Improvements

[Thalassicus]

Thank you for the thoughtful comments, I agree with everything you've said and I'm glad city placement feels more meaningful with the mod.

To be honest, I didn't realize how much I'm taking for granted by now!

The smokehouse for example... wasn't even really thinking of it. Your analysis of how it affects city placement convinced me of your point about the Harbor, I really like the idea of it interacting with resources!

What I could do is instead of harbor as +1 on all water tiles, do +2 on sea resources.

• Rewards optimal city placement.
• Precedent with the Seaport.
• More powerful when resources are available, due to concentrated effect.
• I recently added Ahriman's suggestion of +1 on the coast terrain type. It makes sense to rather than simply have that as a pure addition, make it a move away from the harbor.
• Overall the move is a slight buff to coastal regions compared to balance-combined v1.08, since it's the same bonus but available sooner.
• This gives room to buff the Harbor again without overpowering it, with a bonus on sea resources.
• Previously I'd avoided resource-specific buffs for the Harbor because most sea resources are luxuries, and luxuries didn't seem to need much of a buff. It's been a few months however, and with my new mindset on city placement decisions, I'm starting to feel an extra +1 here or there wouldn't hurt. It's halfway through the tech tree, after all.

I like the idea of watermill improving wheat too!

• It's an otherwise unaltered resource.
• The reason I'd left it alone until now is wheat was already the most powerful bonus resource in vanilla. It does feel a little bland nowadays though, now that I've had time to let everything really sink in.
• 1 is generally less valuable than 1 so perhaps adding 1 on wheat would make sense, limiting the effect of the buff.
• Logically speaking, the smokehouse improves food supply, while the watermill might let the farmer produce more grain than needed and sell the excess for a profit. Wheat also does tend to appear near water sources, like rivers.

So to break it down by resource... these already exist:

• Incense, Wine
  2 Monastery
• Gold, Silver
  3 Mint
• Fish, Pearls, Whales
  2 Seaport
• Cow, Deer, Sheep, Fish
  1 Smokehouse
• Bananas
  1 (resource itself is better)
• Horses
  11 Stable
• Iron, Coal, Aluminum, Uranium
  1 with Machinery (improvement)

And we could add more!

• Wheat, Spices, Sugar
  1 Watermill
  1 Windmill
  (Split in two because these are situational)
• Pearls, Whales
  2 Harbor
• Furs, Ivory, Gems
  2 Market
• Cotton, Silk, Dye
  1 Opera House (chose this since Theater's already quite good)
• Marble
  2 Museum
• Oil
  4 Combustion (improvement)

These seem minor enough they should have a limited impact on a grand scale, but add a lot of variety to landscape-based build orders on a small scale.

I understand the reasons behind altering base terrain too, I like your resource idea more though since it will have a smaller, but interesting effect.

 

[Ahriman]

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)

I once advocated some of these, but now I'm not sure. With flavor mapscripts, these kinds of things can severely mess up balance. Some civs seem more likely to start near deserts, others near plains, etc.
And other times it will just happen randomly.
Do we really want to mess up the balance like this?
I fear we may be solving a non-existent problem in a way that may cause significant side effects, particularly given existing terrain improvement AI and the like.

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)

I'd do this. Jungle shouldn't be a superior terrain type.

 

[Txurce]

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.

Hard to argue with this.

 

[Ahriman]

Hard to argue with this.

I'd balance it by upping the maintenance cost on the seaport (and harbor if necessary).

 

[Txurce]

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?

Continuing to reward developing food resources is one way to do this, as subsequent posts point out. But speaking more broadly, once a civ has all the resources it wants, where to settle a new city becomes a strategic choice, like filling in gaps for combined-city defense. Beyond this, I'm not sure it should matter. To me, we are speaking of a civ that basically wants to spread like a weed as a way to dominate the earth. A weed doesn't care where it grows, and it doesn't need to.

 

[Buckets]

• Incense, Wine
  2 Monastery
• Gold, Silver, Gems
  3 Mint
• Cow, Deer, Sheep, Fish
  1 Smokehouse
• Horses
  11 Stable
• Aluminum, Iron, Coal, Uranium
  1 with Machinery (improvement)

And we could add more!

