(LOCKED) Going for Gold: Specialists

[Stalker0]

Going for Gold: These threads are designed to lock down elements of the mod for the gold release. In other words, if approved, no further changes are expected for this item.

This thread will the bonuses and costs of the various specialists. The great person benefit is covered in another thread.

The question is: Is this item in a reasonable state of balance?

Important Notes:

1) There is no such thing as perfect balance.
2) The key is that each element is strong enough to have a niche, even if that niche is for very specific playstyles.
3) If you vote no in the poll, please comment on the elements you think are in an unreasonable state of balance.
4) If you vote yes, there is really no need to comment. The poll is the key note.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Merchant specialists are weaker than the rest I'd say, but I still vote yes. Engies too.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Past early game, I feel like engineers are a little inferior to the others, since they do not help against unhappiness.
(Well, technically, they do give hammers that speed up buildings, which help for unhappiness, but except for low population cities, the speed up will usually not worth it)
Changes to the happiness system will certainly influence this balance, so I will not vote yet.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Merchant specialists are weaker than the rest I'd say, but I still vote yes.

Well, they do fight poverty, so I end up working quite a lot of them. But yes, I only work them if it reduce poverty (or in early game if I lack of money)

 

[Mad Madigan]

I find Scientists, Merchants, and Guild Specialists to all be useful for fighting poverty by balancing against whatever a specific city lacks in yields, but I pretty much never work Engineers save for in my Capital. Production is always useful, but for most of the game its better to have a civilian work at a mine or quarry than it is for that same civilian to work as an Engineer. Great Engineers are extremely useful, but I feel that I can get enough through my Capital, Wonders, and Policies such that I never need to spawn them via any of my non-Capital cities. The only exception is probably 1-2 tile island cities that I settle in the Renaissance to capture a few more luxuries, coal, aluminum, or oil. These cities don't have enough production tiles to work so once they grow to about 10-12 pop I'll lock in their Engineer specialists to give them extra production. For land-locked or normal coastal cities I rarely ever need that extra production.

 

[pineappledan]

I find Scientists, Merchants, and Guild Specialists to all be useful for fighting poverty by balancing against whatever a specific city lacks in yields, but I pretty much never work Engineers save for in my Capital. Production is always useful, but for most of the game its better to have a civilian work at a mine or quarry than it is for that same civilian to work as an Engineer. Great Engineers are extremely useful, but I feel that I can get enough through my Capital, Wonders, and Policies such that I never need to spawn them via any of my non-Capital cities. The only exception is probably 1-2 tile island cities that I settle in the Renaissance to capture a few more luxuries, coal, aluminum, or oil. These cities don't have enough production tiles to work so once they grow to about 10-12 pop I'll lock in their Engineer specialists to give them extra production. For land-locked or normal coastal cities I rarely ever need that extra production.

This makes me happy to hear for my upcoming Khmer empire VP port. Didn't realize people felt this way about GEngineers

 

[Chandler]

Hm... I don't have anything against engineers. However, if the problem is they don't give anything to fight the unhappiness... I don't know if this is possible or not, but what if every engineer slot worked reduced the needs of every yield (crime, poverty, literacy, followers...) by a certain %? As if they provided a little bit of everything with their production.

 

[Paramecium]

Why do the engineers need to reduce unhappiness? You work them for extra and for GE . Thats it. Depending on your policy choices and your cities with their land, you can decide to work an mine or the engineer slot, depending on what you want. And manufactories can be very awesome tiles, in one of my last games I just realized that one of it can give more than 20 (not sure about the number), which is sth to reconsider.

 

[Stalker0]

I find Scientists, Merchants, and Guild Specialists to all be useful for fighting poverty by balancing against whatever a specific city lacks in yields, but I pretty much never work Engineers save for in my Capital. Production is always useful, but for most of the game its better to have a civilian work at a mine or quarry than it is for that same civilian to work as an Engineer. Great Engineers are extremely useful, but I feel that I can get enough through my Capital, Wonders, and Policies such that I never need to spawn them via any of my non-Capital cities. The only exception is probably 1-2 tile island cities that I settle in the Renaissance to capture a few more luxuries, coal, aluminum, or oil. These cities don't have enough production tiles to work so once they grow to about 10-12 pop I'll lock in their Engineer specialists to give them extra production. For land-locked or normal coastal cities I rarely ever need that extra production.

So you find the engineer to be a more niche specialist but still find them of use in those niches.

Sounds balanced to me!

 

[peterw1987]

engineer useful early game.
civil servant,scientist and guild specialist useful throughout entire game.
I only work merchant to reset WLTKD.

 

[documental]

The Great Merchant is the weakest great person to work due to amount of gold it gives and because gold 1:1 is the weakest yield. Is this in any way offset by having a stronger improvement? By my count assuming you have the proper conditions it'll give you 6 Food, 12 Gold, and 4 Production. Not including beliefs/policies/wonders. This is no doubt useful in any city but does require specific placement. The Customs House starts out strong and gets a huge boost in industrial. WLTKD is a pretty weak bonus unless you can get the beliefs associated with it.

