So while the polls for GPs are still going on, we are already seeing a clear and decisive result for Great Merchants. Its clear the community thinks both the Town and Bulb could use some help. This thread is to try and finalize some ideas for them.
Towns
A number of ideas have surfaced in regards to the Town. A summary below.
Basic
Bulb
So my general thoughts. I like the idea the +1 all yields idea, I think its a strong way to get the towns back in favor, but also gives them a cool niche. Its the "everyman's GPTI", giving you a little bit of everything, which I think is a neat niche and is fitting for the flavor of a town. I think even with that though, you will still need food and gold scaling throughout the game.
While I really like the franchise ideas (a lot), I am worried about the balance there, as corporations are already really good and not guaranteed. So building a lot of towns only to see your one corporation sniped from you would feel horrible to a player.
You could argue that the +1 pop concept is "hoardable" meaning that a player could wait until late game in order to push the pop of their capital to maximum heights....but quite frankly I think that would be a worse strategy than just getting your pop up as quickly as you could. The issue here would be assigning what city gets the bump, you could just say its always the capital (which considering happiness issues is probably the smart play, as its the less likely to go into a happiness deficit when it grows). So with those notes, I think its another solid concept.
For the adjacent tiles, I think we should either go that route and drop the road/railroad bonus, or not go adjacent tiles. I don't like the idea of serving two masters, both are fun "puzzles", but having to consider both is just too restrictive to my tastes.
On the bulb side, I would suggest focusing the scaling on gold. While the WLTKD scaling is nice, I mean its the gold specialist, it feels like it should just be giving you more of the big G.
UPDATE: Town/Manufactory/Academy Bonuses
Its good to have a current summary of what the town gets for discussion.
Towns
A number of ideas have surfaced in regards to the Town. A summary below.
Basic
- More base yields: A simple but solid increase to their food, hammer, and gold bonuses.
- More base yields + new yields: Some like the idea of adding in culture to better mimic villages. Or we could go with a simple +1 to all yields (Food/Hammer/Gold/Culture/Science/Faith/GAP/tourism?), as Towns seem to represent the most "general" of the GPTIs.
- Better scaling: Increase their yields over time either through tech, through the Stock Exchange, or through their road/railroad bonus.
- Add +1 pop to the city when a town is founded.
- Towns provide a virtual franchise, or some mechanism where you could gain a free franchise in an opponent city, perhaps using the current algorithm that assigns franchises in a random city when you hit that 5% random chance.
- Towns provide a bonus to adjacent tiles.
Bulb
- Stronger Scaling: More gold especially.
- More universal WLTKD: Instead of +1 to its WLTKD bulb, +1 turn to all sources of WLTKD.
So my general thoughts. I like the idea the +1 all yields idea, I think its a strong way to get the towns back in favor, but also gives them a cool niche. Its the "everyman's GPTI", giving you a little bit of everything, which I think is a neat niche and is fitting for the flavor of a town. I think even with that though, you will still need food and gold scaling throughout the game.
While I really like the franchise ideas (a lot), I am worried about the balance there, as corporations are already really good and not guaranteed. So building a lot of towns only to see your one corporation sniped from you would feel horrible to a player.
You could argue that the +1 pop concept is "hoardable" meaning that a player could wait until late game in order to push the pop of their capital to maximum heights....but quite frankly I think that would be a worse strategy than just getting your pop up as quickly as you could. The issue here would be assigning what city gets the bump, you could just say its always the capital (which considering happiness issues is probably the smart play, as its the less likely to go into a happiness deficit when it grows). So with those notes, I think its another solid concept.
For the adjacent tiles, I think we should either go that route and drop the road/railroad bonus, or not go adjacent tiles. I don't like the idea of serving two masters, both are fun "puzzles", but having to consider both is just too restrictive to my tastes.
On the bulb side, I would suggest focusing the scaling on gold. While the WLTKD scaling is nice, I mean its the gold specialist, it feels like it should just be giving you more of the big G.
UPDATE: Town/Manufactory/Academy Bonuses
Its good to have a current summary of what the town gets for discussion.
Spoiler :
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I think the culture makes sense, as you said a lot of people see the Town as the big brother of the village (because in real life...that's what they are). So perhaps a +1 culture to its base yield just to round it off a bit, and then scale up the food and gold more.
I tend to focus on yields I really want so if the Town does end up having +1 to all yields, 8 times out of 10 I'd probably still prefer working Holy sites, Academies and Manufactories rather than "a little bit of everything"
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