Initial thoughts

[albie_123]

Going to post some impressions as I play through my second game. Will edit this post a lot as I come back to it.

If I seem negative or harsh, it's intentional - I'm trying to be as nitpicky as possible. In general, I loved my first game, and feel this expansion is brilliant overall, but now it's time to think like an engineer and critique the hell out of it.

I'm playing on King difficulty (apparently the most-played by GEM users, at least when we had that poll) and Standard map size.

Spoiler :

1. Good move making lump sum gold trades require a declaration of friendship but considering the low GPT in early game with the economy changes it really limits early luxury trade.

2. Ruins seem to be all over the place, maybe that was always the case without GEM's map generation, but either way they need to be toned down.

3. Resources in general are placed in strange and seemingly random ways, at least compared to GEM's.

4. Desert and Snow need to be changed regarding movement speed ASAP, the whole map seems so much less varied and interesting because of it. Desert was a scary thing to fight on, especially if you didn't have many ranged units. Now it's the same as everywhere else.

5. AI isn't clearing barb camps.

6. Piety being available in Ancent Era needs to be discussed - it seems like the player has too many options now, especially when we make the policies more interesing.

7. Ugh, "restore health" promotion, no thanks.

8. Having no opportunities again is quite interesting. It's a shame to see the variety and fun of them go, but at the same time I have so much more gold available to purchase buildings and units. We'll need to balance this with the new economy if we reintroduce opportunities (which I hope we do).

9. Resources need to be shown earlier.

10. Diplomatic options (Open borders, RAs, etc.) need to be opened earlier. When considered with point 1. of this post, it means that you basically have no interaction with Civs in early game beyond war.

11. Village / Trading Post should be available earlier.

12. Capitals are once again much more powerful and relevant than other cities.

13. Does trading have any effect on diplomacy? It seems it should, I would figure you'd be less likely to war with a nation you are making good money from. Trading with City States should also benefit diplomacy if possible.

14. The AI seems to have abso-friggin'-lutely no idea how to use trade routes. They trade with cities that give them less gold AND me more gold which are less protected than the alternatives. They trade along routes likely to be ambushed with no protective units whatsoever. They trade with nations that by all accounts are about to declare war on them and ones that they themselves have backstabbed. It's ridiculous, and yet again, incredibly disappointing. Firaxis has put in a new feature without teaching the AI how to do it. Reeks of GaK naval combat all over again. This issue alone has made my response to this expansion go from 'utterly brilliant' to 'pretty good'.

15. Is a tenet also considered a policy? The tooltips need to be made more clear in general. Please consider reimplementing your amazing tooltip mechanics soon Thal.

16. I've got a ton of iron but no need to use it on iron units since other units perform their roles much better in almost every regard.

17. I know others have reported the opposite, but I'm seeing no city turnover from AI conquests at turn 200, city states included. In GEM, I'd at least see a few cities being taken, and possibly even a capital captured.

18. East India Company has a super-boring effect.

19. Mints and Banks are far less valuable.

20. Minor issue but having Gold available to build at the start of the game could be either really good or really bad with Brave New World. Something for the beta, I think.

21. Trade routes basically all come out from one city, unless that city happens to be inland, in which case they come out of two cities.

 

[mystikx21]

1) I tend to agree gold is pretty crippled early. Really puts a premium on trade routes and luxuries, and clearing barbarians. I think moving villages somewhat earlier is about the only major shift here I'd consider at this point however. Minor tweaks to balance luxuries or natural wonders as imbalanced start locations (I have gold! from civ4 start problem).

2) One thing that was in VEM/GEM (I think) was that it cleared ruins that were relatively near AI start locations and randomly assigned rewards (not like, they get a couple free techs, but like some free science, gold, and culture in random amounts). It's really easy to pick off a couple ruins by the AI in a typical vanilla start because it can randomly miss them without much effort. I was more worried about the dud rewards than that there are too many.

3) Second that resource generation and spread and map seeding needs some help.

4) Seconded. Easy to change.

5) They have been doing it either out of random movement or because some CS assigned it as a quest. But it doesn't appear to be a high enough priority to clear the camps in the jungles or hiding at the top of the map for them. Big problem, especially if we were to increase the barbarian rewards in honor or from camp clearing. There was already an advantage in "barbarian farming" as an early strategy in GEM for gold, culture and XP, or even in vanilla (just less rewarding). There doesn't need to be a barbarian clearing gap as well at the bottom of the mine shaft.

