Grand Opera is the worst policy card there is

[Pietato]

And Firaxis just nerfed it.

 

[criZp]

Yeah, culture buildings have inherently low culture and theaters don't have such easy sources of adjacency. Something that was not considered when designing that card.

 

[ShallowSeas]

And Firaxis just nerfed it.

Well, I suppose that sometimes the desire for symmetry overpowers reason. I agree that it would make sense to have more generous requirements given that the theatre square buildings function differently.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Yeah, culture buildings have inherently low culture and theaters don't have such easy sources of adjacency. Something that was not considered when designing that card.

Leaving wonders aside, placing a TS between two EC/WP districts from different cities creates an easy +5 adjacency (two times major adjacency plus another point for two neighbouring districts). Maybe pop-4 cities is one possible conclusion out of the recent amenity/EC/policy card changes, but building an EC or WP in many more cities is my personal approach to deal with the new rules. I may miss 100% efficiency this way, but I will retain my 100% fun with this playstyle at least

 

[Archon_Wing]

*cries in free market*

Commercial Hubs don't have much more adjacency other than rivers, and banks are really bad. They're balanced around not having an maintenance cost, and gold is sorta w/e. Maybe this card should affect harbors too.

Even Mali would probably think about those Holy Site cards instead.

 

[_iheartciv_]

After the august 2020 patch it is easy to get adjacency for Theater Squares . So i think they made the right choice treating grand opera like similar policies (rationalism , free market) .

 

[kaspergm]

I do agree it's become easier to get TS adjacency bonuses, so +4 is no longer *that* difficult, but I do feel overall the TS buildings - or maybe I should say, the Art Museum - needs a serious buff. The Art Museum struggles seriously both compared to the University and when compared to the Archeological Museum. Maybe the solution would be to make the bonus from Grand Opera also apply to the yields of Great Works of Art in the Theatre Square, and probably bump Art Museums to a flat +4 as well.

 

[Pietato]

After the august 2020 patch it is easy to get adjacency for Theater Squares . So i think they made the right choice treating grand opera like similar policies (rationalism , free market) .

Even if you have +4, the card is still rubbish.

*cries in free market*

Commercial Hubs don't have much more adjacency other than rivers, and banks are really bad. They're balanced around not having an maintenance cost, and gold is sorta w/e. Maybe this card should affect harbors too.

Even Mali would probably think about those Holy Site cards instead.

Free market also sucks, but in a different way. While Grand Opera gives rubbish yields, Free market fails because +4 Commercial Hubs are so rare.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Oh I also forgot to mention that Opera and Ballet is a leaf civic too so you may not even recover the culture from going to it without building Bolshoi.

 

[_iheartciv_]

Even if you have +4, the card is still rubbish.

Why is rubbish? If you get +4 adj and 15 pop you get +100% . Not rubbish at all. In my opinion it is still to easy to get +100% bonus with the advanced policies(grand opera ,rationalism, free market). I think +6 adj and 15 pop would be even better for those cards (to make the game more difficult) because +4 it's very easy to reach, you just need a +2 district and the basic adj bonus cards (Natural philosophy,Aesthetics, Town Charters) .

 

[Pietato]

Why is rubbish? If you get +4 adj and 15 pop you get +100% . Not rubbish at all. In my opinion it is still to easy to get +100% bonus with the advanced policies(grand opera ,rationalism, free market). I think +6 adj and 15 pop would be even better for those cards (to make the game more difficult) because +4 it's very easy to reach, you just need a +2 district and the basic adj bonus cards (Natural philosophy,Aesthetics, Town Charters) .

Because Theatre Square buildings have very low culture yields.

 

[The Highwayman]

I wouldn't say it's exclusively the worst since there are many unusable cards in the game. Perhaps it's now tied with all the other useless cards in the game. I liked the balance of 10 pop/+3 before and the mini game of getting a city to 10 pop asap. I am going to revisit my recent game saves and ask myself what it would've taken to get my cities from 10 to 15 pop. Then I'll ask myself why I am focusing on that instead of my win con.

 

[kryat]

Why is rubbish? If you get +4 adj and 15 pop you get +100% . Not rubbish at all. In my opinion it is still to easy to get +100% bonus with the advanced policies(grand opera ,rationalism, free market). I think +6 adj and 15 pop would be even better for those cards (to make the game more difficult) because +4 it's very easy to reach, you just need a +2 district and the basic adj bonus cards (Natural philosophy,Aesthetics, Town Charters) .

