined?

 

[CrazyG]

1) The UA is "broken". Aka it doesn't matter what the White Tower is....having a spy at the beginning is simply not balancable.

The UA has always been strong but I don't think balance is impossible. There are two big changes that affect it

1) Election rigging now gets way more influence (an intentional change)

2) Tech stealing in ancient era became a lot faster (unintentional?) I don't think there was discussion and it wasn't mentioned in any change log. It really is a lot faster too, I've played England a lot and it used to be like 11 turns at the shortest to steal. At 11 turns its extremely good but balanced. Last playthrough it was 4 turns, I'm guessing some underlying mechanic about tech steals changed. G did address it this patch, making it 25% slower is the target civ has no spy (but 5 or 6 turns still sounds really OP to me).

The White Tower has been really OP since its creation. Each time it comes up we give it a slap on the wrist, but it needs to be walloped by the nerf hammer.

 

[pineappledan]

The UA has always been strong but I don't think balance is impossible. There are two big changes that affect it

1) Election rigging now gets way more influence (an intentional change)

2) Tech stealing in ancient era became a lot faster (unintentional?) I don't think there was discussion and it wasn't mentioned in any change log. It really is a lot faster too, I've played England a lot and it used to be like 11 turns at the shortest to steal. At 11 turns its extremely good but balanced. Last playthrough it was 4 turns, I'm guessing some underlying mechanic about tech steals changed. G did address it this patch, making it 25% slower is the target civ has no spy (but 5 or 6 turns still sounds really OP to me).

The White Tower has been really OP since its creation. Each time it comes up we give it a slap on the wrist, but it needs to be walloped by the nerf hammer.

I agree with crazy here. It’s not so much that the UA became OP, it’s that spies became so much better. With how much stronger Spies have become, I doubt the 1 level stronger spies thing is necessary anymore. The early spy more than stands on its own already.

However, I do think the White tower is far more of a legitimate balance concern, and it's a fundamental problem with bringing an Intelligence Agency 4 eras earlier. First off. England already gets a free spy before everyone else. They don't need 2 spies before everyone else. The White Tower gives all spies +1 level, but the England UA already functionally gives spies +1 level. The current White Tower gives 1/4 of the yields that a national intelligence agency gives, so it's a worse building than the base wonder that other civs can get. Lastly, coming out 4 eras earlier makes the wonder very similar to the Carthaginian's cothon: It's a UNW that is much earlier, but basically only adds some empire yields to building class and that's it. The building doesn't add much beyond the base bonuses of the national wonder because of the difficulties balancing a UNW that comes so much earlier

if white tower were to replace a non-spy wonder, it could add spy-related bonuses, rather than have spy bonuses as base that everyone else gets later.

 

[pineappledan]

What about this?

White Tower (Ironworks replacement)

Available at Machinery
1022
3
Has 2 slots for Great Works of Art (33 if themed)
Provides "The Crown Jewels" Great Work of Art for free.
+2 to Constabularies and +2 to Castles on Empire
Slows enemy Spy effectiveness by 10% on empire
25 from Completing a building in this city (same as base Ironworks)
25 for All spy actions, scaling with Era (Stealing GWs, rigging Elections, Advanced Actions, killing enemy spies, etc.)
​

Big things you'll notice:
No free spy anymore.
Strictly adds gold to spy actions, rather than altering the yields that an Intelligence Agency would give, so you aren't left poorer in Modern
No culture except a free GW (which it is implied you stole anyways)