Land management in FfH

[Unser Giftzwerg]

This thread is directly inspired by the "Are Cottages Backwards" thread. As usual that thread started to split off into tangents. The tangents got me to thinking on things from a slightly different perspective. I figure a 'big picture' look at land management in FfH would be a good complement to the conversation on the details regarding cottages.

There are three tools to land management in Civ, Improvements, Terraforming, and Civics. Regardless of the tool, the goal is always to optimize the yeild of & from your nation's tiles.

Improvements: Conventional Wisdom holds that the Cottage improvement reigns supreme over most every other improvement. FfH end-game empires are often dominated by Cottages, with some Lumbermills especially river Lumbermills for hammers. Some players feel the over-abundance of cottages is a symptom of poor performance somewhere in the land management system.

Terraforming: Conventional Wisdom has this as arguably the biggest land management difference betweem Civ and FfH. All realms can obtain the Spring spell. At a minimum, all Desert tiles can be converted to productive territory. The Vitalize spell and Genesis take things further. All realms save the Khazad can convert virtually every tile in their realm to Grassland, if so desired. This allows players the option of building many many self-feeding Cottages. Terraforming drasticaly reduces the role of the Farm, as compared to Civ.

Civics: A few civics affect the resources extracted from tiles, but not very many. Most are geared to governing city population growth (happiness, health) or resource conversion (culture, gold, beakers). Conventional Wisdom has little to say with regard to Civics and land management, other than a recent discussion over the merits of Aristocracy. (A significant number of players feel Aristocracy's Food penalty too high a cost for the return in Commerce.) Perhaps this is a good time to think about new ways in which Civics can play a direct role in FfH land management?

And?

If terraforming is the culprit behind the the phenomenon of wall-to-wall Cottages, that means we just have to get rid of terraforming, right? Well, even I am not about to suggest anything like that. Terraforming is super-powerful, terraforming is certainly open for tweaking, but it is also certainly one of the identifying charms of the entire mod. The task is simply to design the game with the understanding that most every tile can be terraformed.

This leads us to the improvements aspect of the game. There are no CW gripes about Plantations, Camps, or Fishing Boats. CW does not complain about Farms or Mines atop special resources. CW is entirely concerned with the improvements built on the vast majority of ordinary, non-resource tiles. This is where the Cottage thrives, the Lumbermill hangs on, and the Workshop, Watermill, Windmill, Mine, and Farm go begging for emplyoment.

This is probably a good time to define the Specialist as a tile improvement. Every Specialist in a city acts like an extra zero Food tile. Here the Specialist often loses the comparison to the Cottage tile, especially the fully matured Grassland/Town tile. Terraforming ensures the tile can feed itself if the population works the tile. If the population works as a Specialist, some other way must be found to feed that Specialist. It is generally better to work 2 Grassland/Towns than one Grassland/Farm plus one Specialist. Thus the Cottage contiinues to predominate.

Is this is yet another symptom of the underlying problem, might it also lead us to a solution? Terraforming leads to more Grassland which leads to more Food. More Food means fewer Farms and more Cottages. If Food were made more valuable, Farms could become competative with Cottages.

One way to do this is to make Specialists more valuable. The output of one Farm + one Specailist should be roughly balanced against the output of two Grassland/Towns. This would be further modified by Civics selection, buildings built in town, and traits - all of which may or may not be available to a given racial/religious combination.

It is overly simplistic to make the equation 2 Cottages = 1 Farm + 1 Specialist. For one thing that does nothing to help out Windmills, Watermills, and their ilk. But it's a decent start to an examination of the available choices.

It is the Civics angle that takes this start and brings it on home. Right now very few Civcs directly affect tile production. Aristocracy is a clear example. Conquest allows excess Food to construct units. Name Escapesme reduces Food production by 10%. Scientific Discipline adds one Beaker per Specialist (which we now define to be a tile improvement.) Can this concept be extended to reward / encourage different routes to economic excelence?

What does this mean other than a vague plagerization of a Simpson's episode? It means a percieved 'builder' civ such as the Elohim might find their economic sweet spot to be centered on a Cottage economy. But a percieved 'aggressor' nation such as the Clan might find its sweet spot involves a lot of labor camps ... er, I mean workshops, churning out hammers.

