Improvements

[Seek]

Given how few uses there are for oil, that could be a decent way to balance the value of the resource.

Exactly.

 

[Thalassicus]

Do you mean... on the tile itself? That seems reasonable.

 

[Ahriman]

Lighthouse - Limit to +1 on sea resource tiles *only* and add +1 on coastal tiles. Representing local fishing and transportation of goods.
Harbor - Add +1 on all water tiles. Representing more efficient fishing techniques overall.
Seaport - Add +1 on all water tiles. Representing int'l trade.

I like this stuff much more than I like giving tile yield bonuses for land tiles adjacent to coasts. If you want coast tiles to matter, boost the coasts, don't boost the regular land tiles.

Something else I've been considering is instead of adding a bonus to mines in the industrial era, remove the bonus to lumber mills. Basically the net effect of the B-TI mod would be to move this lumbermill bonus earlier in the tech tree (from Steam Power to Machinery) and include one for mines there too.

I like this. Say for example, +1 hammers for lumbermills at machinery, +1 hammers for mines at steam power is much better than having these improvements get boosted twice.
So, mines still get a boost, but the much earlier lumbermill boost still provides an incentive not to chop.

it's always irked me that oil improvements are so terrible. What do people think about a gold buff?

Gold boost to refinery improvement makes sense. Its so late that this could be quite high with no particular balance problems.

My point being: there are significant modifiers to base production in this game. Upping base production can have a nasty sideffect of tiles becoming too strong.

Agree with this very strongly, which is why I think the lumbermill/mine change above is a good one.

 

[Seek]

Do you mean... on the tile itself? That seems reasonable.

Yes, especially since Oil appears predominantly (always?) on Tundra, Desert or Ocean: all extremely weak tiles.

 

[Tomice]

About the various coastal buffs:

It's not so much the "how", but the fact that coasts should be made really attractive. It is a pattern that was true for Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans as well as much later for the US. The Europeans settled in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, ..., not somewhere in the middle of the continent, avoiding coastlines.

Having a similar effect (in terms of gold) for both rivers and coasts is just logical, because they are both natural transport routes -> more trade -> more gold.

Boosts placed on coastal buildings also take a very long time to kick in (research multiple techs, build several buildings, aquire sea tiles), while the +1 gold on coastal land tiles is available very early.

 

[Ahriman]

It is a pattern that was true for Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans as well as much later for the US. The Europeans settled in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, ..., not somewhere in the middle of the continent, avoiding coastlines.

Well yes, but there's some selection bias there. Plenty of civs and empires weren't particularly coastal. Germany, France, Russia, China, India, Inca, Aztec, Maya, Mali, Zulu, Songhai, Siam, Egypt...

Boosts placed on coastal buildings also take a very long time to kick in

Yes, but this is the only way to compensate for the fact that workers don't work on water, so you can't build improvements on coastal tiles.
Unless we want to try to get workboats to build things, but I doubt the AI would be very good at that.

Having a similar effect (in terms of gold) for both rivers and coasts is just logical

I think we can agree that rivers in vanilla are OP, and there are a limited number of river tiles, whereas there are a huge number of land tiles adjacent to coasts.
I'd also argue rivers are far more valuable historically than coasts, because they also provide fresh water (which is the biggest reason for building near rivers) and they aren't vulnerable to storms, waves, getting lost, etc. so are much easier and more profitable to navigate - and you can do so even in a fairly basic boat. Sea-going vessels are much more expensive, and sea-trade much more dangerous.
I don't see why these need to be equivalent.

while the +1 gold on coastal land tiles is available very early

True, but why is this desirable?
And what are the gameplay effects of a massive increase in gold income?
And why do we want to make golden ages even more powerful (+ gold on every gold producing tile)?

Its already worth working a land tile adjacent to coast, just like any other, but its not really worth working coast tiles. So the solution seems to me to buff coastal cities, by boosting coast tiles, rather than boosting decent tiles already even for landlocked cities.

 

[Seek]

Well yes, but there's some selection bias there. Plenty of civs and empires weren't particularly coastal. Germany, France, Russia, China, India, Inca, Aztec, Maya, Mali, Zulu, Songhai, Siam, Egypt...


Yes, but this is the only way to compensate for the fact that workers don't work on water, so you can't build improvements on coastal tiles.
Unless we want to try to get workboats to build things, but I doubt the AI would be very good at that.