• Wheat, Spices, Sugar
  1 Watermill
  1 Windmill
  (Split in two because these are situational)
• Pearls, Whales
  2 Harbor
• Furs, Ivory, Banana
  2 Market
• Cotton, Silk, Dye
  1 Opera House (chose this since Theater's already quite good)
• Marble
  2 Museum
• Oil
  4 Combustion (improvement)

That's funny. I've had almost the exact same ideas for my own mod.

New
• Prison: req 1 iron. Gives +2.
• Police: req 1 horse. Gives +2.
• Airport: req 1 oil, gives 1 per 4 pop.
• Auction House: +2 +2 to pearls/gems/marble
• Abattoir: +1, +1 cow/sheep/deer
Changed
• Broadcast tower: req 1 iron.
• Theatre: +2 for silk/cotton/dye.
• Stable: +2 to horses
• Barracks: +1 to fur
• Reseach lab: +5 to uranium, aluminum, whales
• Granary: +1 wheat
• Forge: +2 iron
• Market: +1 spices/sugar/banana

... Among other tweaks. The idea is that every resource has a relationship with a building and ancient resources stay relevant. Somehow it just feels really right and gives you extra incentive to consider city pacement and development.

I think you should definitely implement your initial take on it and see how it goes.

 

[Seek]

Thank you for the thoughtful comments, I agree with everything you've said and I'm glad city placement feels more meaningful with the mod.

To be honest, I didn't realize how much I'm taking for granted by now!

The smokehouse for example... wasn't even really thinking of it. Your analysis of how it affects city placement convinced me of your point about the Harbor, I really like the idea of it interacting with resources!

What I could do is instead of harbor as +1 on all water tiles, do +2 on sea resources.

• Rewards optimal city placement.
• Precedent with the Seaport.
• More powerful when resources are available, due to concentrated effect.
• I recently added Ahriman's suggestion of +1 on the coast terrain type. It makes sense to rather than simply have that as a pure addition, make it a move away from the harbor.
• Overall the move is a slight buff to coastal regions compared to balance-combined v1.08, since it's the same bonus but available sooner.
• This gives room to buff the Harbor again without overpowering it, with a bonus on sea resources.
• Previously I'd avoided resource-specific buffs for the Harbor because most sea resources are luxuries, and luxuries didn't seem to need much of a buff. It's been a few months however, and with my new mindset on city placement decisions, I'm starting to feel an extra +1 here or there wouldn't hurt. It's halfway through the tech tree, after all.

I like the idea of watermill improving wheat too!

• It's an otherwise unaltered resource.
• The reason I'd left it alone until now is wheat was already the most powerful bonus resource in vanilla. It does feel a little bland nowadays though, now that I've had time to let everything really sink in.
• 1 is generally less valuable than 1 so perhaps adding 1 on wheat would make sense, limiting the effect of the buff.
• Logically speaking, the smokehouse improves food supply, while the watermill might let the farmer produce more grain than needed and sell the excess for a profit. Wheat also does tend to appear near water sources, like rivers.

So to break it down by resource... these already exist:

• Incense, Wine
  2 Monastery
• Gold, Silver, Gems
  3 Mint
• Cow, Deer, Sheep, Fish
  1 Smokehouse
• Horses
  11 Stable
• Aluminum, Iron, Coal, Uranium
  1 with Machinery (improvement)

And we could add more!

• Wheat, Spices, Sugar
  1 Watermill
  1 Windmill
  (Split in two because these are situational)
• Pearls, Whales
  2 Harbor
• Furs, Ivory, Banana
  2 Market
• Cotton, Silk, Dye
  1 Opera House (chose this since Theater's already quite good)
• Marble
  2 Museum
• Oil
  4 Combustion (improvement)

These seem minor enough they should have a limited impact on a grand scale, but add a lot of variety to landscape-based build orders on a small scale.

I understand the reasons behind altering base terrain too, I like your resource idea more though since it will have a smaller, but interesting effect.

