GEM Stage 4: Cities & Policies

[albie_123]

@Stalker0
I believe that's the idea, yes.

@Thal
Do admirals fit into the 'general' category? They're easily the most useless GP by a country mile at the moment.

 

[Thalassicus]

@GenjiKhan
Golden Ages provide +20% to all yields. I don't think that favors tall or wide empires - it's a good bonus for everyone.

@Ahriman
The reasons for moving bonuses from the palace to the player are explained in depth in the Capital vs Satellites thread linked from the documentationhttp://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=11369634#post11369634. If I remember right the main benefits are:

• Capital is less of an automatic "always build wonders here" choice.
• People don't have to regenerate the map to get something we like, since start locations have more similar value.
• Fixed bonuses quickly lose importance as our empire expands.

@Stalker0
Right. Artists have the instant culture Great Works mission. It gives a large culture bonus directly to a city, which expands borders and adds to policy generation.

@albie_123
Yes, Great Admirals are included in the Great General category. I don't really know why Firaxis created two different units. One unit with different land/sea bonuses could have worked with some balancing, and allowed players more flexibility.

 

[mitsho]

@Thal
Do admirals fit into the 'general' category? They're easily the most useless GP by a country mile at the moment.

They're great for exploration as they can travel sea tiles from the start. It's a bit risky, but with their sight, you should be able to avoid the (coastal at first) barbarians. And the connection is easily more worth than a lost Great Admiral...

I do agree they could be merged with Great Generals. It also seems (personal taste) that they are more difficult to acquire than Generals. Or give them a super-sea improvement to create, doesn't need military related but the sea is one place where there's always place for an improvement while sometime I struggle to find a good place for the other Great Persons Tile Improvements...

EDIT: Tried the merge I asked about on page one, the one with More Mercantile Mod. I guess they are too strong now since there are too many luxuries for mercantiles now, may we can balance them in a different way or just bring up the other types of city states to #10 as well (if all are supposed to be the same strength).

Not sure if it works since the mod in this alpha version doesn't appear in my mod browser in-game. I just unzipped it like any other.... Will try more if it worked

 

[Babri]

@GenjiKhan
When we want a goldenage, I think of our choices like this:

It sounds like most people do not use engineers/scientists/merchants for Golden Ages, and the main concerns are artists/generals. How about this compromise to meet those concerns:

GEM: non-generals 8 turns, great general 3 turns, and artists can give instant .
VEM: artist 8 turns, other GP 6 turns, and artists can give instant .
G&K: artist 8 turns, other GP 0 turns.
​

This way using a general on a goldenage is not a super good choice, but the option is still there.

Well I would still say that G&K system is fine regarding Great Persons. Why fixing something which ain't broken. Golden Age only for Great Artists is unique & exciting which is useful for all empires. Generalizing it for all other other GPs simply devalues it. I would suggest that first simply release a version with G&K GP abilities, if later on they are found to be unfit with rest of the mod design then it may be changed.

Anyway I think Great Works & Great Artist improvement is very similar in effect except border expansion which I don't bother about much. Unlike techs & wonders u don't usually beeline hard for policies because in GEM all policies are pretty useful. Just my 2¢.

 

[sukritact]

EDIT: Tried the merge I asked about on page one, the one with More Mercantile Mod. I guess they are too strong now since there are too many luxuries for mercantiles now, may we can balance them in a different way or just bring up the other types of city states to #10 as well (if all are supposed to be the same strength).

What size do you usually play on? Normally, playing or large or standard I usually find only one extra type of resource: my last game on large (4 mercantile city-states) got me 3 different types; 2 jewelry, 1 manuscript and 1 cigar. It's usually not too bad as I'd normally trade extra-copies for other luxuries anyway.

 

[mitsho]

On standard or smaller normally, I just can't really handle larger maps (and then set them to high sea level), but sometimes I set one or two more civs than usual for the map, so there's more cs as well. And I was going only from a hunch, since the mercantile luxuries are a variable. The available happiness is scaled to the mapsize, but the city states are random. It's not really a problem since they can only provide you with one copy, it might be better if you'd get 2-3 so you can sell them again . Going from 10 mercantile city states, I guess 5 luxuries is a good middle. But of course it's not a gamebreaking in any case...

 

[rhammer640]

haven't gotten a great admiral now so not sure if something like this already exists but what if they could create a tile improvement in the water like generals can do on land. This would give them a use for peaceful empires. It could symbolize naval defenses set up on super tiny islands that wouldn't show up on a civ scale big enough for a whole city/tile.

