Gaul should have double Mine Tourism but they made a mistake.
It looks like it's probably one of those situations where they initially were going to have double tourism from mines, but somewhere during development they realized it might be too OP.
The thing is Mines are an improvement that you can plop down on any hill tile, you don't even have to have a mineable resource, so that would be a whole lot of tourism.
The thing is Mines are an improvement that you can plop down on any hill tile, you don't even have to have a mineable resource, so that would be a whole lot of tourism.
Brixter
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You said "The best way to figure out their intent is to read the ability description". Great Lighthouse wonder's description says this:
+1 Movement for all naval units. Must be built on the Coast, and adjacent to land and a Harbor district with a Lighthouse.
Embarked units also get +1 Movement, not just naval units. By your logic, this is a bug because it is not in the Great Lighthouse' description. Should we have a bug fix to remove +1 Movement from Embarked units because it is not in the description?
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Context is everything. In the case of Gaul's "double tourism", we have even greater evidence of intent in that the mines were added to the general Improvements_Tourism table in a patch after Gaul's release. "Fixing" the Gaul modifier to provide double Tourism from mines is incredibly simple; if that were the developers' intent, they would have just done that in the patch instead. I think @Alexander's Hetaroi is right - they probably felt like it would have been too OP.
In the case of the Great Lighthouse, yep, it's an error one way or the other. Either fix the text or remove embarked units from the bonus. Doesn't matter to me.
I think it's pretty clear that embarked units count as naval units. They have all of the characteristics of naval units: they're in water, they can only move into the same type of water as other naval units, and they only heal in friendly territory. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that all embarked units get +1 movement whenever other naval units do.
Developers don’t prioritize what to fix based on how simple of difficult it is to fix. There’s been stupidly easy to fix issues waiting months to be fixed. Money is the deciding factor.
Secondly, one knows if the problem was easy or not to fix only after it’s actually been fixed. Maybe back then the problem was considered difficult, we dont know. And since we dont know then it is a speculation not argumentation.
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I wasn't commenting on how they decided what to fix. I'm saying they had several ways of addressing Gaul, and the one they chose tells us what the intent was. If they wanted only Gaul to have the tourism from mines, or if they wanted the tourism to be 200%, that would have been done. Simple as.
Brixter
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That's your interpretation and people's perspective is subjective. Who's to say that your interpretation is correct.
Since you agree that the Great Lighthouse is a bug that could be fixed one way or another, then you should agree that Gaul mines could be fixed one way or another. Both are the same case. Both are behaving not in accordance with the game's description. Agree?
Brixter
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If embarked units are naval units, why don't they get buffed by Great Admirals? Are you surprised that Great Admirals don't work on them but Great Lighthouse does?
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Nah, not the same. Great Lighthouse is fine and has never been patched, while Gaul has been patched so I am comfortable saying that what we have is what they intended. I think I agree with Kwami's interpretation of Great Lighthouse anyway. Either way, the implementation isn't massively OP or something. I think Great Lighthouse is pretty weak regardless, so the embarked unit movement is a nice touch.
Brixter
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Again, that is your interpretation not Firaxis. Do you have a definitive response from Firaxis that that is what they intended or are you making your own opinions? Everyone can make opinions but they are not facts. Are you a Firaxis consultant?
Also, you just contradicted yourself. In post #25 you said Great Lighthouse is a bug that needs to fixed. In post #31 you backtracked and said it's not a bug that needs to be fixed. With your quick to change mind, how reliable is your interpretation?
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Not sure why you’re getting so testy with me here. I disagree with you, yeah, but I don’t think I’ve been impolite.
You seem to have a lot invested in interpreting the Gaul thing as a bug—go for it and publish a mod
We are all entitled to our opinions.
Brixter
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Not sure why you’re getting so testy with me here. I disagree with you, yeah, but I don’t think I’ve been impolite.
You seem to have a lot invested in interpreting the Gaul thing as a bug—go for it and publish a mod
That's because your opinion on what is a bug or what isn't doesn't have clear cut definitions. Everything is arbitrary based on your opinions.
Aurelesk
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Well... yes?
Every design choices are... choices. Rules are created to give guidelines and a sense of order, so it easier to navigate through and be roughly cohesive and consistent. But ultimately, even those laws, guidelines and such are just handmade, therefore arbitrary. That is why the law is different across countries.
The Great Lighthouse and Mathematics display the same bonus (+1 Movement to Naval units) but behave differently (one is applied to embarked, the other no). Sure it isn't consistent. But not being consistent can either mean "they didn't implemented what they have written" or "they didn't wrote what they have implemented". But it could also mean that two different people designed and coded those two things, and thought being clear as one consider embarked units being naval, and the other not. So the line is even more blurrier.
For the Gallic mines, perhaps the 200 is just a desperate try to have that Tourism code to work, because 100 didn't work. For example, a Coffee Plantation doesn't yield Tourism at Flight, even though Coffee give Culture. It is because native Culture from tiles do not count, while added Culture from Pantheon, Wonders or other do count. Same thing for the Kampung: it always yield 1 less Tourism than the Food on the tile, since 1 Food is coming from the tile itself and not from improvement or buildings. So maybe the coder thought that 200 would work somehow to bypass this, until ultimately failed. As long we don't have direct answer, the double Tourism from Gallic mines is only speculation.
You speculate it should have been. You can back up that assertion with the code founded, or the Gallic gameplay not synerging well with National Parks (lower Appeal, spread districts), so the double Tourism compensate that.
He speculates it shouldn't be. He can back up that assertion by saying if they really wanted that way, they would have implemented it.
In final, we don't really know.