Excellent, these proposals look great. I'm a big fan of dynamic buildings - aside from being more fun, they're a good incentive for more city specialization.

Re: Wheat - What if the Watermill gave a small % bonus (say 20%) to growth with wheat, and the Aqueduct had a non-freshwater requirement? So you couldn't build them both in the same city. This would mess with the Baths NW and I'm not sure how to reconcile it - I don't suppose NWs have an option for either/or building reqs so that it could be built after Aqueducts *or* Watermills were built in all cities?

Re: Jungles - why not remove the (kind of preposterous) science bonus from the Uni and move it to Penicillin? At that point you could add it to the base terrain without worry that it'd be OP, since Unis will already be built in most all cities anyway. Could also buff them to more than 2 to give incentive not to chop jungle tiles at the beginning. As it is of course Unis usually come so quickly there is almost never a reason to chop jungles, and this way you'd be forced to live with them for most of the game.

Note - ATM, Mint does not affect Gems. Should it, or should another building? Market could become too powerful with them as well, but maybe Ivory could be buffed by the Circus instead.

 

[Txurce]

Re: Jungles - why not remove the (kind of preposterous) science bonus from the Uni and move it to Penicillin? At that point you could add it to the base terrain without worry that it'd be OP, since Unis will already be built in most all cities anyway. Could also buff them to more than 2 to give incentive not to chop jungle tiles at the beginning. As it is of course Unis usually come so quickly there is almost never a reason to chop jungles, and this way you'd be forced to live with them for most of the game.

This is fantastic.

 

[Ahriman]

Re: Wheat - What if the Watermill gave a small % bonus (say 20%) to growth with wheat, and the Aqueduct had a non-freshwater requirement? So you couldn't build them both in the same city.

I'd prefer to keep them separate. The aqueduct is important in establishing large cities, a river city should still be able to grow large even if it doesn't have wheat.
I'm a bit nervous about watermill and wheat synergy too.
Rivers are already good. Wheat is sometimes placed in areas not near rivers, to make those zones more attractive. I don't think we need to buff rivers more.

Re: Jungles - why not remove the (kind of preposterous) science bonus from the Uni and move it to Penicillin? At that point you could add it to the base terrain without worry that it'd be OP, since Unis will already be built in most all cities anyway. Could also buff them to more than 2 to give incentive not to chop jungle tiles at the beginning.

Very good idea.

 

[Tomice]

I'd prefer to keep them separate. The aqueduct is important in establishing large cities, a river city should still be able to grow large even if it doesn't have wheat.
I'm a bit nervous about watermill and wheat synergy too.
Rivers are already good. Wheat is sometimes placed in areas not near rivers, to make those zones more attractive. I don't think we need to buff rivers more.

I feel the same.

I also agree the power of jungle trading posts is weird. The positive thing is that at least a few of them are left by the modern age, unlike civ4. Seek's suggestion might be very good if it leaves enough reason not to chop every jungle to get potentially more valuable plains.

 

[Tomice]

Slightly off-topic, but I thought I'd put it here sice Thal uses/recommends "TP-redesigned"

I created an alpha-stage TP graphics mod in addition to Poncratias' "TP-redesigned". I'd be happy if you tell me what you think!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10106144#post10106144

 

[Thalassicus]

Looks great Tomice! I look forward to using it.

I've been revising improvement bonuses now that some of the intended goals (such as boosting growth and production) have been helped in other ways (like the Aqueduct and Workshop). Some people have said these improvement bonuses are too early, others have said they're too late. To reach a compromise, and following the precedent of the farm tech split, I've completed this for the next version:


Access to water for irrigation, trade, or water-powered machinery benefits improvements in the Medieval era.

• +1 on freshwater Farms with Civil Service.
• +1 on freshwater Trading Posts with Compass.
• +1 on freshwater Mines and Lumbermills with Machinery.

Improvements without water access advance at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

• +1 on non-freshwater Farms with Fertilizer.
• +1 on non-freshwater Trading Posts with Economics.
• +1 on non-freshwater Mines with Dynamite.
• +1 on non-freshwater Lumbermills with Steam Power.