6) I think this was probably necessary to make the tree viable. But the consequence appears to be reducing tradition or honor too much to make them that interesting (Liberty didn't get much change from either GEM or GK except you can now build the Pyramids and Republic still sucks in vanilla). I don't think it is required to take it in the ancient era (except on a high difficulty if you really want a religion a little faster), so much as to come back to it in the classical when you already have a religion in motion and want to start using it. You can start filling it out sooner now in preparation for that, and it does mean that occasionally one doesn't have to use the Liberty finisher on a prophet. You can use this on that instead and use a liberty finisher for something else.

7) Ditto. Smaller heal on promotion effect from civ4/GEM was much better. Move the unit away to heal or even suicide it (on defence or attack) to help another unit with more XP already was almost always better than healing it and wasting a promotion.

8) I'd agree opportunities can make a come back once the economy changes are clearer... but they're also not limited to using gold to spend on them. I am pretty sure they can use faith, or science, or even culture. They're pretty flexible.

9) Easy to do. Looks to be in CEP already.

10) Much of the "diplomatic options" are the WC. If this is referring to the earlier RAs, open borders, that's an option. It does get a little boring to just do DoF and a few gold trades for luxuries and then ignore them.

 

[mitsho]

Ha, well I'm gonna start with playing the Scramble for Africa scenario, after all I can't play it afterwards with all the good changes anymore...

I'd say Piety belongs to a big overhaul of Religion which should be one of the earlier things done (since we left it alone pretty much for G&K). The thing I'd want there is to split a Mysticism tech away from Pottery (and put Stonehenge on Pottery for gameplay purposes f.e.).

Btw. Is it possible to allow civs trading Science or Culture yields?

 

[xInVicTuSx]

While I'm finding the Ideology policies pretty powerful, if highly specialized, the penalty seems a bit rough for being in the minority. I picked autocracy while most of the world was order... not only does everyone hate me now, but I got a huge -32 happiness penalty I have to deal with. I've dealt with the happiness problem by now (about 35 turns later) but I'm doubting how worth it it is... although i did get a free policy for being the second to choose it.

 

[albie_123]

I quite like the idea. It means that diplomacy really matters.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

I like the diplomatic consequences, but the happiness hit felt a bit much, the amount that is.

 

[Ahriman]

1. Good move making lump sum gold trades require a declaration of friendship but considering the low GPT in early game with the economy changes it really limits early luxury trade.

...which I think is a good thing. Makes caravans and trade routes more important.

5. AI isn't clearing barb camps.

This is definitely an issue. They're actually worse than before.

6. Piety being available in Ancent Era needs to be discussed

I like it, it gets you a chance to get a religion even on high difficulty levels. Effects need to be balanced overall, of course.

8. Having no opportunities again is quite interesting

I'd prefer that we leave them out. I never found them very interesting, the AI didn't handle them very well, and they could be quite unbalancing.

9. Resources need to be shown earlier.

Agreed.

10. Diplomatic options (Open borders, RAs, etc.) need to be opened earlier.

Not sure. You can still trade for gpt. Early open borders was just a way to soak 1gpt away from the AI.

12. Capitals are once again much more powerful and relevant than other cities.

Inevitable I think, given how trade routes work, and how maritime city states work, and the generally slower expansion.

I quite like the idea. It means that diplomacy really matters.

Me too; it makes tourism valuable and meaningful, and it means that unless you're making a lot of culture/tourism, you should stick with the pack on ideology.

 

[albie_123]

You could be right on 1., and 8. is a matter of opinion obviously, but I think 12. is anything but inevitable. Trade routes will maybe need to be balanced in that respect but that should be happening anyway.

 

[Tomice]

About #21: What about a limited number of trade routes per city?

It might be a bit too fundamental as a change for this early stage, but it would surely help to make other cities than the capital relevant. It could also help to make multiple port cities desirable (Although Thal is convinced we'll want multiple coastal cities anyway, I still fear there might be an issue here).
"Allows an additional TR in this city" could also be a very powerful and interesting building or (national) wonder effect.

The problem is the very limited number of allowed trade routes. If we have a limit of 2 per city and more can be added by buildings/wonders, we have hardly any limit at all (only 4-5 TR's are allowed until renaissance).