Like others have said, engineer is really only useful early game or in low production cities. It doesn't scale as well as the others and it's mostly only associated with one yield; production. Between it's specialist, improvement, and ability. Production is great don't get me wrong, and it'll always be useful for wonder rushing or kicking off new cities, but towns, citadels, and holy sites (can) also give production. A city generally only needs enough production to build up it's infrastructure. The more gold you make the less production you need and production cannot instantly buy units or upgrade them. It also doesn't help that you are strongly encouraged to build all your land units/wonders in one city. So you generally only need 2-3 cities with lots of production. Side note: Heroic Epic isn't very satisfying to play with.

So... random idea's
Merchant Specialist; switch out the gold for culture on caravansary or +1 culture at flight and/or 4 gold as base.
WLTKD; decouple some of its power from it's belief/policies and give it +10% production/gold, nerf China
Enginer Specialist/Improvement; I don't really know. How about some faith?

 

[Paramecium]

Seriously, I wouldnt say that engineers are that niche. It might be for the other ancient social policy branches, but for tradition they are quite important. I would even say, that you should at least work your engineers in that manner, that you have at least one manufactory per city. Place them over stone, iron or any other ressource which's improvement isnt improved by your social policy choices, and you get an awesome tile, especially with tradition and historical landmarks, it will be a tile which pays it food costs itself or even more and it gives Tradition a big chunk of it very needed production.

Sure, I agree that you wont work the engineer slots the whole game if you cant afford them. But there are enough situations where you want to have as much production as possible and having some slots available is important. Especially because as tradition you wont probably found your cities in the middle of a hill range, at least not every city.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Merchant Specialist; switch out the gold for culture on caravansary or +1 culture at flight and/or 4 gold as base.

Giving to specialist yield other than their main yield was tried at some point, but was reversed.
(All the specialist started to look the same, it was more complex, and some specialist ended up worked only for their non-main yields...)
So I'm not really a fan of adding culture to the merchant.

 

[CppMaster]

How about increasing gold yields from Merchants?

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I agree, merchants and engineers could get some love. Simply trading 3 food for 3 hammer, while you also could spend 2 food for a normal citizen and get 4 hammer by a mine on hill with a forge looks sad. Even more sad is the merchant. In early game, you need 2 gold to buy one hammer for buildings, so gaining hammers is double as efficient as gaining gold.
This leads to the 3 options:
Citizen= 2 food for 4 hammer .... engineer 3 food for 3 hammer ..... merchant= 3 food for 1.5 hammer.
The nerf to specialists was good, but it went too far: Less flat food from buildings to feed the specialists, 1 more base food needed for specialists, increased unhappiness from specialists, strongly tuned down their yields.
After cities dont have that much flat food available and growing fast is a killer to unhappiness, could we go back to 2 base food for specialists or atleast increase the yields for merchant and maybe engineer?

 

[Mad Madigan]

I don't think Specialists should lose their base 3 food cost, but I would like to see Engineers and Merchants output more yields to better justify the opportunity cost. Merchants often end up getting worked some in my early game just because I tend to unlock and build Markets before Libraries or Forges, but once that Scientist slot becomes available I always drop the Merchant specialist save for in cities with lots of food and production but no other sources of gold (usually land-locked cities with no gold-producing luxuries to work). Poverty is a very common source of Unhappiness, but the 3 offered by a Merchant isn't worth the 3 to feed them in most cities, and later in the game gold scales such that it's usually never a good trade to 1-for-1 food for gold.

 

[Gazebo]

Not planning on touching specialist values. Too much knock-on for other things. Besides, you are all missing the fact that the trade-off isn't just tile yield:specialist yield, it's tile yield:specialist yield+GP

G

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Not planning on touching specialist values. Too much knock-on for other things. Besides, you are all missing the fact that the trade-off isn't just tile yield:specialist yield, it's tile yield:specialist yield+GP

G

But you're incorrect, it's tile yields:specialist yield+GP-unhappiness.

 

[Gazebo]

But you're incorrect, it's tile yields:specialist yield+GP-unhappiness.

Fine. Still doesn’t negate my point that it’s not a yield:yield trade. Engineers for example get you wonders worth thousands of production, and merchants get you wltkd, gold, and poverty reduction.

G

 

[Moi Magnus]

Fine. Still doesn’t negate my point that it’s not a yield:yield trade. Engineers for example get you wonders worth thousands of production, and merchants get you wltkd, gold, and poverty reduction.
G

Engineers are fine in early game. They just lose some power in end game because:
+ They produce unhappiness and do not help dirrectly to fight unhappiness.
+ The number of GPP needed for the next great engineer is quite high.

I'm fine with current merchant. They are a little less powerful than the others specialist, but it is acceptable.