Can this be done in the game or is it just a bunch of wishful thinking? Well, I am no mod programmer but I believe so. Some Civics are limited by State Religion. It might be nice to limit some Civics by race, alignment, leadership trait, or vocation too. If that is not programmable, or even if it is, diplomatic bonuses and penalties can be built into certain civics to make certain combinations improbable. The idea is to use the Civics mechanism as a targetable adjustment to a given civilization's performance.

For instance consider the Cultural Values group. These could be reworked a bit to further emphasize the old Good/Evil thing. At one ond of the scale hammer production goes up thanks to the work you to death ethic, but Cottage tiles cannot fully mature into Towns. In the middle, neutral-aligned range outdoorsy stuff like Plantations, Camps, Fishing, and Pastures tend towards better Food production than we see now. At the Good end of the spectrum, the Cottage strategy blooms as Town growth is allowed and perhaps even rewarded with an extra .

The exact details above aren't imporant just so long as they manage to communicate the concept. The idea is that Civics can be used to change a given kingdom's economic 'sweet spot'. By making different Civics attractive to different civilizations, we encourage them to develop entirely different economic systems. The idea is worth pursuing because it promises to be win-win. It is both self-balancing, and it is very flavorful.

Unless this is all just the coffee talking. Ahh ..

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Reserved by thread author for Terraforming Summaries. I will try to bulletpoint contributors' comments in this handy-to-reference page.

I personally do not have too much to add to Terraforming. I recognize it as one FfH's more powerful mechanisms. I think it is here to stay. The rest of the game should be designed withthe knowledge that terraforming will be widely available. I'll put up only a couple bullet points, having to do with pacing.

> Mild request (if possible) for Spring and/or Vitalize to take more than one turn to cast, a la Civ I. Some delay isn't out of the question considering how powerful as these spells are. And it makes building Genesis that much more useful. (Why build it when your Druids will have your country terraformed before it's completed?)

> Mild request to lower the probability for New Forest to turn into Forest. This delay seems reasonable in consideration of the spell's power.

> Alternative request: Move the Bloom spell from Preists of Leaves to High Priests and possibly Druids as a Nature III spell.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Reserved by thread author for Improvements Summaries. I will try to bulletpoint contributors' comments in this handy-to-reference page.

I generally don't like to get too deep in the nitty-gritty details, because i never know what will be programmable. But I think this time it can't be avoided. Let's start off with the issue at hand then see what we can do to improve things. When it comes down to tile improvements, it's all about increasing hammers, commerce, and food.

Commerce: No one has to be convinced to boost Commerce. Its commerce that gets you up the tech tree. It's commerce that pays for that big military. FfH features an expensive tech tree. It is important therefore the overall level of commerce remain roughly the same. It is fine to redistribute whete the commerce originates, so long as the total remains about the same.

Hammers: Ditto Hammers. They create the buildings that produce the units that pillaged the Farms that Varn built. Hammers turn into Wonders. We all want hammers. Does the game produce too many or too few right now, or is production about right? Oddly enoughI've notheard many cmplaints about hammer production, so we probably want to keep hammer production about as-is too.

Food: Same thing with Food. Without extra Food you can't build a single soli... wait a second, Food is actually a bit different from the other two basic resources. Food doesn't build anything by itself (with certain narrow exceptions (settlers, Conquest)). Instead it is used to increase production of Commerce and Hammers. Food either causes a city to grow, or it allows a city to employ specialists. Either way, extra Food production ends up eventually as more Hammers and Commerce which do the actual 'building'. And when a city is against its happycap, excess Food contributes nothing.

As mentioned before, CW has it that terraforming has reduced the demand for large Food producers such as Farms. It's too tempting to build cottages everywhere. The three plnak proposal put forth below hopes to encourage more variety in economic development, and do so in a manner which contributes to FfH's roleplaying flavors.

Plank One - Steroid up the Specialists: Specialists act essentially as zero food tiles, except they also produce GP points. In their basic form they produce roughly 2 hammers, or 3 commerce, or 1 hammer plus 1 commerce. This compares poorly with 1 hammer plus 4 commerce from just one Cottage. But we are comparing one Farm+one Specialist against 2 Cottage tiles. Now the comparison is rediculous, 2 hammers from an Engineer specialist as compared to 8 commerce from 2 Cottages. Add Arcane Lore and even the 2 hammers are matched. So,ce Civics add production to Specialists, but them Civics cost money too. With this sort of comparison in mind, it seems justified to double the output from each specialist. I don't know that we want so far as doubling Specialist output, but it does serve to illustrate the point. Specialist output is very small compared to the potential from spammed Cottages.

