Going for Gold: Resource / Monopoly Bonuses

[ElliotS]

How is Pangaea balanced for naval focused civs like Polynesia? Are those civs supposed to be disabled?

Naval combat is generally pretty useful on Pangea.

 

[CppMaster]

Do you mean default Pangaea with standard level of water? Awesome! I like Pangaea more, because all civs have better interactions, but I mostly played Communitas, because I thought it's more balanced.

 

[Moi Magnus]

https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopuli/comments/9j8054/balance_perfume_seems_identical_to_cotton_but/

It seems that with the recent Perfume nerf, it is now strictly inferior to Cotton.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I think faith monopolies are too strong, too early-game warping. If someone gets a faith monopoly, then he'll usually be by far the first to found, enhance (usually by taking the increased pressure enhancer, making it even more spread) and reform, and the first to really spread far and wide. That's been my consistent observation in the last several patches. Has anyone else noticed this? And if so, are you bothered by this?

 

[TwoPodRay]

I was looking at the monopoly required for each corporation and saw Perfume was listed under Hexxon Refinery (military production and strategic resources). Wouldn’t that be more appropriate under Giorgio Armeier (culture)?

Plus, Giorgio Armeier only has 5 possible monopolies while Hexxon has 7.

 

[CrabHelmet]

There are still two out-standing problems with Resources. They are: things which require Plantations and fall on Forest tiles, and Sugar on Marsh tiles. A significant proportion of Resources can be improved with a single tech - (Mining), (Trapping). Some require only two - (Trapping, Fishing). Some require three - (Pottery, Wheel, Plantations), or (Mining, Animal Husbandry, Construction). Now, it has been argued before that the latter are pretty poor, since you have to delay Pottery, but @CrazyG argued they are within the bounds of acceptability - I'm not sure I agree, but I don't want to repeat old ground. So consider how bad e.g. Dye on Forest is - you have to go (Pottery, Wheel, Calendar, Mining, Bronze Working). Not only is that two more techs than the next worse, it doesn't even go via Animal Husbandry, which means you can't get Military Theory until your 7th Tech. Even worse, you likely can't use Chariots after tech 6 since the whole reason you've done this is that you are in Forested terrain. This is absolutely ruinous.

Potential solutions I have considered:

• Moving Chopping Forests to Mining. Now 4 techs are required, but it goes via Pottery, which in my view makes this no worse than Resources requiring Quarries. Bronze-Working is now rather empty, though.
• Moving Chopping Forests to Plantations. Now only 3 techs are required, and there's a pleasing consistency in that Jungle and Forest Plantations are equivalent - even with Chopping Forests on Mining, Jungle luxuries are better than Forest, which seems counter-intuitive. Bronze-Working is now rather empty, though.
• Moving Plantations to The Wheel. In my view, The Wheel is only really important because you need it to reach Military Theory. Chariots are still so-so (and require Animal Husbandry in any event), and Councils are non-essential early on - normal build order goes Shrine, Monument, Settler, Worker, or for Authority/Progress, occasionally Shrine, Monument, (Military Units). You don't get to the point you can build Councils until quite late, which means The Wheel is often delayed. Consequently, moving Plantations here could potentially rebalance the tech tree. This does mean that Plains/Grasslands Plantations are available after a single tech, but then, that's already true for Mining and Trapping, both of which are useful techs in other respects anyway.

My favourite is the last of these.

 

[Owlbebach]

There are still two out-standing problems with Resources. They are: things which require Plantations and fall on Forest tiles, and Sugar on Marsh tiles.

I have to say i've never ever seen Sugar on March. I've seen it on screens but not a single time in my games.

Other then that i think they are not so bad. First of all they usually have strong monopolies that help you early on (like +2 science/culture), second forested tiles are just better overall. Starting on Cocoa or Citrus in Forest is VERY good because you have exceptionally good tiles right away.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Sugar on Marsh is rare with the normal map generator because there's not normally enough nearby Marsh tiles to spawn 8 copies of it. It does sometimes happen though, and I just reroll and pretend it never happened.