This also ensures individual improvement types stay relatively balanced between one another, and rivers are only advantageous for a short time period (the Compass and Economics techs in particular are very close).

It's not possible to do stuff like this for river/non river, so I feel freshwater/non-freshwater is a reasonably close compromise. It does make sense realistically. Most lakes have small river networks leading into them, even if not indicated on big maps, and these smaller rivers can be used for irrigation/trade/power. Also, since lakes are relatively rare on most map scripts it shouldn't have a significance difference in gameplay.

 

[Ahriman]

Seems like a reasonable design. You're losing any advantage of lumbermills over mines, but I'm not sure its that big a deal.

Lets test it.

 

[bobbyboy29]

Thal. Resource yield changes linked to buildings look great. Just one small note, you don't seem to take into account the +25% that marble gives to wonder production in a nearby city, so that resource probably doesn't need to be buffed. Otherwise great job!

 

[Tomice]

That's a very clear design, though I found the old version regarding rivers (only TPs and farms are better next to fresh water) good as well, maybe even better. But I'm open to testing stuff.

I do admit rivers were very important for log driving historically, so this makes perfect sense. I don't think mines profited a lot from freshwater access, but I'm not sure?

_______________________

On the topic of coast vs. inland vs. riverside balance:

I do admit the coastal adjacency mechanic had bad results, thanks to Ahriman for finding the problem. But as of dev 10911, coasts are very underwhelming again.

Coastal water without ressource has a maximum output of 2:civ5gold: 2:civ5food: (already with the lighthouse, no further improvement), making it equal to river-less grassland TPs. That's somewhat useful, but far from good terrain.

I believe normal water tiles should either get 1 additional food or gold with the harbor. The harbor itself has an questionable effect (the trade route might often not be needed, since you need roads for unit movement anyway, and the 25% ship production is rarely necessary), so buffing it would not be unreasonable.

This way, water tiles would either be a very good way to earn money or a good alternative to get a food surplus if no river is nearby.

The ratio behind it is that coastal cities should be a bit stronger than inland cities without rivers, but still a bit weaker than river-dominated cities, as it was historically AFAIK.




When I look for a spot to build a city, I look for LRs and SRs first, of course. Then for rivers, lakes and food ressources, assuring that the city can grow. Next for enough pruduction to build the necessary buildings. Finally also for the possibility to build a lot of stuff that depends on terrain (ships, watermills, parks, observatories,...).

Grassland and 1.09.11 water tiles don't help much in any of these points. Their only advantage is that they can feed themselves. Now that you boost non-river TPs with astronomy, water tiles really leave a lot to be desired. Also, grassland is more versatile since it can be used to give a food surplus (especially after fertilizer).

Personally, I think 3 food with harbor would be best, as there's already a lot of ways to earn money.

 

[Ahriman]

That's a very clear design, though I found the old version regarding rivers (only TPs and farms are better next to fresh water) good as well, maybe even better.

Yeah, I tend to lean this way, I thought the buff for lumbermills at machinery and mines at steam power was good design.
I'd rather that hill-mines capped out at 4 production, not 5.

I believe normal water tiles should either get 1 additional food or gold with the harbor

I agree that harbor should give +1 gold to water tiles, so a lighthouse + harbor coast tile gives 2 food 3 gold.
+1 food instead of gold for the harbor also seems feasible.

If necessary, boost harbor maintenance up to 4 gold.

 

[Tomice]

Then again, a four-maintaince harbor would possibly mean -1:civ5gold: on every coastal tile in practice, since a city might not work more than 4 water tiles.

If the trade route is not necessary, the harbor has a lot of maintainance for no effect.

Do you think that people would avoid building roads if harbors had less than 3 maintainance? To me, thy have a lot of military benefit, so I usually still build them as long as the distance is not too big.
__________________

About improvement effects, I meant I was happy with the way 1.09.5 handled them (except coastal gold, which was wrong). I guess you mean another version?

 

[Ahriman]

Then again, a four-maintaince harbor would possibly mean -1:civ5gold: on every coastal tile in practice, since a city might not work more than 4 water tiles.