Plank One version 1.0 is therefore, all Specialists produce one extra Hammer, and one extra Gold/Beaker/Culture (as appropriate) above and beyond their current output. The extra hammer is reccomended to provide the sharpest possible distinction between the Cottage Option and the Specialist Option. The Cottage option is Commerce-heavy, so let us make the Specialist Option hammerific.

(A side point to GP. I personally have no issue with GP or GPP as-is. Specialists could be made more attractive by boosting them to 4 or 5 GPP / turn. I am not opposed to such a move, per se. I just think it is more important to make Specialists more useful, directly and immedeately. The meat-and-potato need for Specialists is more hammers and commerce. More GPPs would make a fine desert, but I hope it's not the entire meal.)

Plank Two - Fabulize the Farms: There are two obsticles to employing specialists: Food and happycap. Simply adding food production to each Farm doesn't employ more Specialists unless the happycap goes up too. Since nearby Jungles can detract from health, I presume it is possible to write software that adds happiness based upon the number of Farms actively worked in the fat cross.

Plank Two version 1.0 therefore goes like this: Farms produce one more Food under all conditions than they do presently. (That means 2 'New Farms' can do what two 'Old Farms' do now, plus they can employ one extra Specialist for the city.) Every three Farms in the fat cross that are being actively worked by the city raises the city happycap by one. (This creates room in the happycap for that extra, fed, Specialist.)

Plank Three - Food for the Forelorn: Plank Three hits the spot like a waffer-thin mint after a epic feast. It fills that intermindable gap between brunch and lunch. Our new Farms might be Food powerhouses, but they still can be built only near fresh water. What about those civs who tend to habiuate the fringe territories? Tundra Farms still suck, and a lot of Hills can be an issue. Enter Plank Three - new roles for our overlooked pals, the Workshop, Watermill, Windmill, Mine, Pasture, Plantation, Camp and possibly even the Fishing Boat.

CW has no complaints with Camps, Plantations, and so forth because they do what they are supposd to do. You build them on special resources and you don't build them anywhere else. CW doesn't gripe about Gem Mines or Rice Farms. But CW does have an opinion when it comes to raising Farms or Mines on non-resource tiles: build Cottages instead.

Another so-far-unmentioned problem is that certain civilizations like to live in unproductive territory. It is flavorful for Doviello to emerge from the frozen wastes, for example. Since we are interested in making Food a more important resource, we have to ensure folks like Doviello are not left in the lurch. It's an opportunity to knock off two birds with one stone. We add some minor Food production to the other improvement types. At the same time we design these new capabilities with certain known needs in mind.

Watermills and Windmills: "Always start with the low-hanging fruit", my uncle 'Stumpy Larry' used to tell me, while waving a cane fruitlessly at some pears. What never worked for Uncle Larry must certainly work for us. What did watermills and windmills mill? Grain is what they milled, or irrigation water they pumped. If Farms are being improved by +1 Food, then to should Windmills and Watermills.

Camps: Civilizations starting near Tundra will probably want to learn how to build Camps anyway, for Deer and Fur. But that leaves a lot of lousy unproductive Tundra. The proposal then is to allow Camps to be built in any Tundra tile (even Forested) giving +1 Fod and +1 Commerce.

Pastures: Everywhere on Earth you find peple living on marginal hardscrabble unfarmable land, you find people personally familiar with goats, or sheep, or cows, or something made out of meat that eats grass. Sure, they might not all be world-reknowned like sheep of Scottish Highland cloning and da-da-da-daaaa Border Collie fame, but they're still very much grass-munching meatbags. Therefore in FfH terms how about letting Pastures be built on any Hills tile, giving +1 Food?

Plantations: When one thinks 'plantation' one immedeately thinks of hot sweltering climates, long, shaded porches, and pointy-moustached, white suit-wearing, cheroot-smoking Orcs sipping mind julips out of skulls. What better terrain improvement, then, than the +1 Food +1 Commerce Plantation, buildable in any Jungle tile?

Workshop: I'm not sure what to do with this one other than remove teh Food penalty and rename it the Labor Camp. At least under the harsher Civics options. (See next page.)