 

[Bromar1]

I think faith monopolies are too strong, too early-game warping. If someone gets a faith monopoly, then he'll usually be by far the first to found, enhance (usually by taking the increased pressure enhancer, making it even more spread) and reform, and the first to really spread far and wide. That's been my consistent observation in the last several patches. Has anyone else noticed this? And if so, are you bothered by this?

I will say that whenever I spawn near faith Monopoly luxuries, I tend to go for greedier low-faith pantheons. I remember one game I went God of all Creation on a tobacco start and was able to found second religion

 

[randomnub]

Random bump to address Parfume sad state. Fwiw I didn't mind Arena +2 on it, and Cotton could switch to a more production-oriented lux to differentiate the two?

 

[pineappledan]

Agreed, perfume is harsh right now...

 

[randomnub]

I made a nub-friendly sheet to keep track of resource yields and make sure I'm not missing anything when deeming a resource as 'lacking' or just crap, before changing it for my own games.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w67kNW9eJ9gYSIy50s-czcGneCA-5qkQqjPSTGCkhLI/edit?usp=sharing

I think resources are in a reasonable state of balance, with only a few outliers but some also suffer from too much homogenization.

Cotton and Parfume are still pretty much the same thing. The former is plain better until you consider Caravanserary comes half an era after Arenas and is a more circumstantial building: it is not a terrible one though, it's usually worth 2-3G for 200P and if it's a matter of building it only in the 3-4 cities working Cotton, the first ones you built and those that are usually working merchants and sending trade routes. After 100 turns in which you got a little more early gold from the improved cotton tiles, and some more culture from earlier arenas, the two resources tend to average (cotton has +1G/P, what you gain from it is comparable to the investment/production into the caravanseraries you would have skipped when spawning on parfume).

Sugar and Olives end with exactly the same yields. Given the choice, I'd start on Sugar on most games (exception if I'm an Iron Age warmonger), that usually spawns on stronger forest tiles: I'd be building markets before improving the base tiles to not lose worker turns and flat hammers until I have enough workers and resources to claim the monopoly.

Both cases of homogeneizations could be quickly fixed by swapping monopoly bonuses around, or changing a bit the boring food/gold/culture yields.

About that, culture is a bit inflated imo. The comparison with the other two strong yields (faith/science) is one-sided: 19 out of 29 monopoly resources sport culture as bonus yield (11 with just the worker improvement) against 3 science resources and 5 faith ones (with 3 of those also granting culture). If you think science and faith stand a tier above culture (debateable) then I'd like to point out citrus and cocoa similar # yields, or Coral vs Pearls situation (where the net difference before monopoly is 11 vs 1, or 12 vs 11after, Coral is a bit nuts even assuming those tiles are worth the same).

Generally speaking I'm all for having multiple good or even 'OP' luxuries that change my early game strategy rather that having all bland options: point of fact, dyes, jade, furs and gold recently lost their base culture (because culture from turn 1 was too good) but incense and lapis kept it, and we have no T1 science or faith luxuries, that'd be damn good but not any more OP than culture as long as the relevant monopoly isn't an early snowballing one - so no flat yields - or the relevant building is placed down in the tech tree.

Good candidates to receive a science/faith treatment (beside any of the culture-based resources) are two of the resources I deem lacking, coffee and amber. Coffee is plain weak, both early and end-game, and when you finally unlock groceries the base tile is not even worth working most of the time compared to specialists/GPI/villages. Being bland early and relying on a late building make for a weak resource even if the monopoly is alright (but then tea gives production much earlier, just to talk about the same category). I'd toy with yields and put some science on it because we all know coffee lets you study and work harder. Amber is hard to upgrade and the final tile is not spectacular either so you have to hope that 6 happiness swing is going to be worth something in the end. Temples give +1/ to all 3 their resources so I wouldn't mind some diversity here, and amber could be changed to +1 base, +2 with temple. I'd probably end switching some other culture resources (especially plantation ones) into science/faith, or give them the Tea treatment (specialist of one yield types), instead of most of them just being 'a bit of food plus a bit of production plus a lot of gold and a drop of culture'.