I think you should pay something for the trade route value and the naval production bonus.

Do you think that people would avoid building roads if harbors had less than 3 maintainance?

I think people will often connect a city with a harbor rather than roads, if its far enough away, if they were going to build the harbor anyway, if they were never likely to move units too or from that city, etc.

About improvement effects, I meant I was happy with the way 1.09.5 handled them (except coastal gold, which was wrong). I guess you mean another version?

Sorry, I've lost track of which version was which.
I quite liked the version where mine was +1 hammer, +1 hammer with steam power while lumber mill was +1 hammer, +1 hammer at machinery. And no extra hammer bonus for fresh water.

 

[Thalassicus]

@bobbyboy29
The culture buff for marble occurs so late in the game I don't think it matters whether it's there or not. I just added it for consistency: all resources have an effect somewhere.


@Tomice
Mining with water has been common in history when rock in mineral veins is too loose to safely tunnel. A method of flood-driven mining called hushing had large-scale use by the Romans, and there's also placer mining (the use of sluices, made famous from gold prospecting during gold rushes).

The harbor does give 1 merchant slot, and now +2 on pearls+whales as well. With any of these criteria met the harbor pays for its maintenance:

• Pearl/whale resource and market+bank.
• Two pearl/whale resources and no market+bank.
• Specialist economy policies acquired.
• >3 tiles to next city and no military need for a road.
• Railroad tech researched... instant +50% from all harbors! Railroads are very expensive at 2/tile.

In addition, a city can build a single lighthouse/harbor/etc and work an indefinite number of water tiles without the need for workers to build trading posts. That either saves time because the worker can be doing other things, or saves money because the empire needs one less worker.

Water resources also have extremely high yields. Fish caps at 5242, which I think is more than anything else. Sea resources just take longer to max out than land resources. While non-resource water is inferior to many land tiles, resource-water is much higher, and concentrated yields are typically more valuable.

The reason I like the harbor with specialized bonuses is 1) makes sense, as major harbors are typically built where the landscape favors it 2) keeps the distinction between the generalist-Lighthouse and specialist-Harbor separate. I had +1 from water tiles on the harbor for a few months but find the new incarnation more fun. If we were to add flat bonuses to water tiles, I'd rather put them somewhere else.


@Ahriman
I might have made a typo, but mines follow this progression:

• 2 base
• +1 improvement
• +1 from tech (machinery or dynamite, depending on wet/dry, respectively)

If you're thinking about things with different numbers (mines at 5 max), that might have been why your statement about lumbermills puzzled me. Mines cap at 4, while lumbermills are 13. I think the value of 1 vs 1 is close enough it'd depend on what the city has access to on other tiles. A city surrounded by rough terrain and few bonus resources will probably value the 1 higher.

The place lumbermills really shine, however, is due to the fact forests can appear on flatland or hills. When a city's surrounded by flatland, those forests become an invaluable source of production.

 

[Ahriman]

Fish caps at 5242,

That is way too high, I'd take some of those out.
If you boost the base coast gold yield, I'd reduce the fish yield to compensate.

And I don't see why they should get science?

The reason I like the harbor with specialized bonuses is 1) makes more sense, as major harbors are typically built where the landscape favors it 2) keeps the distinction between the generalist-Lighthouse and specialist-Harbor separate.

This seems like a reasonable option, but I thought the general idea was to make coasts everywhere more valuable, so that with the appropriate infrastructure coast tiles were 2 food 3 gold. If coasts are only good where they have bonus tiles, then we aren't really making coasts much more valuable; coasts are already good when they have bonus tiles. I thought the goal was to make all coastal settlement slightly more valuable.

I might have made a typo, but mines follow this progression:
2 base
+1 improvement
+1 from tech (machinery or dynamite, depending on wet/dry, respectively)

Ok, I misunderstood, I thought the bonuses at machinery and dynamite stacked.
My bad; reading comprehension fail.

I still like the design a little where lumbermills get boosted before mines, to give you an incentive not to chop forest-hills, but its not a big deal.