Mines and Lumbermills and Fishing Boats: Not even a get-the-ball-rolling idea at this point. Ideas?

Gatherers: If we have hunters and herders and farmers, why not gatherers? A new terrain improvement buildable in Plains or Grassland, provides +1 Food (i.e. same as the current farm) and possibly +1 Commerce (if needed for balance). Requires access to a source of mounts, perhaps? Be they Horses, Deer, Boars or Rams, depending on race?

Speaking of Farms, one option is to eliminate the ability to spread irrigation. A (probably better) option would be to delay the ability to spread irrigation a bit.

Speaking of Cottages, another option would be to keep irrigation-spreading as it is now, but allow Cottages to be dependant on fresh water just like farms. So cottages could be built along rives and such early on. But Cottage construction away from Rivers would have to wait until Construction. And even then they would need a nearby Farm to supply the fresh water.

Another option with Cottages is to drop the extra Hammer from Arcane Lore.

In sum we hope to encourage diversity by making Specialists much more productive than they are now and by tweaking Food production and Happycaps to expidite their employment. Farms are improved to make them the best route to maximum city size. The 'forgotten improvements' are improved a bit by the addition of small amounts of Food and Commerce, but mostly by 'zoning' them to make marginal territory productive in the pre-terraforming phase.

If it seems like a tremendouns amount of production is being added to the economy, don't worry just yet. The Civics portion of the puzzle remains to shape the final performance.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Reserved by thread author for Civics Summaries.

End of reserved pages.

Go nuts or not...listen to your heart.

As to comments here, I plead a tired brain. I'll fill this in later brain and ISP connection willing.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

I'm having ISP problems ... I have comments for the above messages but canot edit them ATM.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Well, I look forward to seeing your take on this situation. You've been pretty quiet on this issue, save for a recent post, but perhaps that indicates careful thought on the subject rather than a lack of opinion.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Well, I look forward to seeing your take on this situation. You've been pretty quiet on this issue, save for a recent post, but perhaps that indicates careful thought on the subject rather than a lack of opinion.

It's more due to losing my DSL for about 98% of the past week. And today it's no pleasure cuise. But at least it's sorta functional.

 

[Maniac]

The output of one Farm + one Specailist should be roughly balanced against the output of two Grassland/Towns.

I disagree with this. Specialists do not use up a tile, only extra happiness and health. So the output of one town should be measured against the output of one farm/specialist plus the cost of getting one extra happiness and health.
Equalling two towns against one specialist might be correct in the early game when it's harder to boost happiness and health, but the early game is also the time when specialists are still much more valuable due to the lower GPP requirement for getting them.

Personally I consider one hammer = two commerce.
So a town produces six commerce.
Most specialists produces three commerce and three Great People points.
That's why IMO the simpliest way to balance a cottage versus a specialist strategy in the mid- and endgame is to make sure three Great People points never become too worthless compared to three Commerce. Something which currently happens in the late game.

A method I've advocated repeatedly is to decrease the increase of Great People points for every GP created. That is a 150 GPP increase for the first five, 100 GPP for the next five and 50 extra GP for every GP after that. Then the GPP requirement will start slowing down around 1500 points per GP, which is around what you get if you cash in a Great Person for beakers.

Unfortunately this requires SDK changes, so only the FfH team can do this change, and they haven't commented on this issue yet.


Second best solution (something which can be done with a simple XML change, but would be less fun ) is to make GPP requirement fixed at say 500 points, and rebalance all possible GP effects around that number.


Maniac
-- specialist-lover and boring-cottage-spam-hater

 

[formless blob]

A thing that always struck me as odd, is the tech that gives +1 hammer for villages and towns. When you get that your villages can do everything. I am not too fond of one tile that can do it all, you should have to use mines or lumbermills to get hammers, so all kinds of terrain becomes important.

Of course just removing that tech has its own problems, as you are assumed to have a certain amount of hammer production in the late game. But maybe a tech to add hammer production to mines would be better? Then you would get more specialised terrain (also mines should give more hammers than lumbermills, because forests can be planted everywhere now).

The workshop and windmill are problematic for several reasons. Actually I think they should be inferior, and here is why: They generate something which is not the speciality of the terrain. Hammers on flatland and food on hills. If they where superior, you would have to flipflop your terrain improvements midgame. Which brings me to my second reason: If they where better than the old improvements, you would have to build everything anew. At that stage of the game, that is not what I want to be doing (as a side note, you had to do this in Civilization II, when you got to the modern age and had to replace all your irrigation). If they are equal, then why have different terrain at all?

