How should maritimes be nerfed?

[Slowpoke]

Now, we all know maritimes are too powerful. Most people think simple removing their ally bonus and making their food always be 2 i the capitol, one in non-capitol good enough. But that is still not enough. Look at this. Suppose you had a most 10city empire, and decided to just stay that way for no reason. Maritimes are nerfed as above. Let's say you allied one city state near the beginning of the game and played that empire size for 300 turns. If you allied:

A cultural: You would get about one social policy (assuming you count the last policies price). More culturals, however, do not significantly increase the amount of SPs (4 might give 2).

A military: a half dozen crappy units (worth maybe 2 influence for a CS) and a half dozen good ones.

A maritime: 3300 food. (essentially 6600 gold or 3300 hammers if you choose if you think about it)

I think it's clear maritimes need an even further nerf. But you can't just nerf them to 2/3 food per city -.- So what do you do?

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Here's how maritimes should be nerfed:

The AI should be patched to more actively work towards gaining city state allies, especially maritime ones. They should compete for allies that you already have. We all know that the AI commonly sits on thousands of gold. Those AIs unable to win the friendship of maritimes should be actively attempting to conquer them, on the principle of "if I can't have it, no one can!"

Would we still consider maritime city states to be overpowered, if we needed to keep them at 300/60 friendship, and needed to keep 4+ good military units by them at all times, in order to gain the bonus?

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Here's how maritimes should be nerfed:

The AI should be patched to more actively work towards gaining city state allies, especially maritime ones. They should compete for allies that you already have. We all know that the AI commonly sits on thousands of gold. Those AIs unable to win the friendship of maritimes should be actively attempting to conquer them, on the principle of "if I can't have it, no one can!"

Would we still consider maritime city states to be overpowered, if we needed to keep them at 300/60 friendship, and needed to keep 4+ good military units by them at all times, in order to gain the bonus?

It's true that the AI should prioritize them more. But still, they (the Maritimes) shouldn't necessarily be stronger than the other types of CS. I should not look at the CSes on my continent and choose to ally the Maritimes first every time. It should be a hard decision.

 

[Slowpoke]

I think however we decide to nerf them, they should be nerfed in a fashion that if you don't want policies too bad, and you don't warmonger much, these would be the CS for you, and they would have a benefit in the region of one of the other two.

 

[Dekent]

Am I the only one who thinks instead of nerfing them we should bring up the others to their level?
I'd like to see military perhaps give bonuses to exp of every unit you make, maybe a standard bonus built into them? Culture could perhaps also allow you to choose a bonus policy from a tree designed just for them that you keep so long as you are the ally?

I would rather see city states be more important than less, considering they are the only real major improvement I see in this game over IV.

 

[Slowpoke]

Am I the only one who thinks instead of nerfing them we should bring up the others to their level?
I'd like to see military perhaps give bonuses to exp of every unit you make, maybe a standard bonus built into them? Culture could perhaps also allow you to choose a bonus policy from a tree designed just for them that you keep so long as you are the ally?

I would rather see city states be more important than less, considering they are the only real major improvement I see in this game over IV.

Well city states are already absurdly powerful is the thing. You nearly get them for free (500 gold bribe and about -8 gpt for a free luxury worth 10 gpt), they act as strong meathshields, and they give massive bonuses.

If anything, I'd consider making them weaker, by disabling thier ability to make city walls and castles, making them more important to defend.

Edit: Although one possibility, is making them stronger but massively increasing bribe costs.

 

[Rohili]

Maritimes are overpowered because their bonuses increase with the number of cities you have (thus making ICS easier than it should be), unlike the fixed bonuses granted by cultural and militaristic city-states.

The simple solution would to let maritimes grant X amount of food (or X*1.5 for ally status), to be distributed among all your cities. X should start low and increase significantly every era to prevent maritimes being too overpowered in the early ages.

 

[zub]

The AI should be patched to more actively work towards gaining city state allies

They do ally to CS, I don't know how they chose, but I don't like the idea of making the game revolve even more around maritime CS. I think a player or AI should have the choice to rely on maritime or be self sufficient, and remain competitive in both cases.

 

[Kraydak]

Change the name and have them give happiness.

