[GS] GS, Resources & Power: how FXS almost got it right

[acluewithout]

Let's talk about resources and power.

There's lots that's good about the new resources and power mechanics. Lots and lots. Overall, resources and power are a "shot in the arm" that Civ really needed. But there are also a bunch of design decisions which I just don't get. I wanted to chat about the good and the questionable, and get people’s thoughts on the mechanics as well.

The Good Stuff

The original strategic resources system worked really well. No, not hugely realistic, and it made upgrading units both trivial and way too powerful. But it was simple, intuitive and worked.

New system is much better though. Having resources as a consumble resource doesn't create too much micro. And in return, trade makes more sense (you don't give up your ability to build horsemen for 30 turns just by selling one horse resource), there is now a break on spamming units and there is the potential for tough choices between units and powering cities. The cap on how much resources you can hold is also clever – it limits micro, creates an intuitive way for players to “improve” their resource focus, and encourages more resource trading.

From my play throughs, the resource rules do slow down your ability to pump out high damage units. So, either you need to attack with less units or delay your attack. The rules also make ranged more powerful again, because they have good damage output and don’t need resources. I’m not sure I really like that specific change, but I’m happy to wait and see.

There’s also little quirks to the system that I really love. I particularly like how faith doesn't depend on power – religious buildings are the only Tier 3 buildings that aren’t boosted by power. So, religion really is power of the people. I also like how encampments have become just slightly more useful (… amazing that forts don’t slightly increase resource capacity too…). I love how the game shifts gears from just requiring a resource to build a unit in the early game, to requiring continuous consumption late game as your military gets more advanced, creating a satisfying feeling of an infection point. I love how resources make Military Cards more important.

And yeah, I like that Infantry now require Oil. Come at me bro.

… but there’s stuff that really doesn't make sense

Why are resources and power so optional?

Why are the resource and power systems so… optional? Basically, if you don’t build Factories or Tier 3 Buildings, and you don’t worry about having many units… then you don’t really need to worry about resources or power at all. And if you’re playing fast, then you really don’t need to worry about them at all. Part of the problem is that Tier 3 buildings still just aren’t that powerful, so it’s hardly a requirement to build them let alone build and power them. But even so, the mechanics are just way too optional.

Modern cities have huge power demands, and indeed power is one of the key bottle necks for a society to develop. Gathering Storm treats resources and power as things that buff your empire, but it doesn’t treat them as something that’s required by your empire. As a result, Gathering Storm just misses out on a huge level of strategic play and tension.

See, if your empire really required resources and power at some point around the Industrial era, then when you hit the Industrial Era you’d face these huge demands from your cities to power them. You’d have to really plan for it ahead of time, or if you failed to, then you’d have to work really hard to keep your empire together and keep it going. This would also be a natural, and very subtle, nerf to fast science / culture and infinite city spam – if you’re racing through the tech tree and or have a wide empire, well you’ll be fine early on (actually really strong) – but then when you hit the Industrial Era, you’d have a real problem on your hands.

I promise this is not an ideas and suggestion thread. And so I’m going to avoid making any detailed suggestions here. But just to illustrate my point, why don’t Cities have e.g. a minimum power requirement or use up x oil per turn once you research (say) electricity? Or even, why doesn’t the Space District have a power requirement? Seriously?? You can colonise Mars but don’t need Power Plants to do that?

I think this comes back to, again, FXS’s unwillingness to punish players. But FXS need to get past this at least a little. The game needs to put the player under pressure at some point. The AI Players, Barbarians and now Natural Disasters can only add so much challenge. Power seems like a good place for FXS to bring in a little bit of empire / economic management. But, so far, they’re unwilling to do that.

IZ, Workshop and Factory are still too weak; so are Tier 3 Buildings

The new power mechanics have made the IZ more interesting overall. But FXS, let’s get real. The IZ, the Workshop and the Factory are still just massively underpowered.

The problem with the IZ specifically is that its typical yield range is just a smidge too low to justify building. Most IZs are around 3 – 5 hammers. That’s really not much better than a mine. The IZ needs to be at least around 4 – 7 on average to be worth building. There are lots of suggestions on how to do that – I think maybe allowing an extra +1 adjacency for a strategic resource would fix the problem (so, Horses would give +1 and an Iron Mine would give +2, +1 for the resource and +1 for the mine) – but I don’t care how it’s done. Just make the IZs good.

