Inca

[Gothic_Empire]

Good sum up! Is this happening to you in every city all the time, in some cities every game or just some cities sometimes?

The balancing thing is not in that you can use your uniques when you like, but that it gives you enough push up to stay competitive.

The problem is that sheep spawning next to mountains is common, and flood plains / wheat spawning next to hills is (relatively) rare, so the perfect storm of Inca Terrain is pretty hard to come across, and certainly harder to find than sea resources.

There are certainly a few usable hexes on any map, and sometimes a glut of them, but the most common experience I have is essentially summed up in that image. "Yay, a terrace farm can go -- nope. Sheep."

 

[Funak]

The problem is that sheep spawning next to mountains is common, and flood plains / wheat spawning next to hills is (relatively) rare, so the perfect storm of Inca Terrain is pretty hard to come across, and certainly harder to find than sea resources.

There are certainly a few usable hexes on any map, and sometimes a glut of them, but the most common experience I have is essentially summed up in that image. "Yay, a terrace farm can go -- nope. Sheep."

Same thing for everyone there, really. random resources spawning to mess up your Eki adjacency, 3 luxuries and 4 wheat spawning on your river messing up your polder placements. That one perfect coast tile, adjacent to 4 different sea-resources and a deer spawn on it so you can't build a feitoria.
This is mostly just life, and we just have to deal with it.

 

[tu_79]

The problem is that sheep spawning next to mountains is common, and flood plains / wheat spawning next to hills is (relatively) rare, so the perfect storm of Inca Terrain is pretty hard to come across, and certainly harder to find than sea resources.

There are certainly a few usable hexes on any map, and sometimes a glut of them, but the most common experience I have is essentially summed up in that image. "Yay, a terrace farm can go -- nope. Sheep."

It's also frustrating many other things, like when you have a perfect Polynesian coast (2 connected coast triangles) and suddenly coal spawns in the middle. You are facing a challenge and part of it is how to deal with it. You may argue that this is too difficult or frustrating to be fun, though. (More often than not, the polynesian coasts are straight, giving just a couple of tiles +2 adjancecy bonus, that's why I keep looking for better coasts or even settling 1 tile inland, sacrificing the extra food from sea tiles(bye bye lighthouses) for extra adjacent moais).

One thing you can do as Inca is settling all your new cities over resourcey hills, other than trying to settle near hilly regions.

Another thing that can be argued is that an improvement that just gives more food is not so amazing (the 'move faster over hills' is), specially since specialists cost unhappiness, and that it cannot be built almost everywhere like Shoshone's encampments. Funak has complained several times that Inca's main fault is that it decays severily in Modern age.

I suppose we can reverse the disliking for your sheeps if the Terrace Farm where to give a flat +1 or +1 to adjacent animal resources too. It would be as difficult to place as now, but it would reward a little more.

 

[Funak]

Another thing that can be argued is that an improvement that just gives more food is not so amazing (the 'move faster over hills' is), specially since specialists cost unhappiness, and that it cannot be built almost everywhere like Shoshone's encampments. Funak has complained several times that Inca's main fault is that it decays severily in Modern age.

I don't even remember complaining about this , that said I do complain a lot about a lot of things so it's probably true.

I think Inca's main flaw is that the complete dependence on mountains to make use of the terrace farms. Mountains aren't the most common feature, and even when the mountain is present the surrounding terrain is rarely optimal. There is just way too big a margin of error for my tastes.
I also dislike the way that mountain-yields were handled, mainly because my mountains never form chains like that but usually dot the place instead leaving them as 1f/g tiles, which are definitely not worth working.

I suppose we can reverse the disliking for your sheeps if the Terrace Farm where to give a flat +1 or +1 to adjacent animal resources too. It would be as difficult to place as now, but it would reward a little more.

Doesn't sound like this would actually solve any of their problems, it just sounds like more RNG.

 

[tu_79]

Doesn't sound like this would actually solve any of their problems, it just sounds like more RNG.

Two different sets of randomness makes it a little more reliable.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

I suppose we can reverse the disliking for your sheeps if the Terrace Farm where to give a flat +1 or +1 to adjacent animal resources too. It would be as difficult to place as now, but it would reward a little more.

Oof. I'm with Funak. That just makes the randomness more random. And it would be more frustrating too, simply because we'd be able to see what the maps had *almost* given us.

At the end of the day, the changes Japan got were pretty awesome and pulled them away from being completely dependent on sea resources.

Right now, the Inca are completely dependent on (1 - starting near mountains that (2 - are clustered together, as well as (3 - starting near sheepless hills that hug fresh-water or farmable flatlands.