Maybe 1 per city, 1 for the palace, 1 additional from a building (harbor/caravanserie?) could be an interesting concept? Tradition policies could add more TR's for the capital to allow very tall playstiles. Additional TR's from (national) wonders would also help tall players more.

 

[Ahriman]

About #21: What about a limited number of trade routes per city?

We'd probably have to know more about AI trade route formation algorithms.

 

[mitsho]

I played a few turns into a game, observations so far:

1. Man, early gold is looooooooooooooow.
2. Somebody adopted a Reformation belief at turn 47, before having enhanced his religion and everything. It may seriously hamper a AI if it fills up the Piety tree before taking the basic Tradition/Liberty/Honor policies to get your economy off the ground... On the other hand, the barbarian+missionary belief is only really helpful if you can get it early...
3. AI is aggressively settling forward + Pocatello AI may be a very strong one.

 

[Brannock]

Early gold is an excellent change IMO, it really makes that initial trade route incredibly valuable, just as valuable as grabbing your pantheon or second city or ... Making difficult decisions that impact your game is fun.

I like having Piety available in Ancient era. All four trees now offer varying play and growth styles without locking you into any one particular playstyle. Ancient feels much less restrictive than it was in GEM. Patronage, Aesthetics, and Commerce also coming earlier ends up in much more varied gameplay and varied civilizations that you encounter. More variety is a good thing IMO.

Really looking forward to the CivUP interface changes being re-implemented (worked tiles, culture growth bar, unit promotions are the big three)

Someone in another thread complained about Poland's UA and called it "boring". I strongly disagree and would be disappointed to see Poland's UA get changed. It gives Poland a lot of flexibility and unpredictability in a game.

 

[mystikx21]

A limited per city trade route idea would have some potential for the less capital trade, and would improve the value of the canvansary building and other trade increases (more useful in more cities). But it sounds like a considerable overhaul to make it a per city function rather than a per civ.

They'd need to be somewhat weaker perhaps if we could have easily 10 or 15 of them instead of 8 max? Which then impacts wide-tall balance against tall. Or as suggested, national wonders could add to this, which helps. Would there still be an upper limit at all? (It wasn't uncommon to have 20-30 cities in some games in GEM from conquest and expansion and map size is also a factor).

It also reduces the value of particular wonders that add trade routes, or techs. (Or would they add to particular cities?). I'd say that Exploration or Commerce would make more sense to boost the routes or the number of them than Tradition, or Tradition could add one in the capital or a city over X pop?

I don't know if we need to know very much about the AI's trade formation algorithms in order to address this. The problem there seems to be that it isn't very good at using them already. In which case, adding "more" of them and not allowing for maximum trade route focusing in one or two cities wouldn't be as big of a problem that can be exploited. (See: canvansary not being useful everywhere, does the AI know this?... I doubt it).

 

[Ahriman]

a limited per city trade route idea would have some potential for the less capital trade,

I don't think the idea was to literally let you have X trade routes per city (which would be broken with wide empires), but to have a cap on the number that can be started from any given city.

So for example if you have 7 trade routes, only 3 of them can come from any given city.

But this has huge problems for small empires: what if I only have 2 cities? I can't use all my trade routes?

I think we have to accept that trade routes are likely to be designed in a way where they're probably all going to come from one of your cities, quite often your capital or trade city. And that's ok.

I'm not sure that we need to want to build the caravanersai everywhere, but if so then we could give it other benefits rather than messing with trade routes.

I don't think we want to start increasing the number of trade routes available either (except possibly through policies). We want to minimize micromanagement requirements and general clutter.

I don't think Tradition should touch trade routes, leave that in Exploration, Commerce, and Patronage (for sea, land, and city-state).

 

[mystikx21]

I am trying to think through the logical elements. Poorly at that.

If it was a cap per city, but not per empire, there's obvious situations where we don't have enough cities to use all the routes. One solution there is national wonders or policies or buildings that boost the number of local trade routes. If you can get up to 3 or 4 routes in one city, you'd be usually fine. Most of the game, the maximum trade routes are well below any functional per city limit to where most of the routes will come from one or two cities anyway. Unless the limit is one per city with no way to get above it. Which would be rather lame.