The Workshop and Factory (even when powered) also just don’t cut it. I’m not sure how the Workshop should be fixed – it maybe needs more hammers, or perhaps just provide some other buff (housing?). But Factories are easy fixed – just give them the adjacency bonus the Coal Plan currently receives. See these posts in particular from @Sostratus - link and link.

Relatedly, there really needs to be an option to build some sort of – I don’t know – Automated Production Line or Industrial Park in your IZ, instead of just a Powerplant, that really boosts your hammers or gives some other benefits. You’re clearly not intended to build Power Plants everywhere so you’ll end up with cities with just Factories, which is what the current IZ structure sort of suggests. This is just kind of sad, and makes the IZ feel like a very limited district. If a Hammer Focused IZ Tier 3 building had its own power requirement, that would also give your Power Plants something really cool to power.

Also relatedly, can we just embrace the fact that for all the changes that have been made, Tier 3 Buildings are still just way too weak. It’s so frustrating – because equally, there’s really good stuff going on with Tier 3 buildings. Putting higher yields behind a paywall of Power Costs is a great idea, which makes Tier 3’s feel different and special, and (potentially) requires good future planning to make sure the cities with the Research Labs etc. are in range of an IZ with a Power Plant. You then also have a bunch of policy cards that buff Tier 3 buildings, so your advanced buildings are sort of leveraged by your more advanced governments.

…and yet, yeah, they’re still such weak sauce. In fairness, part of their problem is just the pacing of the game generally. But it’s also that the yields are just too low. They really need higher yields – either directly or via policy cards. Or they need to be reworked more generally.

Resources and units

This post from @Victoria really nails my issues with the current resource system. See, the resource system could have been a really strong break on unit spam, but because of two very small decisions, it’s not. Basically, the way the system works now, you can still upgrade units fairly easily with just a small amount of resources by using the Professional Army card. On top of that, you only need to retain 1 unit of the required resource to heal units, so your swordsmen etc. can always heal. So, in some ways, you can actually Swordsman rush more easily in GS, and there’s no risk of your units being unable to heal e.g. (because someone pillaged your Iron mine, or the Iron you traded for gets cut off) because you only need one tiny unit of the required resource to heal all your units.

FXS need to nerf the Professional Army card. It is just broken, has been broken for ages, and even more so now it discounts both gold and resources. Magnus’ resource discount also needs to go, for the same reason. And units really need to consume resources to heal – it could be as simple as 1 resource per unit per turn spent healing.

The whole Infantry needing Oil needs a look too. Yeah, I said I like the change. And I do. It’s a great change, because Infantry was just too easy to rush before, and units with resources feel more “important” and Infantry should feel important. But, there are two odd niggles. First, when you unlock Oil and when you unlock Infantry are really out of whack. And second, there’s something odd about building AT Crew if you don’t have Infantry. Until you get to AT Crews, Anti-Cav sort of feel like normal soldiers, just with different promotions and strengths / weaknesses. It doesn’t feel odd having lots of spearmen or pikemen or pike & shot. But it does feel weird having lots of AT Crew, ie guys with Bazookas, given they seem like specialist units. I don’t have an easy solution, but maybe Pike & Shot need to upgrade into some other unit visually (Militia?), with AT Crews being got rid of or made a different unit line. I don’t know – but having my empires defended by a bunch of guys with Bazookas is just weird.

Final thoughts

So yeah. Overall, I really like the resources and power systems. They’re the key feature of GS (maybe +diplomacy), just like loyalty was the key feature for RnF. But I also think the mechanics need a little more work. It’s not just balance - there some small decisions which really hold back the mechanics.

 

[kaspergm]

The Workshop and Factory (even when powered) also just don’t cut it. I’m not sure how the Workshop should be fixed – it maybe needs more hammers, or perhaps just provide some other buff (housing?). But Factories are easy fixed – just give them the adjacency bonus the Coal Plan currently receives.

I've created a mod that gives Workshops area of effect. It may not be enough to make them great without other tweaks (I've also seriously reduced district cost scaling, and reduced later game building costs), but I love my workshops.

 

[Cakeathon]

I strongly disagree with the statement about how it's supposedly easier to do a swordman rush. Unless there is some magic trick to getting hundreds of resources in couple turns I'm completely unaware of. It's way way harder to do any substantial classical era push. Just look at an aztec game I did days before GS, I had 18 horsemen by turn 70ish that's a game-winning army right there on a standard pangea, good luck finding 360 horses to develop anything close to that military might. Also good luck getting 100-140 iron by the time you finish your ironworking beeline, if you could even stockpile that much.

