ICS? Icey No!

[MilkmanDan]

Since maritime CS can't be fundamentally changed in how they work, perhaps dropping the food per city to 1 (and not have it increase with eras) and leaving the capitol the same or maybe a boost there. Still some benefit to ICS but not near as much and a lot more benefit to a smaller empire where the capitol is a significant chunk of the empire pop.

To make large cities more gold competitive, add merchant slots to the stock market. I'd bring it up to 4. In general, adding significant bonuses to the later buildings (the ones 2-3 deep in requirements) will make large cities competitive with ICS.

I'd like to see a 'worker' type specialist on the factory/workshop building that gives 2prod but no GE points, or 1 prod/1 gold for instance. Original factories boosted production not by being more efficient but by making it possible for more unskilled/semi-skilled workers to work productively. That and the addition of heat engines producing mechanical work (which was previously limited to water/human/animal power).

 

[Louis XXIV]

Actually I like the sound of this idea. The main concern is how it would impact on the AI because that is a major change, probably much more significant than every change made by the mod (so far) combined.

Can we get some other opinions on this suggestion?

I would point out that one problem with it at the moment is that it can be built on tiles with no food, like desert/tundra/plains hills.

Maybe, I can figure out a way to make sure it can only be built on tiles with 1 or more food.

I thought about that, but I figured there weren't a lot of those tiles anyway. Hills are the biggest one, to be honest, since most people say that a TP hill is better than a mine hill. Still, I think it'll at least encourage people to build some farms to offset them, since growth would be impossible otherwise (even to the size 4-6 cities ICS people want). You could also make it -1 production. At some point, you might have to draw the line, since Trading Post Plains would become barren 0.0.2 tiles.

RE: The AI? I have no idea. I would hope they should be able to take into account both positives and negatives of whatever terrain action they take, but I'm not hopeful. They tend to build a decent amount of farms, though, and might at least be programmed to build more farms if they need more food.

One thing I've been thinking about, but it would continue what is already a major change, would be combine it with increased food from bonus resources. The problem with simply increasing them is the tech rate increased too much. But together, they might balance out.

Maybe I should just make the separate anti-TP spam mod (ATPSM) so people can test this out. It would help keep your mod a bit more limited, at least for now, rather than too dramatic. Making farms and mines as viable as trading posts would be a step towards solving ICS, though.

 

[Irgy]

Farms aren't better than TPs because martime food is too plentiful. Otherwise, even a commerce city would need some farms for growth, and a production city would need a lot of farms to work mines.

Mines aren't better than TPs because they only ever provide a pathetic 1 extra hammer. A mined hill should be 4 hammers, I know they might have wanted to slow unit production, but 3 hammers from a mine is so weak as to throw the balance out. People only work mines at all because food is so plentiful that they can afford to.

So, fix maritime food (somehow), give mines a buff (and give bonus resources +1 food after improvement too) and you'll be back to the number of trading posts that there should be.

Trading posts on deserts are fine, they're strictly worse than a specialist so I can't see why people would bother working them most of the time anyway. Ok so I can, it's because they don't have enough specialist slots and nothing else to work, but the point is the tiles aren't overpowered or even particularly useful.

 

[pi-r8]

One thing I've thought would be useful was nerfing trading posts. I wasn't going to bring it up, but, since that seems to be a strength of ICS, what if trading posts gave -1 food? It's honestly the only practical way to hurt it, since it can't be gold support based, like roads.

That works too. The way I see it, it's clear that one of the big reasons ICS is too strong is that mass trading posts + rush buy is too strong. A trading post gives 2 gold that can be used anywhere, instantly, whereas a mine gives just 1 hammer that has to be used locally for a specific purpose.

That can be balanced in several ways- reduce the yield of a trading post, weaken rush buy somehow (I suggested removing it entirely, or we could just make it really really expensive), boosting the gold buildings so that other gold alternatives can keep up, or boosting production.

