Is Agriculture too strong?

[vorshlumpf]

I'll keep writing until I tire everyone, but modifiers on improvements need to be applied to that improvement only. If you want both a bonus and a malus, then keep them on the improvement or the use of it, otherwise you get malus for something you're not using, which is just silly.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that it doesn't make sense to, for example, put +1 food on farms and -1 production on mines?

When it comes to balancing the power of civics, I'm much more concerned with plausibility. If it makes sense for an agrarian society to focus more on agriculture than production, then it makes sense for farms to be +1 food and mines (or workshops) to be -1 production.

If a civic gives you a penalty for something you're not using, then that civic is obviously not the right choice for you at the moment (e.g., if I have no cities with specialists or wonders, it makes no sense to be pacifist).

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I agree with Nilo in principle civics can have diverse bonuses and penalties. I generally don't like a -10% or -20% because of Civ always rounding down, so 1 - 10% becomes 0.

 

[uberfish]

Agriculture's -1 hammer doesn't work very well as a drawback, because it's easy just to farm all grasslands and build cottages or workshop/watermills on plains, and I think it makes more sense anyway if the drawback is economy related.


Sac the Weak is a different issue, what it needs is a meaningful downside because the other compassion civics don't do a lot, so it's like Veil gets to run 6 civics to everyone else's 5. If it were up to me though I'd change the bonuses and penalties a bit to -

Citizens eat 1 food and enables slavery (unchanged)
-2 or -3 happiness instead of health (you'd expect citizens living under such a law to be stronger/healthier but less happy. This civic needs a negative side and the current health penalty does almost nothing anyway when citizens only eat 1 food to begin with)
-25% city maintenance instead of the gold/research bonuses (again makes more sense, since no resources go to supporting the weak)

 

[psychoak]

Assuming happiness is not an issue.

Cottages are not a long term advantage, the great people production could be scrapped in it's entirety and still give specialists a substantial advantage. A fully upgraded grassland town only supports itself, yes it has significant science output, but five commerce is only five commerce. A sanitation level farm on grassland provides 6 food, enough for its own maintenance and two more population. The biggest problem isn't really the agriculture civic, it's the combinations of happiness modifiers one has access to. With law mana and archmages, you can have massive farm cities producing astronomical science, commerce and culture while still having greater production than they would have as cottages, regardless of whether the tile is a plains or grassland tile. Not to say there is something particularly wrong with the order spell, or massive happiness modifiers from ancient forest covered elven power houses.

Cottages are only a long term positive if you can't increase your happiness far enough to make them obsolete. With sacrifice the weak and law mana, it would be insane to build anything but farms on flatlands in six cities, with or without agriculture at all. You don't even need the civic combos at all. You can skip aristocracy, caste system, agriculture and scholarship and still outproduce cottages with farms in every way.

In a massive empire, I'd probably end up skipping agriculture for mercantilism since I tend to like being at war with everyone anyways and wouldn't be able to keep the happiness up. To go for any other victory though? Great sage pops will help with the early tech rush and get you to archmages all the faster, and a three to six city empire with 500+ culture production, 200+ science output, massive industry more akin to an arete mine network, and still enough extra commerce to upgrade anything and everything you can think of... I strictly automate all workers to avoid cheesing the hell out of my own experience against the ai. If I ever micromanaged them...

The baseline for cottage effectiveness versus farms scales directly with happiness after you pass the maximum sustainable population with cottages, which isn't very high anyways, there's really no comparison once you add in ways to greatly extend the happiness limit.

 

[onedreamer]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that it doesn't make sense to, for example, put +1 food on farms and -1 production on mines?

When it comes to balancing the power of civics, I'm much more concerned with plausibility. If it makes sense for an agrarian society to focus more on agriculture than production, then it makes sense for farms to be +1 food and mines (or workshops) to be -1 production.

If a civic gives you a penalty for something you're not using, then that civic is obviously not the right choice for you at the moment (e.g., if I have no cities with specialists or wonders, it makes no sense to be pacifist).

Yes, I mean that. And I think that plausibility is important, but this remains a strategic game. So if I adopt Agriculture and this civic MUST have drawbacks (I personally don't like drawbacks, I prefer smaller boni), it should be a drawback that it's connected to the actual use of the bonus. If both bonus and malus are general, like -10% gold and +20% culture in all cities, then that's ok. But applying a bonus to the use of a particular improvement while penalizing another one is a strategic paradox. I can have a city relying on seafood and mines that will be penalized without actually making use of the bonus. I think that it makes much more sense strategically and realistically the idea to give a -1 hammer for every used farm or -1 hammer every 2 farms in the city radius.

 

[vorshlumpf]

I can have a city relying on seafood and mines that will be penalized without actually making use of the bonus.

Again, to me, this all a part of the strategy in deciding which civic to choose.

Also, every civic has a drawback, the most common one being a higher maintenance.

I wouldn't be opposed to your suggested implementation - it sounds good - I just don't agree with you on your suggestion of a strategic paradox.

 

[onedreamer]

you can have half cities that won't make use of that bonus at all and be instead penalized, and half cities that could make use of the bonus. In that case it would still be plausible to use the civic but not optimal. This is not correct IMO, if it's a civwide bonus+malus then it should apply to all your cities, it can be minor or major, but existing. If it's a improvement specific bonus, I don't see why there should be a civwide malus.
You can still say that even if it's not optimal it's a strategic choice. Ok, good point, but I really can't think of another civic that introduces this kind of concept, and I believe it's better not to introduce it especially in regards of the AI, which can't take the decisions we can about improvements and civics connected to them.