The new resource system is a massive nerf to classical era rushes.

 

[acluewithout]

I've created a mod that gives Workshops area of effect. It may not be enough to make them great without other tweaks (I've also seriously reduced district cost scaling, and reduced later game building costs), but I love my workshops.

In RnF, I modded my Workshops to give +1 housing and +1 food to camps; and to give Facotories and Powerplants Area Effect housing and amenities. I also buffed hammers for each by 1 or 2. That worked pretty well, although those changes to Factories and PPs wouldn’t make sense for GS.

I strongly disagree with the statement about how it's supposedly easier to do a swordman rush. It's way way harder to do any substantial classical era push. Just look at a game I did days before GS, I had 18 horsemen by turn 70 that's a game-winning army right there, good luck finding 360 horses to develop anything close to that military might. Also good luck getting 100-140 iron by the time you finish your ironworking beeline, if you could even stockpile that much.

I guess YMMV. Resources can be more a bottle neck, particularly for swords given how early they come, but overall I think rushing is easier. The only difference is you need to be more careful that you have enough iron. On the other hand, I’m finding walled cities are a bit more resistant to swords, so that bit is trickier.

The fact unit %production cards work on legacy units also doesn’t help. You can just keep building your legacy units and upgrading as you save up more resource.

 

[UWHabs]

I agree with all of this.
Re: Resources and Units - The game still has the "wrong" balance, where it's cheaper to upgrade units than to build them. And this gets broken even more once Professional Army comes into play. As mentioned, the Classical/Medieval/Renaissance are the areas where resource management and stockpiling is critical, but the fact that for one turn you can slot in a card and just skirt the rules makes no sense. There's no point to spending 20 turns to slot in the card to stockpile resources faster if you can just slot in the card to save 50% on upgrades for only a couple turns.

Reower - the game also lacks the balance that you really should require power in the modern era, or else you end up stuck in the dark ages. Tech/building/unit costs should be massively more expensive in the modern era onwards, meaning that you absolutely require power to operate. For example, take a "normal" city in the modern era and let's calculate science.
Our example city will be size 10, with a +2 campus, and with 6 envoys in 2 scientific city-states. My numbers might be a little off, but the science from this city is thus:
10*.5(pop) + 2(campus) + 2(library) + 4(cs-lib) + 4(uni) + 4(cs-uni) = 21.
Building a research lab adds just 3(?) more to that, and with power, only another 5(?) on top of that. Meaning for 500+ production, you get less than a 40% boost in science. And you only get that full boost by using resources, which cost another few hundred production to build and maintain.

Production is just as bad. So you add factories and coal plants, and it only gives your cities 5-10 more production. If they're already pulling in 20-40 production before them, that means that having modern factories is only worth 25%?

Basically, they need to really super-charge those late buildings. What should happen is that you basically get forced to go through industrialization/urbanization/ideology, and from that point on, everything should simply be massively expensive until you have industrialized and urbanized. But when you do that, you get the full bonuses. So I would love to see changes where with power and research labs, for example, your citizen slots increase a lot more, and have much larger yields. So that city before that was getting 21 science, or maybe 30 with the research lab? What if it had, say, 6 scientist slots, each one which can yield 6 science? Now, you can double your science in the city IF you can support it with food and power. And it wouldn't be that hard. The simple changes for that would be:
-each building adds an increasing number of slots. 1 for library, 2 for uni, 3 for research lab
-At urbanization, specialist yields increased 50% (2 science to 3 science)
-With power, specialist yields double (3 science to 6 science)
If you add that in, then that truly simulates urbanization, since it actually would be a benefit to having more citizens in a city. Suddenly that size 10 city is pretty small, since if it needs 4 citizens to work the fields, it only has 6 available to work the districts where the true yields lie. So sure, you might have 5 districts built in the city, but you don't have enough citizens to work them all unless if your city grows big. This also has a nice effect of making neighbourhoods more valuable, since now those late population points actually matter, as they're all working valuable tiles. Right now, you have the awkward case where if your city grows an extra point, if it drops you from +1 amenities to +0, then suddenly you see a drop in science from the city even if the new guy is a specialist in the university.