 

[QES]

I apprecaite the study, And agree with most of its tennants.

Ive the following thoughts:


Tiles vs. Specialists vs Income vs Value:

Specifically, when we talk of the health of a city, were talking about the efficency ratio of the potential of that city, and what it currently provides the civilizaiton as a whole. In essence, were not talking about "tile" work so much as over all output. Truly, Overall out put cannot be messured in buildings, which vary from civ to civ and religion to religion to talk about the underlying qualities of tile and work variance. Instead let us discuss raw output of tiles and specialists.

Because I'm a Flavormonger, I'll be discussing Flavor, while It seems Unswer is doing a fantastic job of the gameplay numbers. As it is, each worker, roughly represents equal posistions in society. Now, the gentleman who is working the gold mine, is clearly doing better than the poor sap working the woods tile. The raw output of a gold mine is far higher. But what of the specialist? What of the trained individual in a city who's skills are what we could consider teh "elite" of the civilization. As I see it, we've several strata of socio-economic periods in our real history, and something similar could be generated for the old period.

In this, I think we need to best represent The Elite, the Middle Class (when it pops into existance) and the Lowerclasses/Slaves.

In my opinion, the Elite are generally The Land owners, and specailists that provide generous income. The Middle class become the specialsits in the later periods of history, and the lower classes exist at all points as those who actually work for the landowners. How to represent this in CiV FfH?

If a citizen is working a tile, I think of them as a landowner. Their Income is derrived directly from what they can produce, and a tax is levied on it (the actual output we as rulers see) so really they're producing more than we see, but what we see is whatever tax was levied. Regardless the Landowners pay us the rulers - but where are the lower classes? I think this is a potential for how balance can be achieved. Namely, an IMPROVED tile, are the elite. And unimproved tile are the peasentry (as applicable) and the Specialists are all three strata.

Namely, I think if we fleshed out the Specialists, and had more than 1 type per economic gain, and had different methods of gaining specialists, we'd have a all round better economic system. (I will touch on the "Town issue" shortly)

Let us imagine, no change (yet) to the current Improvement system. Wokers work tiles and gain income used to further the civilization. Specialists are ONLY used when there are no more "decent" tiles left, and the "worker" specialist is NEVER used. THis strikes me as odd that there are never any poor people. Now, poverty and social discontent is supposed to be reflected in the unhappiness and unhealthiness of a city, and i agree that is 1 form of representation, but it doesnt seem to effect the economy of any civilization very much. What I propose is essentially a dynamic shift in how tiles are A) accessed, B) the importance of that access, C) the improvements on that tile, and D) the importance and quality of specialists.

Since improvements become avilable at a VERY rapid rate, almost every tile initially becomes a "upscale" tile. Some do better than others, but there are rare incidents in which tiles are worked but not improved. Forests being one of the few exceptions. To fix this, I think that improvments should be spaced out much farther apart in the tech tree. The technologies that come early should indeed come early. Roads, Farms, and Animal Husbandry. But trully, Cities of the "ancient" eras should be full of mostly poor, mostly farms, and a few elite, then later towns should develop to their glory.

In this, i Suggest that the towns be moved to the farthest reaches of the tech tree, this can then allow them to keep their powerful status. Other improvements should be available earlier, and again, at a spread out rate. This way, one may not be able to have access to ALL of the improvments. Farms should/could wind up in very unfavorable locations until better things come along.

Specialists. With the problems of not having as many improved tiles, specialists would have increasing value. I think that it is good for specialists to require buildings to represent the elite educations and crafts that they have, however I think that more emphasis should be put on the Worker/Slave/Serf.

All specialists should require buildings to be accessed. Some could allow one of a kind, or infanite of a kind. The accumulation of these buildings would allow more and more "workers" to be better specialists than the mere worker.

The worker should provide 1 food and 1 hammer. Thereby half-paying for itself in food, and providing raw output of production. Comparitively, Working a "unimproved plains" tile wouldnt be better. Forests still would, but then the natural bounty of a forest makes that make sense. And grasslands wouldnt serve much in the way of purpose (unimproved) because all they could do is add to population straight out. Hills would also be the equivilant of a worker. If we refocus some of our attentions on the "worker-specialist" then we could ahve a decent counter to the tile-rule that currently exists.