 

[Dunkah]

Or better yet a fort that can be created on water, (still assuming a tiny island of some type), that can have a land unit or air units stationed on it. Have the tile still count as water.

 

[rhammer640]

Basically that was the idea, also would improve the tile and maybe a culture bomb....that is how the great general improvements work now right?

 

[Zaldron]

I don't understand this first part of the cities plan. Are you really suggesting base yields of 15 science and 12 culture from turn 1? So that a monument only increases culture production by ~17%? And a second pop only adds 1/16 to the science rate?

That seems totally weird. Have I misinterpreted? What is the rationale behind this?

Recall that monuments at least are doubled to four culture in GEM so it's a 33% increase from a monument which seems high enough to warrant testing before I make further conclusions.

And I believe that's exactly what Thal has done with science. I assume it's to help prevent truly early tech disparity due to say three fish starts, etc.

 

[mystikx21]

Updates to policy trees.

Some left over changes for anyone who wants to tackle it:
Happiness on piety for religion in city (I think that's in, but I haven't tested it yet to make sure it works as intended).
Espionage bonus on sovereignty. Check/fix espionage to Freedom tree.
Piety finisher making missionaries/etc buildable
Piety finisher increasing religion spread
Reordering policy trees if needed.

Text changes for renamed policies, and renaming in files.

 

[Thalassicus]

I think I can take care of the rest. Thank you mystikx.

 

[JohnS]

Not the topic of the thread, but the discussion is drifting there anyway: One form of Great Person I've always felt was missing from Civ is a Great Explorer-type person. History is full of names of famous explorers and tales of their adventures, and it's a shame that similar concepts don't exist in Civ.

With Great Admirals, this now somewhat exists, and (at least I) find it very enjoyable to navigate my "Great Explorer" around the map, finding new civs, city states and potential city sites. Bonus points if I manage to get an Great Admiral early, so that I'm the first one to discover these places: It captures the feeling of being an "Exploratory Great Power", so to speak.

Would it be insane to change the role of the Great Admiral? As people have said, a GP that only increases combat chances in naval battles is already boring, and the role could easily be filled by a modified Great General anyway. Meanwhile, a modified Great Explorer (or Seafarer or whatever) would make exploration more interesting, might have the power to step onto land and grab goody huts (spoils of exploration!) and maybe even fight barbarians/clear camps (but that doesn't fit the theme quite as much).

Apart from the passive ability to travel over oceans, seeing far and being relatively fast, active abilities could be a Great Expedition, instantly exploring a chunk of the map, a Great Diplomatic Mission, giving a boost to a city state relationship (Though that would overlap with Great Merchants), or founding a colony. The colony founding would just be the ability to found a number of cities, similar to how Great Prophets can perform a number of conversions.

The obvious downside is that Great Explorers would be almost useless once the map is explored, but hey, there's always golden ages. And it would still be more interesting than the Great Admiral, right?

 

[Stalker0]

The Great Admirer already is a great explorer for the most part, he has the ability to cross the globe before astronomy, which is huge!

 

[black213]

@albie_123
Yes, Great Admirals are included in the Great General category. I don't really know why Firaxis created two different units. One unit with different land/sea bonuses could have worked with some balancing, and allowed players more flexibility.

What if you would try to implement that?

 

[Ahriman]

I don't really know why Firaxis created two different units. One unit with different land/sea bonuses could have worked

My guess is a combination of:
1. AI. It is much easier to have the AI that uses the Great Admiral for fleet and the great general for its army than having to have the AI decide between the two.
2. To encourage naval play. To get a great admiral you have to actually engage in naval combat. This means that those with a "tradition" of using their fleets will have an advantage through GA generation.

I don't see any need for change. I think the GA is fine for what it does.

 

[Seek]

What about removing the Golden Age ability from all GPs? It would strengthen the dilemma between their respective TIs and abilities nicely I think.

 

[GenjiKhan]

@Seek

Are you suggesting to replace the special ability of GAs with "Great Works"(considering it's a change from G&K to GEM)?

 

[Seek]

@Seek

Are you suggesting to replace the special ability of GAs with "Great Works"(considering it's a change from G&K to GEM)?

I'm not sure what you mean here, but AFAIK Thal is planning on reintroducing the Great Works modcomp into GEM. (He said as much earlier in the thread.)

 

[Zaldron]

I'm not sure what you mean here, but AFAIK Thal is planning on reintroducing the Great Works modcomp into GEM. (He said as much earlier in the thread.)

He's also going to allow all non-generals to pop GAs. Are you suggesting that the *only* way to get a GA is through GA points and each great person has a unique special ability?