Just some ideas, but again, the main problem is there just isn't enough point to industrializing right now to make things worth it. I still build the stuff because I hate seeing "incomplete" cities, but it really doesn't make sense to spend all that effort to build modern parts of the city for the minute yields they give.

 

[acluewithout]

I had a long post about industrialisation - see my signature. I think GS goes a long way to making industrialisation feel meaningful, but doesn’t quite go far enough.

In short, to really feel important, Industrialisation needs to do two things.

First, it needs to unlock the ability to really do something different. Power and the changes to governments are a big step in the right direction, but I think buffing Factories, Tier 3 building yields (either directly or governments or policy cards), and having an alternate Industrial Park IZ Tier 3 building would really help make that work.

Second, Industrialisation needs to have a cost, so you feel like Industrialisation is something you actually have to adapt to. Climate Change currently is not significant enough of a cost. Actually requiring power generation or resource use, eg my preference is requiring cities to use Oil per turn unless after you research electricity, maybe with buildings or projects letting you reduce that, or else receiving negative amenities, would really help with that. It doesn’t need to be heavy handed - just something to give the player another thing they have to juggle.

 

[glider1]

I think this comes back to, again, FXS’s unwillingness to punish players. But FXS need to get past this at least a little. The game needs to put the player under pressure at some point. The AI Players, Barbarians and now Natural Disasters can only add so much challenge.

Enjoyed your post and your thinking is valuable. Keep in mind when you analyse the game that FXS's unwillingness to punish players is not just about building a reward system for players to enjoy, but is a way of minimizing the AI coding effort. The more punishments you introduce, the more you need to code the AI with great detail and attention because decisions are more critical.

 

[bbbt]

First, it needs to unlock the ability to really do something different. Power and the changes to governments are a big step in the right direction, but I think buffing Factories, Tier 3 building yields (either directly or governments or policy cards), and having an alternate Industrial Park IZ Tier 3 building would really help make that work.

IMHO with the resource system, adding an alternate 'manufacturing center' and some sort of basic crafting seems like a natural fit - and possibly a lead into a corporation/economic victory mechanic in a potential third expansion.

 

[acluewithout]

@bbbt Agree. I do still think we’ll get a third expansion. And it does make me wonder to what extent things are implemented now which are intended to be expanded upon or dovetail with future mechanics.

 

[sonicmyst]

I love your analysis. I was in the same thinking why the devs seem hesitant to have a mechanic that can punish players for wrong decisions?

Even gated mechanics (e.g. you cannot launch space projects if you do not have power) are only limited by what the prerequisite tech / civic tree has.

Power and strategic resources can be a good source of conflict and diplomacy, not just being limited by random trade deals. Strategic resources could be used as part of peace agreement, or sanction tied to grievances. Lack of power could be linked to happiness and loyalty. There are many more that we could come up with to play around power and strategic resources.

 

[acluewithout]

So, one thing that’s a bit tricky with Civ is this: in real life, to develop technology x you often need to have built technology y. In Civ, you don’t. You just need to “research” technology y.

Why does this matter? Well, this is fundamentally why you can blow through the tech tree. You don’t have to actually stop and build any of the things you’ve researched, save for maybe getting some Eurekas. So, lots of buildings, units, “things” become totally optional - they’re not required to maintain your empire (no one “needs” a granary) and they’re not required to continue your development.

Not needing power for spaceports is an obvious example, but there are plenty of others.

Generally, I’m actually okay with this approach. I don’t think Civ should make too many things “mandatory” to build. It’s too limiting. But, I think maybe power and or resources should be the exception, and shouldn’t be quite as optional as they are currently.

I don’t think resources and power are as under-utilised or under-developed as, say, loyalty or governors / Government Plaza. But I do think FXS maybe stopped a little short of what could have been done with power and resources (as well as, relatedly, revamping the IZ and Tier 3 buildings).

 

[kaspergm]

So, one thing that’s a bit tricky with Civ is this: in real life, to develop technology x you often need to have built technology y. In Civ, you don’t. You just need to “research” technology y.

Why does this matter? Well, this is fundamentally why you can blow through the tech tree. You don’t have to actually stop and build any of the things you’ve researched, save for maybe getting some Eurekas. So, lots of buildings, units, “things” become totally optional - they’re not required to maintain your empire (no one “needs” a granary) and they’re not required to continue your development.

Not needing power for spaceports is an obvious example, but there are plenty of others.