And if 1 science on a spammable UI is bad, per Funak's talk of the Maya UI, a not-even-spammable 1 food with RNG adjacency bonuses is debatably worse.

i hate to say it, because I really, really like the Incan UA, but it feels like it has the same problem that got edited out of Japan.

 

[Gazebo]

Oof. I'm with Funak. That just makes the randomness more random. And it would be more frustrating too, simply because we'd be able to see what the maps had *almost* given us.

At the end of the day, the changes Japan got were pretty awesome and pulled them away from being completely dependent on sea resources.

Right now, the Inca are completely dependent on (1 - starting near mountains that (2 - are clustered together, as well as (3 - starting near sheepless hills that hug fresh-water or farmable flatlands.

And if 1 science on a spammable UI is bad, per Funak's talk of the Maya UI, a not-even-spammable 1 food with RNG adjacency bonuses is debatably worse.

i hate to say it, because I really, really like the Incan UA, but it feels like it has the same problem that got edited out of Japan.

apples and oranges. Japan was edited because it was internally incoherent (RNG at sea yet a land war empire). Not same as Inca. Inca more like Polynesia or Iroquois.

G

 

[Gothic_Empire]

apples and oranges.
G

I'd like to point out that both of these are fruits.

 

[Funak]

I'd like to point out that both of these are fruits.

Yeah, never really liked that expression much either.
Something like 'Apples and Rocketsurgery' would be better

 

[Gazebo]

I'd like to point out that both of these are fruits.

Ah but they taste like chicken.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

New Version - September 23th (23/9 because American date system is stupid)

Oranges removed from the game
Instead of Oranges, you can get Diapers

No base Food
+1 Happiness

 

[tu_79]

The problem seems to be that with some maps, Terrace Farms are ok, but with Communitas it's very difficult to benefit from it. So if we make Terrace Farm stronger, they may be overpowered in other maps.

The only sensitive solution here seems to be allowing Terrace Farms be built over cattle (sheep) resources, then (even if I dislike it somehow, but I cannot foresee another solution).

 

[Funak]

The problem seems to be that with some maps, Terrace Farms are ok, but with Communitas it's very difficult to benefit from it. So if we make Terrace Farm stronger, they may be overpowered in other maps.

The only sensitive solution here seems to be allowing Terrace Farms be built over cattle (sheep) resources, then (even if I dislike it somehow, but I cannot foresee another solution).

To be perfectly fair, communtias spawns resources on pretty much all tiles, so it's not really that weird that it's a bad match.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Ah but they taste like chicken.

What kind of fruit do you eat!?

 

[tu_79]

What kind of fruit do you eat!?

Sadly, in developed countries, it is almost impossible to find fruit that actually tastes like fruit in groceries. You have to grow it yourself and take it mature, but that's incredibly expensive. There are just few exceptions: melons and watermelons, bananas, pears, figs, and sometimes grapes and cherries. I enjoy having a couple of fig trees at work, and we get to eat matured in the tree figs for two months every year. Figs in grocery just cannot compare.

 

[Funak]

Sadly, in developed countries, it is almost impossible to find fruit that actually tastes like fruit in groceries.

Developed countries don't have grocery stores, or what are you trying to say?

 

[tu_79]

Developed countries don't have grocery stores, or what are you trying to say?

Ehm, that when I go to a grocery to buy fruit, it is almost always immature, tasteless. And I care to go to specialized fruit stores, not just any supermarket.

 

[Gazebo]

Ehm, that when I go to a grocery to buy fruit, it is almost always immature, tasteless. And I care to go to specialized fruit stores, not just any supermarket.

Fruit in New England is always immature. My bananas always call me a noob and make jokes about my mom'a sex life.

G

 

[Funak]

Anyways how do we deal with the Terrace-fruitpie?

I'm still for somewhat limiting the RNG by changing the TF to receive a (larger) bonus for being built next to a mountain instead of the current bonus for every nearby mountain. This would at least limit those extreme situations where you have a hill surrounded by 5 mountains and it spawns a sheep there.

 

[Gazebo]

Anyways how do we deal with the Terrace-fruitpie?

I'm still for somewhat limiting the RNG by changing the TF to receive a (larger) bonus for being built next to a mountain instead of the current bonus for every nearby mountain. This would at least limit those extreme situations where you have a hill surrounded by 5 mountains and it spawns a sheep there.

A higher base yield would probably suffice. It is a rarer UI and I kinda prefer it they way.

G