Any of these work, but the balance depends on what other changes get made to the game. Reducing the food works, but only if you keep maritime states the way they are. I'd never use -1 food trading posts without maritime states to offset it. Once you get enough maritime state food, the -1 food is nothing.

I think I'd still prefer decreasing trading posts to -1, while boosting the gold buildings and increasing the cost of rush buy.

I would point out that one problem with it at the moment is that it can be built on tiles with no food, like desert/tundra/plains hills.

Maybe, I can figure out a way to make sure it can only be built on tiles with 1 or more food.

Hmm, is it possible to have a tile with negative food? Or would it still go to zero food?

I do agree. I'll be reconsidering it, probably much to pi-r8's disappointment.

haha, I don't really care that much about the heroic epic. Although you'll recall I actually suggested boosting it to +30%, because of this...

Way too strong. I think +15% was plenty for this national wonder. I just never built it because I never build barracks. I assume that's true for many people. I also fail to see how this addresses the issue of ICS, but perhaps I skimmed that post.

No one builds it because no one wants to build a barracks in more than one city, or delay their expansion just for a little +15% bonus.

I'd leave the specialist slot off from the university, and just keep the one added to the observatory. Simply put, the scientist specialists are too good, and may be a large part of what puts the game nearly in the modern era around 1400 AD. I'd go so far as to reduce the per specialists to +2 instead of +3 , but that's me.

(

I'd agree with this. When I suggested adding a scientist slot to the observatory, I assumed you'd also take one away from the library. With the game as is, it's already a great strategy (maybe even the best) to rush education for fast universities-adding a slot to the university would just make that even better.

 

[Celevin]

No one builds it because no one wants to build a barracks in more than one city, or delay their expansion just for a little +15% bonus.

Yet people talk about the Chinese UU ability constantly, which is only 5% higher.

I get this building in probably half my games, which includes a lot of ICS games. With the ability to sell off buildings, it's much more common.

 

[pi-r8]

Yet people talk about the Chinese UU ability constantly, which is only 5% higher.

I get this building in probably half my games, which includes a lot of ICS games. With the ability to sell off buildings, it's much more common.

People talk way too much about the Chinese general IMO. I don't think it's worth pausing your expansion in order to build the heroic epic- and by the time you've got iron working you should have quite a few cities already. Delaying your expansion long enough to build it could put you 20 turns behind in tech, which means almost an entire era of technology lost.

 

[a barbarian]

It's probably not possible atm but allowing trading posts only on tiles with roads could be interesting to try (and remove the trading post when the road is deleted).

 

[Elenhil]

It's probably not possible atm but allowing trading posts only on tiles with roads could be interesting to try (and remove the trading post when the road is deleted).

Wonderful idea (I love the logic), though implementation (especially AI tweaks) must indeed prove difficult ATM.

 

[pi-r8]

Since roads cost 1 gold maintenence/turn, that would be almost the same as reducing them to generate just 1 gpt.

 

[a barbarian]

Since roads cost 1 gold maintenence/turn, that would be almost the same as reducing them to generate just 1 gpt.

true, but you would have to build whenever you want to build a trading post, adding another slight nerf.

And I also had this in mind (cities usually grow alongside important roads):

Having growing towns back would be nice too but would add even more balancing tasks.

 

[kris159]

+Reduce unhappy per pop? Not even sure if this can be made non-integer

Doesn't Ghandi's trait make unhappiness per population an integer?

 

[MilkmanDan]

Doesn't Ghandi's trait make unhappiness per population an integer?

Even if it's limited to an integer, there's ways to get around that. Especially now that you can change everything with a single sql call. You could conceivably double everything's happiness/unhappiness value (or research, or gold, or culture, etc) and just leave the one thing you want halved normal. It wasn't practical in civ4 because of having to go by hand and change everything but it's quite doable in V.

I'd seen one where someone wanted to halve the effectiveness of population for research but couldn't do it for rounding. That'd be really easy to double the cost of all the techs, double the values of science for buildings/specialists/terrian (except the library of course), and voila, halved population research.

 

[Slowpoke]

Even if it's limited to an integer, there's ways to get around that.