Generally, I’m actually okay with this approach. I don’t think Civ should make too many things “mandatory” to build. It’s too limiting. But, I think maybe power and or resources should be the exception, and shouldn’t be quite as optional as they are currently.

I don’t think resources and power are as under-utilised or under-developed as, say, loyalty or governors / Government Plaza. But I do think FXS maybe stopped a little short of what could have been done with power and resources (as well as, relatedly, revamping the IZ and Tier 3 buildings).

This is a really interesting point. Personally, I like the idea of a closer interlinking between research and buildings - weather it being through restrictions (can only research this tech after building a spaceport/research lab) or through nudging (i.e. massively increased research cost for modern+ technologies, with research labs giving correspondingly massive bonuses).

On a related side note, I always felt the space research should sort of go into its own tree, and this would work very well with what you describe here. I.e. once you research Rocketry, you can build a spaceport and send off Apollo Mission, and only when you've done this, you can unlock next level of space research, which will also require certain "normal" technologies.

 

[Victoria]

Also good luck getting 100-140 iron by the time you finish your ironworking beeline, if you could even stockpile that much.

“Hey Gilgamesh? Have you got 20 iron?.... here is some gold”
“Hey Tomyris, the same goes for you....but I will glady trade you diplomatic favour because that is a joke and I need the rest of my gold for cheap upgrades “
“Oh, I already had 40 I had bought earlier
Now I have 4 swords, never wait for 8... you just slowed down your victory by 20 turns. Costs you double the gold and more maintenance for units less used. Take some warriors/archers/scouts for flank and ZOC duties. Not a sword army... make it look like a decent mixed army, even the odd spear to get the now needed eureka.
I just need to buy 1 more iron and I can heal.
... and I never started with iron which stopped me doing this. A sword rush is not to be underestimated. It really buffs the Greeks who have a wildcard for a GG... yes and America but the Greeks used hoplites.
@Cakeathon I am polarising slightly to make my point, it’s not completely broken but could have been so much better if you had to heal with iron because you then have to war AND stay friends with the ironmonger. It would mean people would have to use diplomacy... it never was that broken, it just could be bypassed... just like I really have completely ignored grievances in my games. It still makes no difference unless playing a peaceful CV/RV.

I even wrote a massive diplomacy manual 2 years ago but then realised no-one would read it so did not publish it. I may publish because understanding how promises work and their degradation helps with dip points... which are great extra cash for buying iron I never used to have!...

opps sorry gilga, I know we are friends but I will never move my troops near your borders again... bang... 30 dip points (20 iron)....now lets move those 2 scouts over to Lautro and do the same trick. Sorry Mvemba I will not settle another city so close (yeah right) ... bang, another 20 iron.

And sadly making that promise makes them like me more... just like swapping 1 gold for 1 horse does.

It's magic!

 

[acluewithout]

“Hey Gilgamesh? Have you got 20 iron?.... here is some gold”
“Hey Tomyris, the same goes for you....but I will glady trade you diplomatic favour because that is a joke and I need the rest of my gold for cheap upgrades “
“Oh, I already had 40 I had bought earlier
Now I have 4 swords, never wait for 8... you just slowed down your victory by 20 turns. Costs you double the gold and more maintenance for units less used. Take some warriors/archers/scouts for flank and ZOC duties. Not a sword army... make it look like a decent mixed army, even the odd spear to get the now needed eureka.
I just need to buy 1 more iron and I can heal.
... and I never started with iron which stopped me doing this. A sword rush is not to be underestimated. It really buffs the Greeks who have a wildcard for a GG... yes and America but the Greeks used hoplites.
@Cakeathon I am polarising slightly to make my point, it’s not completely broken but could have been so much better if you had to heal with iron because you then have to war AND stay friends with the ironmonger. It would mean people would have to use diplomacy... it never was that broken, it just could be bypassed... just like I really have completely ignored grievances in my games. It still makes no difference unless playing a peaceful CV/RV.

I even wrote a massive diplomacy manual 2 years ago but then realised no-one would read it so did not publish it. I may publish because understanding how promises work and their degradation helps with dip points... which are great extra cash for buying iron I never used to have!...

opps sorry gilga, I know we are friends but I will never move my troops near your borders again... bang... 30 dip points (20 iron)....now lets move those 2 scouts over to Lautro and do the same trick. Sorry Mvemba I will not settle another city so close (yeah right) ... bang, another 20 iron.