 

[PawelS]

Don't change the name and have them give naval units

 

[aimlessgun]

There's been so much discussion on this, and I think the best 2 options that came out of that were

1: Making them give a +% bonus to your surplus food production (like a We love the king day effect)
2: making them give a flat quantity of food, divided evenly through your empire, rounded to the nearest .01

Both would need some serious testing to balance the exact numbers, and there might be unforseen effects. But farms are currently underpowered (in large part due to maritimes), so I don't think multiplying their output by a % would suddenly make them overpowered. Splitting a flat food amount would be great for small empires, which are currently much less powerful than large empires. Either way, you are strengthening a weak part of the game, which should theoretically work out well.

 

[DaveGold]

Link the food bonus to infrastructure in a city. Instead of getting more food in later eras you give a bonus food to a building available in that era. Granaries, Seaports, Harbours, Markets all seem candidates for such a bonus.

 

[Dermo]

My suggestion would be that when you ally with the first MCS, the capital gets x amount of food, and the 5 or 6 closest neighbours to the capital, get x/2 amount, the second MCS ally would do the same thing but to a different city, perhaps the closest city geographically (excluding the capital)
Another thought would be to have an MCS alliance reduce the amount of food required for the next pop, in cities, either by a fixed percent or scaling up over time or population. This would help the larger cities to grow quicker.

 

[AriochIV]

First of all, improving relations with city-states should be more interesting (and difficult) than just bribing them.

If food resources were meaningful (as they were in Civ IV), then a Maritime city-state could give you access to one or more sea food resources, and that would be sufficient.

If a Maritime city-state needs to provide a food resource, it should a bonus to only ONE of your cities (perhaps nearest, or capital, or let you pick). Letting a single city-state supply massive amounts of food to your entire empire is ridiculous (in addition to being game-breaking).

 

[GKrause]

I think the real fix lies in having gold not as powerful. It's too easy to stay allied with Maritime city states cause they give free population, which in turns drives "free" science and working more gold tiles. It's a snowballing effect, and once you have it running, you can just buy whatever you want, including the cheap free food that runs the entire process. I feel the real problem still stems from production being too weak and gold being too powerful.

 

[greggbert]

They don't have to be nerfed anymore after the patch. AI now battles like crazy for control of maratimes, so it's not easy to control them all like it used to be.

 

[espence]

When you become allied to a city, you should then be able to choose which of your cities receives a food bonus. It should be the same as the current (non-modded) capitol bonus. You would also be able to change which city receives the bonus via the diplomacy menu, the same way you can tell military allies to stop sending troops.

I don't think that allowing only one city the bonus is nerfing it too much, as it would still be pretty powerful. If it is too much, then maybe allowing two or three cities the bonus would work better. However just having one would be easier to manage, and would provide a good incentive to acquire more maritime states, in order to give the bonus to other cities.

 

[Babri]

Maritime CSs should provide their bonuses only to the nearest few cities. That way it would be much more balanced. And as AriochIV said the allying CS should not be all about bribing. Bribing should be more expensive so that it is used only when you need a CS badly e.g fighting a war & needing an ally immediately. However your other actions should be responsible for building up relations with them (slowly instead of instantly). There should be more ways to please CSs though.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Am I the only one who thinks instead of nerfing them we should bring up the others to their level?
I'd like to see military perhaps give bonuses to exp of every unit you make, maybe a standard bonus built into them? Culture could perhaps also allow you to choose a bonus policy from a tree designed just for them that you keep so long as you are the ally?

I would rather see city states be more important than less, considering they are the only real major improvement I see in this game over IV.

There already exists almost no incentive to actually kill city states. They don't need to be STRONGER.

 

[Qin Shi Huang]

I know this kind of goes against what the thread is about but nerfing them would make them massively less useful nevermind a little less useful as after a size of about 10 cities take forever to grow also what about civs that end up starting in really bad positions such as in the middle of a dessert?
They can't really come back from that and cant capture lands because they cant gain enough population to work enough production land and make an army.
However dispite a bad start if they "save" a MT CS from barbs or nearby barb encampments they gain the food needed to provide the city with production.
It also means that people are able to place cities in high production areas that have little food and enable them to be the high production cities that in previous civs you were unable to keep because of no food.
However I do believe that the money you give a civ should produce less influence, and the AI should compete more for CS influence.