I dug into the issue once more and all boils down to the fact that the only way in the game to give tourism to improvements is via the Improvement_Tourism table. All modifier effects that "adjust" tourism need an already existing tourism source and they only multiply it by a given factor. Since devs wanted Gaul mines to give tourism (for me the "final" argument is that it was explicitly mentioned in the patch notes) then they ended up with an entry to the table.
Perhaps they wanted to limit it to Gauls only, and they started to tinker with modifiers but it is not possible. The only thing a modifier can do in this case, is to make it 200% instead of 100%.
And here is another small issue. The ScalingFactor in the table is does not have any effect. No matter what you put in there (0, 100, 200, etc.) it always gives 100% of the source yield. But since an entry is there, so now Mines convert culture to tourism not only for Gauls. It is just Gauls that give them culture via their UA, but as @Aurelesk pointed out, there are other ways that mines can get culture and later tourism.
The only question left (also asked by @Aurelesk) - should we also include Camps and Quarries into the mix? I can think of the reason why initially only Pastures and Plantations were included - these were the only improvements that gained Culture from pantheons. But as Flight's description clearly says - each improvement that generates culture should have tourism also. Camps and Quarries can get culture, yet after Flight they don't generated tourism. I like clear, precise rules, the less exceptions, the better, so I'd include them.
Perhaps they wanted to limit it to Gauls only, and they started to tinker with modifiers but it is not possible. The only thing a modifier can do in this case, is to make it 200% instead of 100%.
And here is another small issue. The ScalingFactor in the table is does not have any effect. No matter what you put in there (0, 100, 200, etc.) it always gives 100% of the source yield. But since an entry is there, so now Mines convert culture to tourism not only for Gauls. It is just Gauls that give them culture via their UA, but as @Aurelesk pointed out, there are other ways that mines can get culture and later tourism.
The only question left (also asked by @Aurelesk) - should we also include Camps and Quarries into the mix? I can think of the reason why initially only Pastures and Plantations were included - these were the only improvements that gained Culture from pantheons. But as Flight's description clearly says - each improvement that generates culture should have tourism also. Camps and Quarries can get culture, yet after Flight they don't generated tourism. I like clear, precise rules, the less exceptions, the better, so I'd include them.
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Aurelesk
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I have a few dumb questions. I know you are talking about the Culture to Tourism modifier at Flight, but is it possible to give flat Tourism to a tile improvement? For example, I believe the Swedish Open-Air Museum generates Tourism naturally, and is not in the "Culture to Tourism" table at Flight.
One more: the Marae. It gives 1 Tourism at Flight to passable feature, improved or not. So my guess is that the Marae behaves like an Arena, which ahs +1 Tourism at Conservation.
Well, if those two previous presumptions are right... I was wondering... if the developers wanted that only Gallic Mines to generate Tourism at Flight, could they have done a "+1 flat Tourism to Mine once a Technology is researched"? The main problem would be that Mines with more than 1 Culture would only yield 1 Tourism. But if this was doable, nothing would have prevented then to give +2 Tourism if they wanted to tweak the value.
I would add the Fishing Boats, as a few Luxury Resources can be next to a Château or a Theater Square when playing Catherine "Magnificent" de Medeci. I would also add Industries and Corporations.
The Nubian Pyramids may generate Culture, yet does not generate Tourism. Yet, if the improvement would have to generate Tourism, it would more logical it be from Faith. After all, Scythia has its Kurgans generate Tourism from Faith at Flight even if the Civilization is not geared toward Cultural Victory.
Last... Well... Every improvements can have Culture from outside influence. So the clear distinction between which one should be added or not is not very clear. For example, Teddy "Bull Moose" Roosevelt can have almost every tiles in the game to generate Culture as long it is next to Wood / Wonder and is breathtaking. Should all tile improvements count? Teddy can have a Lumber Mill, a Farm, a Fort, a Solar Farm or a Cahokia Mound next to Wood and be Breathtaking. A city with the Mausoleum can have an Oil Rig with a Culture too.
So... where the limit should be put?
In a sense, I want to put the limit to improved Bonus and Luxury Resources (including Farmed Rice) as it covers the Pantheon (God of the Open Sky and Goddess of Festivals) and Catherine "Magnificent" de Medici, to unique tile improvement by adding Nubian Pyramids and Monasteries to generate Tourism from Faith at Flight, and add a "+1 Tourism to Mine at FLight" to the Gallic ability even if there is some double-dipping with improved Copper, Diamonds, Jade, Mercury, Salt and Amber.
But... I don't know if there would be side-effects to this, if it is possible to do, and even more: if it is a good idea.
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@Aurelesk
Open Air Museum: It is still the same table, just there is no PrereqTech hence it works at any time.
Marae is a building, not an improvement. There is a specific modifier effect for it: EFFECT_ADJUST_CITY_TOURISM_PER_FEATURE.
Arena gets Tourism actually from Conservation via its District and EFFECT_ADJUST_DISTRICT_TOURISM_CHANGE.
Hm.. There is 36 improvements that actually exist in the game yet they are not in the tourism table. Well, I take back my idea of putting anything else there
Open Air Museum: It is still the same table, just there is no PrereqTech hence it works at any time.
Marae is a building, not an improvement. There is a specific modifier effect for it: EFFECT_ADJUST_CITY_TOURISM_PER_FEATURE.
Arena gets Tourism actually from Conservation via its District and EFFECT_ADJUST_DISTRICT_TOURISM_CHANGE.
Hm.. There is 36 improvements that actually exist in the game yet they are not in the tourism table. Well, I take back my idea of putting anything else there