And sadly making that promise makes them like me more... just like swapping 1 gold for 1 horse does.

It's magic!

The core of you’re describing in your post actually sounds really fun. To me: buying Iron build swords sounds fun; throwing if favour to get more out of the deal sounds fun; engineering (or capitalising) on situations to get more favour to buy more iron sounds fun; padding your army out with non-resource units because you can’t actually spam swords is fun; having to do all that efficiently sounds fun.

It seems to me that there’s something in the resource system (and diplomacy system) that’s really really fun.

But it’s the details which kill it, as you’ve pointed out. Not needing iron to heal is a big one. Diplomacy and favour and those things not being quiet balanced (and so not that useful) is another. The AI struggling is another (which itself is probably about more details - the AI not having quite the right behaviours, or the rules not quite suiting how the AI plays, or just optimising / bugs etc. Your timing out point for example).

Gathering Storm is much better put together, more satisfying, than RnF, and overall I think the game is a lot better for GS. In particular, GS has made a big effort to get a lot of “details” right. Resources, in particular, is way better implemented than say loyalty in RnF (another really good mechanic, but which FXS haven’t really capitalised on).

But there’s still a lot of “details” that are off, that really undermine the challenge and fun. I honestly think part of the problem is just what a massive beast of a game Civ is now.

And I don’t mean “this version” i.e. Civ VI is a “beast”. I mean the franchise. People want all the things, plus all the depth, plus all the polish, but producing all this and making it all work together seems like a massive task requiring years of support and development.

Anyway. If FXS want to, I think there are some easy wins with the resource system. And with the power and diplomacy. Let’s see what happens in the patches. Let’s see if we get another exapansion.

 

[Victoria]

having to do all that efficiently sounds fun.

It is... you will find a few posts in the past where I state I play with mixed armies... it's just more fun and you can still have a great fast game, just not perfect and repetitious.

But it’s the details which kill it,

Bang on 100% yes yes yes... it has become easier in an easy game. Dip points are free and worthless for their intended path but highly valuable in speeding up the game. Ironically when I have no dip points everyone gives me more dip points in a deal... maybe thats just the way it feels.
Then there is the trade bug where I can get 20 iron for 40 gold...
The moment I saw the Canada liveplay my heart dropped.... you can trade diplomacy? everything just got easier, there is more "gold" in the world. They sort of doubled it.
And why use it on an emergency, all you get from emergencies is more dip points and not significantly more. Emergencies have been massively nerfed.

 

[kb27787]

In essence make units also require upkeep in terms of strategic resources would be a welcome change no? Each sword now requires 1 iron per turn and will disband if you run out of iron (UUs can be the exception). I could get on board with that... So one mine can support two swords and players can trade resources per turn as well as flat amounts... This would be a huge buff to archer units...

 

[Victoria]

upkeep in terms of strategic resources would be a welcome change no?

No... in this area there will be a huge range of difference in opinion, I respect yours, for me it is a step too far. Repair with iron when healing to some limited degree.
A plane needs oil for maintenance, that makes sense... but not aluminum... if should need aluminum for creating and healing. Healing is adding new planes to the squadron for those lost.

This would be a huge buff to archer units...

They certainly do NOT need buffing

 

[Sostratus]

And yeah, I like that Infantry now require Oil. Come at me bro.

Consider my Jimmies to be rustled, bro

There are lots of suggestions on how to do that – I think maybe allowing an extra +1 adjacency for a strategic resource would fix the problem (so, Horses would give +1 and an Iron Mine would give +2, +1 for the resource and +1 for the mine) – but I don’t care how it’s done. Just make the IZs good.

I could see an argument to exempt horsies (#gluefactory) but I wouldn't mind this change. An alternative option would be to finally allow oil wells to count for +1; we could go further and add in something for dams and geothermal plants. (Because geo fissures currently suck.)
Combined with the option to get machu picchu, that would be likely enough extra sources to make things spicier.

I’m not sure how the Workshop should be fixed

There is some elegance in having every tier 2 building grant flat 2 yield- the runner up award in case you have poor adjacency- the issue with the workshop is that the tier 1 buildings have wildly varying costs. If you want to fix the workshop you could just level the cost of all tier 1 structures to ~80. Because the IZ comes in medieval, it gets a monster penalty thanks to how costs are set. The tile yield game considers science to be worth more than production; yet the +2 science library costs 80 while the +2 prod workshop costs 175. (Except the Arena.)