If specialists, were tied one to another, then the worker specialist could be given more significance, and improvments could be ingored a bit more.

Assuming we have a tech tree that spreads out the access to improvments of all kinds, the specialist becomes the method of "short term" economies most notably useful throughout all of history. For example:
IN the beginning of the game, we decide that food is the most important thing for THIS game. We therefore neglect tech paths that would lead us to hammers and to gold. In theory, the food will provide the others later. In this, we research farming, and build us a worker unit, and quickly start building farms. Food output soars and our city starts to grow. After a certain point, we are making food for the purpose of getting more food, and either expansion, war, or specialization become necessary. Technologies that provide access to specialists would allow us to manipulate our economies while wating to receive technologies that would unlock better and future improvements. If we had a city of size 8, having 4 of those citizens be Worker-specialists should be a very real economic tactic. A) to slow growth, and B) to improve production. But what if "other specialists" added to the quality of Citizen-workers?

For example, A merchant provides 2 food and 4 gold. What if each merchant also made each worker-citizen provide 1 gold? Then having 2 merchants, and 4 citizens, would yeild a grand total of 16 gold. Thats a population of 6 producing 16 gold 4 hammers, and 6 food (paying for themselves). That's an average of 1 Food, .6 hammers, and a little over 2 gold. Not great, but it starts to add up and multiply upon itself, large cities could have a large multiplicative effect.
The idea that each specialist provides some quality to the average worker specialist, would A) make the average worker specialist worthy of choice, B) make dependance on tiles lesson, C) create interesting and complex middle class choices for the late game, and D) rival the Cottage as the main choice. However, cottages would remian the masters of tile profits, and be worked by a single citizen, the combination of specialists throughout the ages, would allow a more fluid and dynamic economic system.

Improvements, should also be harder to construct (take longer) and if occuring far less frequently (not almost all at the beginning of the game), will make each invidual improvment researched, far more valueable.

Unworked squares, should provide less benefits than currently. The best places to start a city would be near resources because of their natural boons (like in RL), but a city that would not be adjacent to a good tile might have to take a long time to develop. Also, it would increase the value of pillaging, becuase a city would be more dependant ON the improvments.

Another option at our disposal is to raise the requirements of citizen food consumption. If it took 3 food, not 2, to make a citizen happy, this may do a lot to increase the value of food. I therefore suggest that farms should provide more food (to compensate) but that un-improved lands do NOT give more food than they do currently. Farms would become necessary for larger cities, and towns could almost, but not quite, support themselves.

I'm done rambling.
-Qes

 

[Hypnotoad]

I think the extra hammer for towns and villages really puts things over the top. An extra hammer for all non-cottages would be better. Then there would be more reason to go for non-cottages. It would also kick in right as the cottages were becoming powerful.

In the Ancient Med mod, they've lengthened the time it takes for cottages to mature. This helps. Right now I get towns quite early on.

I think the Ancient Forests are too powerful for food now, too. Don't get me wrong: I think they are super cool. But as it is now, right around my capital I have a bunch of cities with 3 food (ancient forest on grassland), 2 hammers (forest plus the plus the hammer for a town), and 4 commerce (from towns). This allows me to have a large number of specialists without having to build any farms. If I want specialists, I should have to build some farms to support them. I think Ancient Forests should get some other advantage. Especially since, as things are, the elves end up being the most populous race. Does this strike anyone else as rather strange? I normally think of elves as not having as large of populations, but more gifted. Perhaps the ancient forests should provide one commerce?

-- HT

 

[Maniac]

In the Ancient Med mod, they've lengthened the time it takes for cottages to mature. This helps. Right now I get towns quite early on.

That's true. Eg most buildings take 50% longer or even double as long to build in FfH compared to vanilla. Great People take longer to get. it would only make sense to increase cottage growth time as well by say 50%.

 

[formless blob]

Specialist are surely interresting, but it should never outshine the land usage. It should always be important where you place your city, or you get strategies like "place your cities in a reverse squid formation for max benefit" or somesuch nonsense.

Having the improvements scattered all over the tech tree would lead to the situation, I described in my earlier post, where you would have to replace existing improvements along the way. Is this desired gameplay?