One last word: Ivory. Being too special is also a problem. This is by far the weakest point of this discussion but hey I'm against elephants in circuses!

Games with elephants are already special on their own: weak early civs can rely on a resource-free heavy unit, while warmongers add one nice toy to a mixed army. So far so good, the AI also demonstrated to use them efficiently. The resource itself though is the only one buffed by a circumstantial building and is buffed with a whopping +3. The fact Celidth Hall boosts them (when is the last time you spawned next to Ivory as Celts? I don't remember) is also a bit weird. I'd move the Ivory buff to Garden or Caravanserary, or tone it down and place it on Markets. As a side note, being able to train an unlimited amount of War Elephants out of a single Ivory source sounds wrong, I'm setting their MaxPlayerInstances to 3. Or make 1 per source of Ivory but that'd require new code probably.

 

[Owlbebach]

As a side note, being able to train an unlimited amount of War Elephants out of a single Ivory source sounds wrong, I'm setting their MaxPlayerInstances to 3. Or make 1 per source of Ivory but that'd require new code probably.

From production point of view Horsemen are still better than War Elephants...

Otherwise, beautiful and very thought out as always

 

[Stalker0]

From production point of view Horsemen are still better than War Elephants...

Otherwise, beautiful and very thought out as always

While technically true I still find War Elephants very strong in actually combat, especially if I have a strong production capital at that point in the game. I find it easier to get a to critical mass where no other army can really stop me.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

The most sad luxuries right now are those with +2/4 gold and those which appear on forests. Those on forests need 5 techs to get improved, and sometimes you lose 1 production to gain 2 gold after 11 turn of cutting wood and constructing a plantation (if herbalist is not build yet).
Early game 1 hammer is worth 2 gold. If I compare a tea Ressource with total of 4 hammer with one plantation which give 4 gold, I would say tea definitely wins.

Also, the yields gained by lately unlocked luxury buildings like the bank are too low in comparison to early one like stone works. A stonework constructed on turn 50 will maybe generate its additional yields over 350 more turns. While the bonuses from banks may work only half the time.
Additionally, the yields in early stages are much more worth than the same yields in later stages. Gaining one culture while your culture output is somewhere between 10 and 50 is much more than gaining three culture when your culture output is already over 1000.

 

[Bromar1]

Random bump to address Parfume sad state. Fwiw I didn't mind Arena +2 on it, and Cotton could switch to a more production-oriented lux to differentiate the two?

Perfume should get +1+1 on arenas to match the +1+1 that other plantation luxuries get from buildings (incense gets that from temple, dyes get the same from amphitheatre etc)

 

[phantomaxl1207]

Since England no longer has a UB Factory, Coal does not have a Building associated with it. Oil never had its any Building associated with it.

For reference, Research Labs give +4 Science to Aluminum and Uranium.

Possible candidates are Factory, plain and simple +X; the Refinery and make the +X global; or something else.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Since England no longer has a UB Factory, Coal does not have a Building associated with it. Oil never had its any Building associated with it.

For reference, Research Labs give +4 Science to Aluminum and Uranium.

Possible candidates are Factory, plain and simple +X; the Refinery and make the +X global; or something else.

So, +X yields to coal deposits from the factory
and
+X yields to each oil deposit from any Refinery

Sounds good.

 

[HungryForFood]

I agree, coal and oil should have a building bonus to be consistent. I think Factory is the best option here.

 

[Coffee Monopoly]

Meanwhile, Perfume is still a strictly worse knock-off of Cotton.