GEM: Technologies

[skodkim]

I like how health let us represent things from history that aren't possible with food alone. I miss that and city maintenance. It's harder to balance expansion in a fun way with happiness alone.

Quite agree. The health system perhaps wasn't perfect but it added flavor and I had fun that I had to take into account whether a new city could connect to a resource I didn't have alreadly (increased health).

To compensate for some of this I find that upscaling yields make it a little bit easier to make small tweaks.

\Skodkim

 

[mitsho]

I'd actually go further and say the food system is wrong. Population is not really about the available food, or if you want to do it that way, you need to find a way to represent the trade of food which isn't possible in the current system. So I'd scrap food, happiness, health and production and introduce things like a population (sustainment/growth)-work allocation (specialization) scale goes by tech available and a stability system including the happiness/health. Also, the building system in civ doesn't make much sense either...

On the current game, I'd say that higher numbers on culture are ok and I did like the Call to Power solution that basically just x10 all the numbers. Much more clear to look at, despite the additional zeros. (Another revolutionary idea would be to x10 the population numbers so that you have to have specialists and allocate them all over the place - would be a different game though).

 

[Ahriman]

I'll think about Combustion.

I'm glad they got rid of city-based growth limits (Civ4-style happiness and health). They created highly discontinuous benefit functions: providing additional health or happiness gave zero benefit over the cap, and excess happy or health in one city didn't affect any other cities, and so all cities were technologically constrained to be roughly the same size.

I like having the tradeoff of Tall/Wide, which just wasn't meaningful in the Civ4 economic model.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree about those details, but like the general concept of health, since disease and pollution are big parts of history. It's an odd thing to leave out in some form.

 

[skodkim]

I agree about those details, but like the general concept of health, since disease and pollution are big parts of history. It's an odd thing to leave out in some form.

Agreed - health (and pollution) has always been a major factor in society and it's really poorly reflected in CiV.

\Skodkim

 

[Stalker0]

GAs themselves aren't as useful either I find to generate.

I've noticed this too.

So far I find getting golden ages with artists to be superior to the other options. I still get a decent amount of the culture, but I also get lots more of everything else. Meanwhile the culture work just doesn't seem comparable to the scientist's bulb.

But I still also think GAs through GP is too strong, even moreso now that GGs and GAdmir give 8 turn GAs.

 

[Thalassicus]

G&K gave great person golden ages fixed length, unlike the gradually shortening version of vanilla, so it essentially buffed the golden option.

I suspect Great Improvements are the best option in the early game, because they offer a fixed bonus, while goldens are a percentage. Goldens get better in comparison as our empire grows. I intend both the improvement and golden options to be better than the instant option in average circumstances, since instant has the advantage of being... well... instant!

With that said, I'd be happy to buff the artist instant ability. Its present values are below. What do you think they should be?

Era | Culture
A|250
C|420
M|690
R|1210
I|2250
M|4170
A|7500

 

[Stalker0]

G&K gave great person golden ages fixed length, unlike the gradually shortening version of vanilla, so it essentially buffed the golden option.

I suspect Great Improvements are the best option in the early game, because they offer a fixed bonus, while goldens are a percentage. Goldens get better in comparison as our empire grows. I intend both the improvement and golden options to be better than the instant option in average circumstances, since instant has the advantage of being... well... instant!

With that said, I'd be happy to buff the artist instant ability. Its present values are below. What do you think they should be?

Era | Culture
A|250
C|420
M|690
R|1210
I|2250
M|4170
A|7500

Do you happen to have culture numbers to get each policy handy? That would help as a baseline.

Comparing to the GS, a bulb will normally get you a tech flat out, or maybe only require a turn or two. The flipside is that there are far more techs in the game, and not every tech you research increases science costs (you can pick up same cost techs or even cheaper techs).

Policies increase cost with everyone you grab, and there are fewer in the game. So I would say the culture bomb should not be as strong as the bulb (I shouldn't be able to get a policy straight up every time), but I think it should put in a good hit. Right now many times I will get 3-5 turns of culture out of a 18-20 turn policy, and that doesn't feel right.

 

[Ahriman]

Do you happen to have culture numbers to get each policy handy? That would help as a baseline.

And of course note how these base values are affected by # cities, with and without the Liberty policy.

I find that a great scientist contributes much more towards a tech than a great artist does towards a social policy, but there are many more techs in the game than there are social policies, and making cultural victory too easy is more of a risk, so that's not necessarily a problem. I agree that most of the time the culture output does feel a bit low.