What would happen if cottages gave -1 food? Then they would be more specialised. This would result in smaller cities, and all kinds of balancing problems. The upside is that you would not have "free" towns, paying for themselves with two food, on grassland, so you would have to consider the benifit. Maybe the tech which gives +1 hammer could then give +1 food instead (representing better distribution of foodstuff, or something), so you could still get large cities in the end game?

 

[Good Sauce]

The fact that cottages are the most powerful improvement isn't a problem to me. The cottage must be the best improvement simply because of what it does, produce commerce. Of the three things a tile can produce commerece is the most valuable because it is most versitile. it gives you a tech lead, can be turned into production, produce happy faces and culture at the same time, or be saved for any of the above at a later time.

Second is production, for obvious reasons. more production allows more units and wonders which well give you the lead against a civ you are on equal footing in commerece with.

Finally food is last because usually it is only important in allowing you to get more of the first two recsources. In vanilla civ slavery would almost put food above production, but because slavery is limited to only the evil religons it's less of a factor.

So commerce is king and cottages are the king of commerce. Because of how important commerce is to the game fiddling with cottages too much would have more unintended consequences than it's worth. But clearly we don't like that spamming nothing but cottages is the dominant strategy, so what do we do?

First of all remove the +1 at arcane lore. Cottages are already good enough, they don't need to be versitile too. In fact I'd like to see -1 on villages and towns, and then perhaps very late in the tech tree +1 to towns only
Second, no cottages on hills, force players to find other ways to get their ecconomy up.

The most important reason cottages reign supreme though is that there is no viable alternative, particularly on flat land.
The farm is simply too weak, a combination of good placement and terraforming will allow most cities to reach maximum size or even beyond with only farms on their resources.
I suggest that somewhere early in the tech tree we give farms +1 I think this would fix two problems; farms would be a solid alternative to cottages, and the aristocracy civic would go from being almost never used to a great strategy choice.

So: -1 for towns and villages,+1 for towns very late in the tech tree, and no cottages on hills. (though the hammer minus might be enough to discourage this)
And: farms +1 very early in the tech tree. perhaps at education?

I think this would help create more diverse improvement plans without crippiling the cottage too much, which feel deserves the honor of 'best improvement'. as long as it's not the only improvement.

Anyway, i think i've gona on long enough.

 

[bdmarti]

Speaking of Cottages, another option would be to keep irrigation-spreading as it is now, but allow Cottages to be dependant on fresh water just like farms. So cottages could be built along rives and such early on. But Cottage construction away from Rivers would have to wait until Construction. And even then they would need a nearby Farm to supply the fresh water.

I think this fix sounds like a great idea.

This would help greatly with cottage spam. You would need at least 4 farms to spam the rest of your city with cottages. (not accounting for where your water is)

This would also make land next to fresh water all the more valuable, which to me makes some sense anyway.

Perhaps Aqueducts could even end this restriction for a city.

However, in conjunction with a slowdown in how quickly cottages grow, the time required to research the extra tech(s) and then build the aqueducts would be dozens of turns that the user couldn't have cottages growing and producing.

This might have a real impact on what people choose to build.

 

[BCalchet]

I'd be interesting to see how the following worked out for cottages:


Cottage: -1(Negative improvement!)

Hamlet: -1, +1

Village: -1, +2, 0.25

Town: -1, +3, 0.25, 0.25 (The area is too crowded!)

+1 from Arcane Lore to all of the above.
+1 from Medicine to all of the above, also removes the health penalty.
+1 from Unquestioning Obedience to all of the above, also removes the happy penalty.


This makes cottages useless at first, but still worthwile to build and work (especially on flood plains with financial leaders - 23 after a single growth is pretty good.

Massing cottages on all tiles will not only leave you short on food, but also start hurting the happiness and healthiness of the city once they grow up.

Techs eventually remove all the penalties, but the current cottages could only ever be reached by Order civs. Further, I'd like to see some specific civs get special cottage bonuses - say, the Luchuirp might get an additional +1 hammers (silly 15-images-per-post limit!) at all levels.

 

[QES]

If cottages were useless, then the AI would never work the tile, it'd choose a specialists over it, even if its only option was a 1 hammer citizen. Therefore they'd never grow.
-Qes

 

[BCalchet]

Aah, forgot all about the AI for a moment, there. Wish it was possible to get it to behave without giving it bonuses it recognizes everywhere...