 

[TheBoatman]

I agree with Nilo in principle civics can have diverse bonuses and penalties. I generally don't like a -10% or -20% because of Civ always rounding down, so 1 - 10% becomes 0.

I suppose the balance will change when FfH2 goes to BtS because the decimals will be introduced.

 

[Grey Fox]

And I don't find that it rounds down when you have 1 to 0. However you don't get any bonus if you have less than 10 with a +10% bonus.

 

[MisterBenn]

I also think that +2 food for Agriculture is acceptable provided there is a disadvantage. I'd be tempted to suggest:

Agriculture:

+2 Food for Farms
-1 Gold per Cottage (and upwards)
-1 Hammer per Mine (or workshop, etc)

All the effects are at the improvement level rather than Civilisation level, and if you are gearing your workforce at farming, it seems fitting to diminish the value of the other improvement types. Yes, Agriculture will allow you to grow quickly to your cities' happiness caps (as intended), but the hit you take on hammers / commerce / science mean it would hurt in the long run to continue running like this. And the more industry or commerce city-focused you are, the more you'll notice the drain.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I suppose the balance will change when FfH2 goes to BtS because the decimals will be introduced.

Yes, but is that on food and production, or just commerce?
Although if it is on commerce, it shouldn't be hard to mod to food & production as well, I would think.

And I don't find that it rounds down when you have 1 to 0. However you don't get any bonus if you have less than 10 with a +10% bonus.

Well, maybe 1 is a minimum? I don't recall exactly.

 

[Quetz]

IMO Agriculture isn't as bad as City States. I mean, occasionally I switch from Agriculture, but I never take off City States once I have it.

If you do, please tell me how you manage it.

 

[Xuenay]

IMO Agriculture isn't as bad as City States. I mean, occasionally I switch from Agriculture, but I never take off City States once I have it.

I tend to get stuck on God King, myself. +1 in cities with state religion, AND +50% hammers and gold in the capital? Despite it being only in the capital, it benefits your whole empire via faster production of wonders, workers, etc.

 

[Polycrates]

IMO Agriculture isn't as bad as City States. I mean, occasionally I switch from Agriculture, but I never take off City States once I have it.

If you do, please tell me how you manage it.

God King or Aristocracy are often better choices. Theocracy is great later when you can't run Apprenticeship (because of Religious Discipline or Scholarship), or in concert with apprenticeship and conquest for lots of xp. I've never found city maintenance to be a particularly major issue in this mod.
I think the government civics are actually really well balanced to make for interesting and difficult choices throughout the game.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I tend to get stuck on God King, myself. +1 in cities with state religion, AND +50% hammers and gold in the capital? Despite it being only in the capital, it benefits your whole empire via faster production of wonders, workers, etc.

I approve this message.

 

[Kolath]

IMO Agriculture isn't as bad as City States. I mean, occasionally I switch from Agriculture, but I never take off City States once I have it.

If you do, please tell me how you manage it.

Yes please do tell me. I always end up stuck in City States as soon as I have more than 6 cities or so. The maintenance costs are just crushing otherwise. For example, I recently played Calabim on a standard map and had an empire of about 8 cities reasonably clustered and I had heard that there were strong synergies with aristocracy and agriculture (since I built almost exclusively farms). But I found that my gold income actually dropped by about 20% when I switched from City States to Aristocracy because the increased gold was completely canceled out by the increased maintenance costs.

 

[3141592]

I must agree with those that have said City States is too powerfull. In every game I have played I have to city states and never looked back. Every time I switch to city states I can up my reaserch 20-40% and still make more money than I was. The -80% distence matinence is huge and with an empire of any decent size it is the only way to go.
Saying that, I have not played through nearly as many games as most people here and I can see some of the other civics being very practical in other situations.

 

[Grey Fox]

I find the government Civics pretty fine. They have all had their uses to me. I've even switched to despotism once! (War weariness was killing me)

I think people that use City States a lot are people that play bigger maps, or expand quickly. I find that City States can be really good, it really frees up a lot of cash since it almost eliminates city maintainence. But, God King is King!

Aristocracy is also pretty good, especially if you have built courthouses everywhere during City States. It takes some food, but if you have gotten Sanitation you have that taken care of. It's kinda dependent on Agriculture though, cause without it you might as well run a cottage economy. I find Aristocracy to be particularly good with a financial civ, since the bonus is applied to every farm. And if you got horses, the Royal Guard are SUPERB! Not only are they excellent defenders and VERY MOBILE. They give the city they are in +1 Happy as well. AND +4 Culture. So very nice for border cities, or newly conquered cities.

God King is very powerful in an early game/small empire. The Capital is often the base of my industrial backbone. The brain of my lab, and the broker of my stock market. The capital makes the money, the capital makes the units, the capital takes care of the rest. It works especially nice with a Sage economy, where you might not have that high research %. Which means you benefit more from the Gold bonus and from Gambling Houses. The +1 Happy for all cities with the religion is just icing on the cake.

Theocracy is pretty good if the +2 Experience helps you get to 10 Experience during the buildup for a long war. Once you are done you can switch to a more economical government civic.

Republic is pretty good for a peaceful builder, especially for a cultural one.