I think we can agree that rivers in vanilla are OP, and there are a limited number of river tiles, whereas there are a huge number of land tiles adjacent to coasts.
I'd also argue rivers are far more valuable historically than coasts, because they also provide fresh water (which is the biggest reason for building near rivers) and they aren't vulnerable to storms, waves, getting lost, etc. so are much easier and more profitable to navigate - and you can do so even in a fairly basic boat. Sea-going vessels are much more expensive, and sea-trade much more dangerous.
I don't see why these need to be equivalent.


True, but why is this desirable?
And what are the gameplay effects of a massive increase in gold income?
And why do we want to make golden ages even more powerful (+ gold on every gold producing tile)?

Its already worth working a land tile adjacent to coast, just like any other, but its not really worth working coast tiles. So the solution seems to me to buff coastal cities, by boosting coast tiles, rather than boosting decent tiles already even for landlocked cities.

I think there may be some confusion here. Unfortunately, all water tiles are deemed equal in the code, and therefore unmoddable. All "coastal tile" references are to *land* tiles along the ocean. Also unfortunate is the fact that my Lighthouse idea you quoted above is not possible either: Improvement bonuses cannot be tied to buildings.

 

[Ahriman]

Still no problem, just code ocean tiles to have lower yield (zero if necessary) without any buildings, and then have all the buildings boost all water tiles. So ocean tiles still aren't great, but coastal tiles can be very good with enough infrastructure.

So for example, we could have:
Ocean: 1 food
Coast: 1 food 2 gold
Fish (bonus): 1 food, 1 extra gold 1 extra food with fishing boats.
Pearls (bonus): 1 gold, 2 extra gold with fishing boats
Whales (bonus): 1 food, 1 production 1 gold with fishing boats

Lighthouse: boosts all water tiles by 1 food
Harbor: boost all water tiles by 1 gold, adds trade route access
Seaport: boost all water tiles by 1 food, boost fishing boats by 2 hammers.

So:
Early game with just a lighthouse, coast tiles give 2 food 2 gold, same as a trading post on grassland.
Early-midgame with lighthouse and harbor, they give 2 food 2 gold, as good as grassland trading post next to river
Late-game with lighthouse/harbor/seaport, a regular coastal tile gives 3 food 3 gold.

 

[Seek]

Still no problem, just code ocean tiles to have lower yield (zero if necessary) without any buildings, and then have all the buildings boost all water tiles. So ocean tiles still aren't great, but coastal tiles can be very good with enough infrastructure.

So for example, we could have:
Ocean: 1 food
Coast: 1 food 2 gold
Fish (bonus): 1 food, 1 extra gold 1 extra food with fishing boats.
Pearls (bonus): 1 gold, 2 extra gold with fishing boats
Whales (bonus): 1 food, 1 production 1 gold with fishing boats

Lighthouse: boosts all water tiles by 1 food
Harbor: boost all water tiles by 1 gold, adds trade route access
Seaport: boost all water tiles by 1 food, boost fishing boats by 2 hammers.

So:
Early game with just a lighthouse, coast tiles give 2 food 2 gold, same as a trading post on grassland.
Early-midgame with lighthouse and harbor, they give 2 food 2 gold, as good as grassland trading post next to river
Late-game with lighthouse/harbor/seaport, a regular coastal tile gives 3 food 3 gold.

But there is nothing in the code that allows the differentiation between coastal water tiles and ocean water tiles! All water tiles - including lakes - are the same from it's point of view, so coastal waters are unmoddable. It's absurd, but true.

 

[Tomice]

Well, the game must recognize lakes - they have one more food IIRC?

But even if coast and ocean are the same, would buffing all water tiles to 2 gold 1 food without any building be overpowered? Remember how the tile aquiring automatic hardly ever takes water tiles - it will take quite a while until ocean tiles are even within your borders...

 

[Ahriman]

But there is nothing in the code that allows the differentiation between coastal water tiles and ocean water tiles

Huh, I misunderstood; I thought you were saying just that buildings could only give a bonus to all water tiles (ie you couldn't have a lighthouse that gave +1 food to coasts but not oceans), not that there is no longer such a thing as a coast terrain type and an ocean terrain type that could have different base tile yields.
So how does trireme-type restrictions work, if there is no Ocean terrain vs Coast terrain?

Well, the game must recognize lakes - they have one more food IIRC?

Agreed - lakes at least must be different?

But even if coast and ocean are the same, would buffing all water tiles to 2 gold 1 food without any building be overpowered?