Relatedly, there really needs to be an option to build some sort of – I don’t know – Automated Production Line or Industrial Park

Always nice to see converts to the idea. I feel like making the power plant line truly linear (which could be done by moving what coal plants do now to factories) and thus a question of resources usage would open the path to have an industrial park type structure.
One would want to avoid the current coal plant situation (making it a yield grab bag that is clearly just better.)
One would also want to avoid making something that is worthless if you already have them- like a factory covered by a factory already. (We wanted to change factories, remember?)
I think something like
+1 GE point/engineer slot
+utility function (like +20 stockpile cap, or something)
+2 production for engineers in this city
If engineers gave 4* production each, then this structure would be worth +6 if you slot all the engineers. Neat for focused/big cities, has some usage for small cities via the utility, but is useful even if you already have them.

*Edit I realized specialists are still garbage at +2, not +3.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But FXS, let’s get real. The IZ, the Workshop and the Factory are still just massively underpowered.

Lets just all recall that IZs used to have stackable auras. It's clearly why they didn't make an IZ building card.
Currently, a campus can give you 14 science from buildings when powered, or 21/28 with the card. That's beefy.
Even if we assume 1:1 valuation, IZ buildings used to only ever give +9. Now, with a nuke plant, that can give (+11prod, +3 science). That's 14, but there's no card. (Why does the Nuke plant have to give science? Rude!)
To equalize things by using a card slot, running Craftsmen means you can turn a +4 IZ into a +23 (8 adj, 7 Workshop+Factory, 8 coal plant.) If you only run IZs in half your cities, you get the factory aura applying pushing this to +28... the same as a well placed campus buildings in a big city (although the campus would pick up +3 science from adj.)

I can't tell if FXS thinks that player IZ placement sucks or not. If they think its usually bad, then clearly the district isn't giving enough yields. If they think we have good placement, then clearly the coal plant is massively out of line (1 adj=4 net prod under coal+craftsmen) with the others. I have to assume they think players build a given district in about half their cities; otherwise auras are pretty pointless. But if we assume players only place districts in good spots (which is how they end up in only half of cities) then we have the "coal plant is clearly imbalanced" result.

I promise this is not an ideas and suggestion thread. And so I’m going to avoid making any detailed suggestions here. But just to illustrate my point, why don’t Cities have e.g. a minimum power requirement or use up x oil per turn once you research (say) electricity? Or even, why doesn’t the Space District have a power requirement? Seriously??

To be in best keeping with the current game philosophy, I think a great way to get at "people should eventually just demand power" is to stick power requirements on the thing big cities need: stadiums. I know you can run New Deal, or Digital Dem, but gating the massive late game amenity sources with power (also extending this to the Aquarium+Aquatic Center) would sting players. You can ignore power, but you won't be able to support a large population. It's just odd to me that amenities completely ignore power when it's one of the big pieces around electrification. Do you know how long people will sit in the dark, unable to play civilization games? Revolts within hours, lads.

I really like that they fixed the chief issue with late game resources from civ5: there was no guns v butter / economy v military tradeoff. Factories used coal but only ironclads also did, so it didn't matter.
Now we have that across all yields, although i do think we need to figure out some unit balancing to make sure this doesn't lead to results like "only use coal for power and oil for military, so never make ironclads, Bships, or Oil plants."

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I'd add that not only do power and t3 still week, with Global Warming it also feels like the game actively punishes you for using them. I understand about renewables and about how warming doesn't even affect the human player that much, but it's something I'll still avoid if given the option. T3 should be stronger and coal should be easier/earlier/something than renewable.

 

[acluewithout]

@Sostratus Excellent post.

On the Industrial Park T3 IZ building, one way forward would be that the Industrial Park allows that City to stack multiple Powerplant auras. So, you build a tonne of powerplants, then one has an Industrial Park and the rest have Powerplants. The one with the Industrial Park gets all the hammers.

On power = amenities. My point is that power, or at least maybe oil, should be required otherwise you’re penalised. That would then force more empire management on the player is the late game.

I don’t have any strong views on how that should be done. But my one observation is that, given Civ has this sort of “board game” design, there’s a limit to how complex empire management can get. No sliders please. So, if power or oil was made a “requirement”, it should be done in a fairly simple way.