Doubling culture output from GAs though does really encourage you to either make landmarks or horde until the late game. So a less steep gradient (with similar late-game levels) might be appropriate.

How does the GA culture output scaling compare to the great merchant or great scientist? Those don't double per era.

 

[Ahriman]

Combined arms feels like it gives too many things as well; fighter, bomber, airborne, tank marine. I think that is almost enough to justify two techs' airborne and marines and something could be a special forces tech, and fighters/bombers/tank could be combined arms?

 

[Stalker0]

Just to put the GA numbers in perspective.

In my recent game as persia, I was generating 1020 culture per turn as I just hit the Industrial Era (was going for a wide style culture victory to try it out, was doing pretty good but still didn't have all of my museums and even the hermitage out so I could have definately had more). At that point, one GA bomb is worth.....2 turns of culture. Not exactly awe inspiring

 

[Ahriman]

Part of the difficulty here is empire size though; a culture boost that is large for a wide empire is going to be huge for a Tall empire with very few cities. I think it's ok if great artists aren't very useful for Wide empires.

 

[mystikx21]

Actually they are useful for wide empires in that they can pop as a golden age versus the possibly useful missions of other GPs. Other than late game prophets and extra general/admirals, there's a higher cost for the others (large science or gold boosts, instant or near instant wonders, and even the GP improvements are useful).

 

[mitsho]

Especially since the Golden Age bonus applies to more cities than with a tall empire and you may specialize more cities (since you have more). It's a touchy subject to balance. Can we tie the amount to # of cities so to balance it somehow between wide and tall? I feel like a GA should give 1/2-3/4 of a policy.

 

[Ahriman]

Let me rephrase; it's ok if the culture bomb isn't very useful for wide empires.

 

[Thalassicus]

Golden ages used to clearly favor wide empires with fixed flat bonuses to gold/production, but now it's a national percent increase to all yields. I believe national percentages don't favor wide or tall empires (unlike city percentages), though I haven't analyzed it in detail.

The boosts to city growth, production, and culture help tall more than wide, particularly production, because world wonders can only be constructed with production. The gold boost helps wide empires more, and science obviously helps everyone.

 

[Ahriman]

I would say that wide empires still generally have larger production and gold amounts - they have to, because they face higher aggregate building production and maintenance costs because they have to duplicate structures across more cities, and they generally need a larger army to protect their territory.

Tall empires also usually have more other % modifiers already built (eg factories and universities in every city), so a further % boost is a small proportional benefit.

So I'd agree that golden ages are slightly more useful for wide empires than tall - and that's ok.

 

[Zaldron]

Honestly I think this is an issue of misperception. People see the boost from the mines in increasing build speed in the city, but they don't see the boost of gold from the trading posts, because it is diffuse, empire wide, and because they give a mix of yields, and people don't see the science boost. Mines weren't too strong.

If the design goal is for production and gold to be of equal value 1:1, then mines and villages need to give the same boost in yields.

My preference of course is to remove the science yield from villages, and have mines, mills and villages all give just production or gold in the same amount.

I actually happen to agree with pretty much this entire position. Mines were strong, but not so strong you always built them everywhere, especially after gold purchasing was made reasonable in cost (compared to expensive in G&K). I am definitely in favor of removing the science from villages.

 

[Stalker0]

I am definitely in favor of removing the science from villages.

I have actually come to like science from villages myself. Its a very strong bonus, but its competing against other very strong bonuses.

I also like them for coastal cities. Right now coastal cities get tons of food and gold, so mines are always a big priority. But with villages, I can also get science which I could not get otherwise so it still makes them useful.

Right now I really do blend the terrain improvements pretty well so I think they are roughly balanced. We will see if the mine nerf changes that but they still get a freshwater bonus so it might be enough.

 

[skodkim]

Thal

You wrote in a previous post that changes or buildings, wonders, etc. added after GEM was loaded would not be affected by the new AI priority system. Was that correct?

The reason I'm asking is bacause I've got a little modmod running after GEM. I've got two observations from here:

1: I've changed the Oligarcy Policy as I really did not like it. This now shows up with a new AI priority in the Policy screen. Should do that?
2: I've created a couple of new tile improvements. These show up without AI priorities, while standard Civ ones do. The latter didn't use to before though - did they? Will this matter for the AI?

Edit: No. 2 is perhaps related to this bug.

\Skodkim