Right, I don't see a huge problem here. And its easy to tweak the maintenance cost for the ocean buildings.

 

[Seek]

Huh, I misunderstood; I thought you were saying just that buildings could only give a bonus to all water tiles (ie you couldn't have a lighthouse that gave +1 food to coasts but not oceans), not that there is no longer such a thing as a coast terrain type and an ocean terrain type that could have different base tile yields.
So how does trireme-type restrictions work, if there is no Ocean terrain vs Coast terrain?

To clarify a few limitations of the current tools, these options are not possible:

• Non-stacking bonuses (+1 to rivers or coasts, but not both)
  [*]Building/tech bonuses to coastal water tiles (only option is "water" tiles, which includes coasts, oceans, and lakes)
• Inherent bonuses of fresh water or coast adjacency (only can boost near rivers, or boost coasts with specific improvements)
• Tech bonuses near coasts (only can boost fresh water with a tech)
• City/mountain/coast adjacency bonuses with tech (only can be from turn 1)

I remembered the second part, but not the first. It looks like coastal water tiles can indeed be given from turn 1, just not boosted later. Returning to your earlier post, Ahriman, essentially what you're proposing is a +1G on coastal water from the get-go and +1F with Seaport. Seems like a good starting place.

 

[Ahriman]

Returning to your earlier post, Ahriman, essentially what you're proposing is a +1G on coastal water from the get-go and +1F with Seaport

Yes, except that the fishing boat reduction is reduced, so fish tiles with boats still only give 3 gold.

 

[Tomice]

I remembered the second part, but not the first. It looks like coastal water tiles can indeed be given from turn 1, just not boosted later. Returning to your earlier post, Ahriman, essentially what you're proposing is a +1G on coastal water from the get-go and +1F with Seaport. Seems like a good starting place.

I agree, that would be an alternative to the river-like boost. Not that I think a coast-adjacency boost is a bad concept...

Ahriman suggested no gold on ocean tiles from start, I'd leave it as 1 gold, though. Ocean tiles would hardly ever be useful otherwise.

Not sure about the +1 food from seaport. Coast/ocean water tiles have always been designed to have enough food to feed themselves with lighhouse, even in Civ4. A food surplus from every water tile might be too much. I suggested one food on the lighthouse building in another thread, to allow a small surplus from plain water tiles. We could so this and add another 1 or 2 food on seaport.

 

[Ahriman]

Ahriman suggested no gold on ocean tiles from start, I'd leave it as 1 gold, though

Maybe, but I think its fine for ocean tiles to be inferior to non-desert/tundra land tiles, unless they have a bonus resource.

Coast/ocean water tiles have always been designed to have enough food to feed themselves with lighhouse, even in Civ4

They do in this proposal.

A food surplus from every water tile might be too much

Well, it depends on what the other improvement yields are going to be.
If a river-farm is producing 5 food with no buildings, it doesn't seem unreasonable for a coastline to give 3 food 3 gold with 3 expensive buildings that collectively have significant maintenance costs. The whole point was to make coast tiles better than non-river land tiles. If they're capped out at 2 food 3 gold (compared to 2 food 3 gold non-river grassland trading post), and even that requires 2 buildings, then I'm not sure they're desirable.

 

[Tomice]

You have a point about the 5-food farms and about the other stuff.

I agree coastal cities should be better than an inland city without river nearby, and maybe a bit weaker than cities with many river tiles. We should also consider yield changes from different eras, to not have the significance of water tiles shift too much from era to era (except there'd be a reason for it historically).

Ocean tiles may be weaker than grassland or not, i don't have a strong preference here. As long as coastal regions are an attractive place to settle and no longer best avoided, I'm fine.

This wiki article may be of interest, just in case anybody doubts the coast/inland balance in vanilla civ5 is broken:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlocked

"Historically, being landlocked was regarded as a disadvantageous position."
"Coastal regions tended to be wealthier and more heavily populated than inland ones."

 

[Thalassicus]

I've been thinking about something in my latest game . . .

Once we have enough luxuries to trade with partners and strategics to supply our army, what incentive do we really have to build at one location over another? High city-tile yields and low terrain yields are one factor that contributes to ICS-like casual city spam. There's not really much reason to settle at one location over another. How can we make this more interesting?

• Improve luxury/strategic yields?
• Add some benefit to additional resources, like Civ IV Corporations?
• ?
• ?
• ?