As far as I know, and I've heard it from others as well. The +4 adjacency requirement requires a natural adjacency, before the doubling cards. However, it is relatively easy for a TS to get to +4 these days because ECs count as +2. On the other hand, a large part of culture yields comes from the great works in the district, not from the buildings themselves. So in the end, even getting 100% of the bonus isn't as dramatic as it is for other districts.

 

[walkerjks]

Leaving wonders aside, placing a TS between two EC/WP districts from different cities creates an easy +5 adjacency (two times major adjacency plus another point for two neighbouring districts). Maybe pop-4 cities is one possible conclusion out of the recent amenity/EC/policy card changes, but building an EC or WP in many more cities is my personal approach to deal with the new rules. I may miss 100% efficiency this way, but I will retain my 100% fun with this playstyle at least

But getting 2 entertainment complexes is pretty late game (from a cultural victory perspective, at least) when the +50% adjacency on a handful of theater squares is pretty inconsequential anyway.

Never really used the card in it's previous form anyway. Definitely won't slot it now.

 

[Vargas1]

I wouldn't say it's exclusively the worst since there are many unusable cards in the game. Perhaps it's now tied with all the other useless cards in the game. I liked the balance of 10 pop/+3 before and the mini game of getting a city to 10 pop asap. I am going to revisit my recent game saves and ask myself what it would've taken to get my cities from 10 to 15 pop. Then I'll ask myself why I am focusing on that instead of my win con.

I like the change precisely because it removes what you've said - the "mini game of getting a city to 10 pop asap." The old version of the cards made it too easy to splash districts all over the place, try to chop each city to 10 pop, and insert eternal policy cards. Now, I think the cards will be more in line with what (in my view) policy cards should be - something you slot in under appropriate circumstances, but don't just set it and forget it. I like the idea that these particular cards may not be useful at all in certain games, or that in others it will take a long time for them to be worthwhile.

 

[_iheartciv_]

Because Theatre Square buildings have very low culture yields.

You should count the great works yields in the total . And remember that there are 77 techs and 61 civics so if the game mechanic gives you less culture than science is perfectly fine with the tech/civic trees ratio.

 

[Equilin]

You should count the great works yields in the total

The point here is to discuss the policy card, which only buffs building yields not GW yields, so not including GWs is correct.

 

[Pietato]

You should count the great works yields in the total . And remember that there are 77 techs and 61 civics so if the game mechanic gives you less culture than science is perfectly fine with the tech/civic trees ratio.

The card does not work on those.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I think Theaters and Commercial Hubs, while not THAT hard to get to 4+, are certainly a lot harder than other districts, so I would give them more adjacency opportunity as follows ("harder" meaning more expensive. HS's and Campuses just need mountains or something which you don't pay for. Theaters and Hubs need ECs or Harbors, which you have to pay for). Therefore I'd give them additional adjacency opportunities as follows:

Theater: +1 for being on a charming tile, +2 for breathtaking.
Commercial Hub: +1 for adjaceny bonus or luxury land resources (to match Harbor's +1 from fish and whales and such). None from strategics since industrial zones get them. Both Harbor and Commercial hub have an easy +2 opportunity (rivers and city centers) but only Harbor gets a lot easy +1s. To be fair, Commercials gets+2 from Harbors and not vice versa, but I think districts are so expensive that I almost never build both trading districts in the same city (except when playing societies with the owls). Do others do this?

 

[Smity2k1]

I think Theaters and Commercial Hubs, while not THAT hard to get to 4+, are certainly a lot harder than other districts, so I would give them more adjacency opportunity as follows ("harder" meaning more expensive. HS's and Campuses just need mountains or something which you don't pay for. Theaters and Hubs need ECs or Harbors, which you have to pay for). Therefore I'd give them additional adjacency opportunities as follows:

Theater: +1 for being on a charming tile, +2 for breathtaking.
Commercial Hub: +1 for adjaceny bonus or luxury land resources (to match Harbor's +1 from fish and whales and such). None from strategics since industrial zones get them. Both Harbor and Commercial hub have an easy +2 opportunity (rivers and city centers) but only Harbor gets a lot easy +1s. To be fair, Commercials gets+2 from Harbors and not vice versa, but I think districts are so expensive that I almost never build both trading districts in the same city (except when playing societies with the owls). Do others do this?

I like your adjacency idea. I pretty much default to city center/harbor/commercial triangles and, more recently, entertainment/theatre/+1 triangles but your solution would make it more map dependant.