GM and GE should get the scaling treatment like other GPs

[randomnub]

I always bulb them.

Unlike recently changed Great Scientists, granting you more science the more academies you planted, you don't get more gold/production if you planted some towns or manufactories. Even GA/GM/GW have been reworked so that the more great works you own, the more effective their bulbed abilities are.

On Standard Speed, Great Engineers formula on CPB is 150 base + 30*population, nerfed compared to Vanilla 300+30*pop but still A LOT of hammers, it's going to take many turns of working the manufactory improvement to get there, and the advantages of a rushed wonder are obvious.

Great Merchants gold from diplomatic missions has been boosted instead, but if that wasn't enough it gives 20 turns of WLTK to all cities. That's a lot of growth, with added synergies from buildings/beliefs/UAs granting more of everything. It's also a great convenience being able to reset the resource asked in order to trigger WLTK, when it's the only copy of a distant CS or of an AI hating you.

GP improvements don't scale that well the more you progress through the tech tree, and in any case hammers/money NOW are better than hammers/money later, due to snowballing factor and the fact you save a citizen slot as well. I'm not asking for more yields on manufactories and towns (well, maybe) but make the bulb scale for the last two GPs as well, something like 150 base + (20+5*#manufactories)*pop GE hammers and 10+5*#towns turns of WLTK for example. Less gold and some influence would be interesting as well.


Bonus pic of early Medieval, when I don't even care much about the WLTK growth (but the reset on those damned resources I don't even spot on the map is very welcome), I actually need some more gold in the capital to combat unhappiness and I have a nice spot for a town over a road, over which I'm going to move a trade route soon. Let see, how soon is that tile going to pay it off...

... I'm still going to bulb the GM.

 

[Deadstarre]

yeap. and 20 turns wtlk by itself wouldnt be so horrendous but for all those synergies you mention then easily become endless, permanent bonuses from the mid to late game.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I agree with regards to Great Engineers (perhaps a buff to mines around manufactories, or extra science if it's en route between cities&trade routes (analogous to production&towns). In the early stages, however, I find towns quite useful (especially with +3 production from routes), so they're not, imho, in such a dire need for buffing.

 

[Chandler]

Perhaps we shouldn't buff the improvements, but nerf the bulbing? The thing, though, is... manufactories don't give anything you can't find in many other tiles around the map, such as quarries or mines with different resources. Yes, the benefits of an early tile with huge production are obvious. But you have to work that tile. And the yields it provides become less impressive the more you advance. If you bulb them, you don't have to work anything. Insta-wonder, and that's it.

I like the idea of buffing tiles around manufactories, or buffing manufactories for every tile around it, if it could be easily codeable. Maybe 1 for every quarry, 1 for every lumbermill, and 1 or for every mine. You could easily tweak the yields of the basic manufactory if it would be too strong, though in best case scenario it'd be +6 yields, and you'd have to improve those tiles before.

Either way, I totally agree with the statement of increasing the bulb bonus depending on the number of towns/manufactories you have constructed. I don't understand why it's not like that already.

 

[ElliotS]

Part of the problem is that manufacturies are just awful. Towns are fine but manufacturies scale very poorly into the mid to late game. Academies end with like 8-10 more yields. It's crazy.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Well, we have the code for polders that gives adjacent villages extra gold, so perhaps that could be a starting point for the code (where we'd change "polders" to "manufactories", "villages" to "mines, quarries,...", and "extra gold" to extra whatever...). Not sure, though, how hard it would be to adjust the polder code for manufactories.

Alternatively we could give more buffs to manufactories in the mid/late game (perhaps add something like +2 culture to manufactories with 2 or 3 mid/(early)late techs), to bring it more on par with academies.

And/or we could nerf everythings else (academies, bulbing great scientist/engineers/merchants),...) to bring them down on par with manufactories to avoid Buff_Inflation.

 

[tu_79]

Well, OP idea isn't bad. We are assuming that a Manufactory is going to be worked, so the city production is overall higher. This makes the next GE bulbing stronger, as the production from the recent turns is high. But if the Manufactory doesn't get worked, it's wasted. Next GE won't be stronger.
OP proposed having GE scale based on the number of Manufactories planted, independently of them being worked. The other way is to let Manufactories be so wonderful that you wouldn't want to stop working on them. Well, as long as any GPTI is going to give the same yields, or even slightly less, than a specialist, they are going to be abandoned.

If you want to avoid power inflation, you need to start with specialists. Modern societies have like 20% of their working people in the first sector (represented by working the tiles), so a city with 40 people should have at least 8 worked tiles. And that's for a well developed country in its most modern cities.

 

[CrazyG]

I would consider a manufactory if it gave something like +20% to future great engineers, though 20% might be a little bit high.