 

[Tomice]

Smaller amount of happiness (1-2 instead of 5) from surplus ressources maybe?

In my last game I had the oddity that 10 of 12 civs turned from firendly to guarded in three turns time without much provocation. Maybe it was a self-sustaining chain of "your friends found reason to denounce you?

Anyway, ressource trading and RA's can be a non-option quite suddenly... Maybe there should be some way to get extra happiness without willing trade partners?

 

[Thalassicus]

Hmm... sounds like it might be an interesting idea for a new policy! Perhaps something in the Commerce tree that interacts with major civ trade relations? The +1/luxury doesn't really affect the value of excess resources much, just lets us possibly trade away one we previously needed.

 

[Polycrates]

I've been thinking about something in my latest game . . .

Once we have enough luxuries to trade with partners and strategics to supply our army, what incentive do we really have to build at one location over another? High city-tile yields and low terrain yields are one factor that contributes to ICS-like casual city spam. There's not really much reason to settle at one location over another. How can we make this more interesting?

• Improve luxury/strategic yields?
• Add some benefit to additional resources, like Civ IV Corporations?
• ?
• ?
• ?

Well, some sites are still clearly better than others from a purely city-development perspective, I think. Would you agree with this assessment?
1) Freshwater trumps non-freshwater, quite substantially. Particularly when rivers are involved.
2) The smokehouse changes have made food specials something to get moderately excited about, I think. Though perhaps food specials need another kick in the pants at some tech or another.
3) There's no workshop improvements, so a site with plenty of hills/forests is imperative for a production city
4) A mountain is great for a science city
5) Coastal slightly trumps non-coastal, as long as there aren't too many sea tiles. Think this mod is moving in the right direction to get this balance right.
6) Certain resources get a nice bonus from buildings
7) Plains vs grassland still provides an interesting distinction
8) Natural wonders are really worth settling near
9) Maybe it's just that I play mostly large maps, but I find it's rare that I have as many copies of resources as I would like for trading. So I think extra copies are still an incentive.

I think the design rationale behind relatively weak tile outputs from resources is that it avoids too much luck of the draw with capital sites and those crucial early turns; as well as avoiding an ICS where you settle lots of deliberately small cities where just about every citizen is working a special tile. Powerful resource tiles do sort of favour small cities

That's why I really like what you've done with the smokehouse; it gives you a bit of a bonus at the outset for a good site, but really rewards you when you start actually investing in it. Likewise buildings like the Monastery, Mint and Forge - and for me it just really feels like a rewarding mechanic when you get these special bonuses from buildings. They promote picking a "perfect" site to maximise the number of those resources you can get in a particular city's radius, since the one copy of the building pays off more. And I think it helps empower special resources while still promoting well-developed cities.

So I'd perhaps suggest a few more bonuses like that, though I'd be inclined to add the bonuses to existing buildings. To throw out a few ideas off the top of my head:
The market seems like an obvious place to add gold from whatever (luxury resources, probably, or even livestock and bananas); perhaps the harbour to add gold for sea resources. Watermill could add an extra food from wheat resources, perhaps?
Marble seems like an obvious candidate to add culture somewhere (though it's already quite powerful, I guess). Perhaps the museum?
Theatre could add additional happiness for worked dye and silk
No idea if this is even possible, but if you really wanted to empower resources, you could perhaps even have a building that makes worked resources produce GPPs.

The Monastery is good, but there's currently no culture modifier building before the Hermitage and then Broadcast Towers; to better promote a focused culture city, if it gave e.g. 2 culture +25% culture in the city per wine or incense, that could really make it very very worthwhile.
Likewise the mint might give e.g. +25% gold output per gold or silver resource; that's powerful, but gold and silver should be powerful

And yeah maybe a few more bonuses to resources with tech too? So that as time goes on, resource specials stay powerful
e.g iron with Steel or Metallurgy
Livestock with Refrigeration
Furs and Ivory with Rifling
Gold with Electronics
Oil just needs a tile boost
etc

Beyond that, I don't know if it's worth it to maybe bring some of the tiles back in line with Civ IV yields?
Grassland hills->1f1h (though this is then entirely better than a flat plain, by virtue of versatility)
Plains hills->0f2h
Desert hills (which are currently far better than flat desert)->1h
Floodplains->3f (I know there's no health in play, but it's maybe balanced by the worse desert hills)
Somehow weaken jungle a bit - perhaps require that trading posts chop it down (so you don't get the gold and the university science bonus)