I think I'd agree a global cap of no more than 8-10 is the sweet spot whether a per city limit is involved or not (map size an issue?). It would be too easy to exploit beyond that. Maybe a +1 route from a policy tree works, or national wonder, or powerful trade building if there are local limits used. I am wary of Tradition being involved as well, if that's going to be the approach to use a policy to impact trade route limits. It would seem a logical replacement for moving the non-naval themes out of Exploration or for tightening commerce.

A Patronage related trade route policy also feels like a no-brainer, but not the one we have and not one impacting trade route limits. It's a separate issue.

The reason the caravanersai not being useful worries me is the AI. I know I only want it in a couple places. I'm not sure if it does given how it handles trade routes already. This was the problem with stables before. Wasted production and gold (less so with gold since these are free upkeep). One approach is to make it useful for other things, like moving the exotic food bonus from aqueducts. This at least gives the AI some random bonuses. I wouldn't want to tinker with it heavily the way the espionage buildings ended up in GK/GEM.

The other reason it worries me is that it means that the AI's weird trade logic is less penalised if it doesn't use the same maximizing strategies that the player might and only have one or two trade cities. I suppose we could look to improve that in the meantime. But the objection that this kind of change would be more of a problem to the AI's trading logic doesn't really hold I should think. The problem there is the same regardless of whether there are per city limits or per global limits, and the only real change of per city limits would be to spread out your own trade a little.

 

[Ahriman]

If you can get up to 3 or 4 routes in one city, you'd be usually fine. Most of the game, the maximum trade routes are well below any functional per city limit to where most of the routes will come from one or two cities anyway. Unless the limit is one per city with no way to get above it. Which would be rather lame.

Venice might well have 10+ trade routes coming from it
3 or 4 per city is not enough, any restriction will screw Venice or any OCC.

These solutions sound worse than the problem. I'm not sure that spreading out international trade routes is really an important design goal. So I'd probably leave the routes alone.

Let's see if the AI actually overbuilds the caravanserai before changing it. I did think I noticed that puppets didn't seem to be building it, which is a good sign that it isn't a generic gold building.

What do you think are the problems in the AI's trade route logic? I haven't noticed them yet.

I wonder if it basically:
a) assigns gold flavor to the caravan/cargo ship, with the cargo ship having priority.
b) forms the highest gold trade route available from the city that builds the unit when it gets completed.
c) Late-game, adjusts for tourism influence if that is a victory condition.

 

[mystikx21]

I'd agree it's a lower priority issue. It impacts gold only in the sense of how spread out you make your trade routes. Some ways that can be impacted already though is
a)stronger barbarians that can attack land and sea routes, requiring an active defence
b)strong and diverse naval units that can sit on sea routes and choke off a city or two, with an AI that wants to do this, requiring an active defence.
c) WC embargos, which would hit the most profitable major cities anyway.
Anything requiring active defence also can be ameliorated by changing route sources to safer locations.

Venice does/can have puppets right? I haven't experimented to see if you could move the trade route start point to one. It would seem like that is possible. Though obviously if they don't build a caravanserai, it's not going to be very lucrative.

 

[Ahriman]

Venice does/can have puppets right? I haven't experimented to see if you could move the trade route start point to one.

I think you can, but I don't see why you should be forced too.
That doesn't sound very flavorful, or profitable.

There is already a downside for having all your trade routes for one city is that its very vulnerable to pillaging or blockade, and that you might run out of good cities that are in range. The upside is that it will be more profitable because you can make that your gold city with gold buildings and east india company. I don't see a problem with that.

 

[mitsho]

Yeah, not sure we need to hardcap trade routes. What's so wrong about if most come from one city. Most often, you'd need at least two anyways, from each coast or other different point in the map. One better boosts the caravanserai with a bonus on a policy per building. Other than that, ressource diversity of the different sites should be big enough of a diversity stimulator for trade routes.

Can we introduce a factor that inversively influences the gold bonus of trade routes? Like the more routes you have, the less it gives? Not sure if that's a good idea.

Btw. one way to boost land trade routes versus sea ones is to increase the non-gold bonus they give. If they are better at draining science f.e., we have a good strategic decision which to take.

 

[mystikx21]

Btw. one way to boost land trade routes versus sea ones is to increase the non-gold bonus they give. If they are better at draining science f.e., we have a good strategic decision which to take.

This could be appealing actually. Reflects railroad and road connections of overland trade? Extra money from coasts or extra science or influence and religious spread would at least be interesting.