I find 20 days of WLTKD a litte bit too long, its not hard to get infinite WLTKD after a certain point. It could be like 10 turns plus 2 more per town you have. The gold amount should go up too, its dumb that I bulb a great person in what is supposed to a historic event for only half of the gold required to buy one unit

 

[Infixo]

Manufactory, however strong it would be, will always go against wonder speed-up. It has to offer something to balance that.
I would:

• Make manufactory have a capability to increase production in city while building Wonders by +10%.
• Add to one of Industry policies +5% production in city for each Manufactory and one of Order tenets similar effect.
• For each adjacent resource, depending on its type, +1 or +2 of yield related to that resource - that would account for the fact that you can process various resources to produce various goods. Gold/silver/diamonds would give Gold, metals production, uranium/alu could give science, some luxes maybe culture, etc.
• 1 or 2 techs to increase yields in late game is a good idea too.

 

[Stalker0]

Personally it would take a lot to get me to stop bulbing GMs. The gold is great, the WLTKD is awesome (especially because their are so many bonuses for that). Towns are nice, the bulb is just plain nicer.

 

[tu_79]

Manufactory, however strong it would be, will always go against wonder speed-up. It has to offer something to balance that.
I would:

• Make manufactory have a capability to increase production in city while building Wonders by +10%.
• Add to one of Industry policies +5% production in city for each Manufactory and one of Order tenets similar effect.
• For each adjacent resource, depending on its type, +1 or +2 of yield related to that resource - that would account for the fact that you can process various resources to produce various goods. Gold/silver/diamonds would give Gold, metals production, uranium/alu could give science, some luxes maybe culture, etc.
• 1 or 2 techs to increase yields in late game is a good idea too.

You forget that great engineers use your city production as base, so bulbing a great engineer in a city with worked manufactories will yield more hammers. So, you are actually saving some great engineers if you use manufactories.

 

[Chandler]

I'd say the difference in the hammers that'd provide a manufactory and a late mine or quarry is negligible.

I remember a game where I was way ahead of everyone by the Renaissance Era, and I let myself experiment a little once GE started not being able to "one-turn" wonders by bulbing them. I used the following two GE to create manufactories, and assigned citizens to them. When the third one came, I tried using it to bulb another wonder, and the two manufactories made no difference there. It was just disappointing.

 

[Infixo]

You forget that great engineers use your city production as base, so bulbing a great engineer in a city with worked manufactories will yield more hammers. So, you are actually saving some great engineers if you use manufactories.

I know. Early-game you don’t have them. Mid-game your wonder-city should be doing 80+ production, 5-7 from manufactury is more or less 10%. But then I’d rather just send 1 internal TR with 10 prod. Late-game cities make 300+ production easily. And this when manufactury is useless. Knowing all that - I never build them. Literally, never.
It has to scale to late game somehow to be in par with whatever cities are getting from buildings that provide +x% to production.

 

[CrazyG]

You forget that great engineers use your city production as base, so bulbing a great engineer in a city with worked manufactories will yield more hammers. So, you are actually saving some great engineers if you use manufactories.

This isn't how great engineers work. They give you hammers per population, the formula is something like 150 + 30 per population

Manufactories do boost total GE yield by some amount (I think its like 10% per manufactory), which is nice but its really hard to pass up a wonder in the early game

 

[tu_79]

This isn't how great engineers work. They give you hammers per population, the formula is something like 150 + 30 per population

Manufactories do boost total GE yield by some amount (I think its like 10% per manufactory), which is nice but its really hard to pass up a wonder in the early game

Right, it was changed not too long ago. My bad.

 

[lunker]

Some civs don't care about wonders and could go out of control with a manufactory buff. I think we should be careful if we decide to rebalance this.

 

[CrazyG]

Some civs don't care about wonders and could go out of control with a manufactory buff. I think we should be careful if we decide to rebalance this.

Can you provide an example? There is a pretty wide variety of wonders out there. Currently I'll use a great engineer on something like an Arena before a manufactory.

 

[lunker]

Can you provide an example? There is a pretty wide variety of wonders out there. Currently I'll use a great engineer on something like an Arena before a manufactory.

Civs that want to warmonger with their unique unit around classical-medieval. I was under the impression that the warmonger mindset doesn't care about wonders since they can just take them.

The thing is the ability to get an instant wonder is so strong, that an equivalent manufactory would have to have a bonkers amount of hammers. That would be too strong for civs who want to just pump things out of their capital and snowball.

Rome in particular could benefit from the hammers to build every building in the capital.

 

[CrazyG]

Civs that want to warmonger with their unique unit around classical-medieval. I was under the impression that the warmonger mindset doesn't care about wonders since they can just take them.

That Terracotta Army though............
Build wonder's who effect is immediate and thus not very useful to conquer, such Oracle or Hagia Sophia.

Other options include Great Wall (so you don't have to deal with someone else building it). Angkor Wat is really good if you have Authority. Is it better if you get to conquer it? I guess, but you aren't guaranteed to conquer it

 

[IcyAngel]

That Terracotta Army though............
Build wonder's who effect is immediate and thus not very useful to conquer, such Oracle or Hagia Sophia.

Other options include Great Wall (so you don't have to deal with someone else building it). Angkor Wat is really good if you have Authority. Is it better if you get to conquer it? I guess, but you aren't guaranteed to conquer it

Ye man of little faith.