In my mod, I just gave everyone ghandi's trait in addition to their own. Done (gotta fix ghandi, now, though :/)

 

[LegioCorvus]

Since maritime CS can't be fundamentally changed in how they work, perhaps dropping the food per city to 1 (and not have it increase with eras) and leaving the capitol the same or maybe a boost there. Still some benefit to ICS but not near as much and a lot more benefit to a smaller empire where the capitol is a significant chunk of the empire pop.

This is a good idea. I understand that the food bonus grows with each era to match the culture & militaristic City States, but even 1 :civ5food: per city is worth it in any era.

An aside: I was playing a military ICS game a while ago, and I had to befriend two maritime CS to march my armies into Greek lands. They were his allies and creating a wall between us. Instantly regretted it. I couldn't keep any city under size 6, even when working no tiles.

Farms aren't better than TPs because martime food is too plentiful. Otherwise, even a commerce city would need some farms for growth, and a production city would need a lot of farms to work mines.

Mines aren't better than TPs because they only ever provide a pathetic 1 extra hammer. A mined hill should be 4 hammers, I know they might have wanted to slow unit production, but 3 hammers from a mine is so weak as to throw the balance out. People only work mines at all because food is so plentiful that they can afford to.

So, fix maritime food (somehow), give mines a buff (and give bonus resources +1 food after improvement too) and you'll be back to the number of trading posts that there should be.

Trading posts on deserts are fine, they're strictly worse than a specialist so I can't see why people would bother working them most of the time anyway. Ok so I can, it's because they don't have enough specialist slots and nothing else to work, but the point is the tiles aren't overpowered or even particularly useful.

I just want to say that I agree with all of this.

 

[kris159]

Farms aren't better than TPs because martime food is too plentiful. Otherwise, even a commerce city would need some farms for growth, and a production city would need a lot of farms to work mines.

Mines aren't better than TPs because they only ever provide a pathetic 1 extra hammer. A mined hill should be 4 hammers, I know they might have wanted to slow unit production, but 3 hammers from a mine is so weak as to throw the balance out. People only work mines at all because food is so plentiful that they can afford to.

So, fix maritime food (somehow), give mines a buff (and give bonus resources +1 food after improvement too) and you'll be back to the number of trading posts that there should be.

Trading posts on deserts are fine, they're strictly worse than a specialist so I can't see why people would bother working them most of the time anyway. Ok so I can, it's because they don't have enough specialist slots and nothing else to work, but the point is the tiles aren't overpowered or even particularly useful.

I recommend Balance - Improvements, which adds +1 production to mines upon researching Engineering and +1 food for farms on freshwater tiles (along with alot of other things that you didn't mension), and Balance - Less Rancid Resources, which adds +1 food to banana, cow, sheep and deer. Improved yield for wheat and fish were removed for some reason.

 

[boehj]

An aside: I was playing a military ICS game a while ago, and I had to befriend two maritime CS to march my armies into Greek lands. They were his allies and creating a wall between us. Instantly regretted it. I couldn't keep any city under size 6, even when working no tiles.

Just check "Cap Growth" or whatever it's called in the city screen. Works a treat.

 

[LegioCorvus]

Just check "Cap Growth" or whatever it's called in the city screen. Works a treat.

I mean I literally could not prevent a city from growing past size 5 . I think I was getting +8 for two CS, and with 2 standard it's enough to support at least 5 pop. Then, I had Liberty, so pulling up a person as a citizen or specialist was like working a 1 tile, since they ate half but still counted as a pop point. Most cities only had so many no tiles, so every city grew to at least size 6.

 

[PieceOfMind]

IIUC, the 'avoid growth' function, after the latest patch, is supposed to actually prevent growth.

 

[Slowpoke]

yup, if you have enough food added up to get a new citizen, you just won't now. Very convenient.

 

[LegioCorvus]

yup, if you have enough food added up to get a new citizen, you just won't now. Very convenient.

Really?

I'll have to test that out. If so, that's awesome.