 

[KaNeaGE]

Hey all, im new to the boards here but not to Civ or this mod.

The underlying problem with making all the other improvments obsolete is the ability to turn all lands into grass land. this is stated earlier but i want to hammer it home again. so part of what needs to be done is make terraforming harder.

1. Terra forming should take many turns to complete, similar to building a mana node.
2. This process should also consume the unit as a penalty for what you are doing. as of now there are zero consequences for doing this. you are manipulating the balance of nature for your own selfish needs, and nothing bad will ever happen... In a sense you are building a farm on plains when you terraform it to grassland. perhaps make the world unit druid (forgot its name) be able to do this without consuming him.
3. you should only be able to terrafom a tile into a type of land that is adjacent to the square you are terraforming. ie you can only terraform into grassland if the square is next to a grassland tile.

with these changes it makes it more difficult and strategic to terraform thus cutting down on the ease of getting grass+cottage tiles.


something else that needs to be tended too is the use of improvements.


Farms- I like the idea of +1 or +.5 health per farm as it will want larger cities to rightfully produce farms to keep themselves healthy. more than that i think the agriculture civic should give farms +1 gold (it is an economic civic after all). im not sure if it possible but if cities above size 8 started requiring 3 food per pop then i think we would see more farms poping up.


Mines/Camps/Plantations have their uses so they are not a problem i think


Lumbermills. Hmm. Lumbermills should have an extra element to them. the whole purpose of a lumber mill is getting hammers w/o cutting down the tree. but many people like cutting down the trees. so lets combine them. what if the lumbermill uses a workers timer and "pretends" to chop down the tree. you get instant hammers just as if you cut the tree down (prolly half as much) but the forest stays put. after you get these hammers it will start the timer again and repeat. every 5 or so turns you will get 4-8 free hammers. spamming these could be a problem but hammers dont make the world go round. Gold does, so spamming cottages is actually more detremental to the balance IMO.


Windmills. I think windmills should have a similar unique effect on top of its bonuses. i think adding +1 gold and +1 food to all farms located in the 8 square surrounding it will be fair. this lets farming communities compete with cottages for gold with not overthrowing them. Combined with Aristocracy and my proposed agriculture change, farms next to windmills will give +1 food +3 gold, very close to the +1 hammer +4 gold cottages give.


Watermills. these should be similar to windmills but better due to their limited placement. i think +1 food and +2 gold for each farm next to it would be fair while still holding true to the purpose of wind and watermills in real life.


Workshops. the only purpose i can see in FFH for workshops is when you found a city that is surrounded by water and desperatly need hammers. This is ok, but workshops should be found all over the world. Worksops in a sense build things. more importantly Weapons, building materials, and wonders. so what if we changed the stats to +1 hammer -1 Gold but gave it the ability to increase production of whoever is working the tile by 5-10%to its base hammer count. (im not sure if this is possible but i think it should be similar to how stone/marble work). cities that are geared more toward production will take advantage of the % they give rather than a set amount.


i can see how people can abuse lumbermills and workshops but remember hammers dont give science beakers, but gold does. massproducing hammers from workshops will mean less gold and less research from the city unless the switch to research or wealth. in which case they arent building anything particularly useful anyway.


Ultimatly i think the 3 base improvements are Mines, Farms, and cottages. to rebalance cottages we should look to balance it with the other two improvement first. Windmills, lumbermill, Watermills, ect are specialty improvement that should be balanced to be used sparingly. i do NOT want to see more workshops in a city radius than farm/mine/cottage, but i do want to see at least a few workshops, which is more than what i see now


these are my thoughts, please tell me what you think of them

 

[Sureshot]

The underlying problem with making all the other improvments obsolete is the ability to turn all lands into grass land. this is stated earlier but i want to hammer it home again. so part of what needs to be done is make terraforming harder.

itd be nice if the vitalize/etc. spells instead created a worker that could build "improvements" that create no improvement and instead terraform the land. the beauty of this is that those workers could be automated as well

Farms- I like the idea of +1 or +.5 health per farm as it will want larger cities to rightfully produce farms to keep themselves healthy. more than that i think the agriculture civic should give farms +1 gold (it is an economic civic after all). im not sure if it possible but if cities above size 8 started requiring 3 food per pop then i think we would see more farms poping up.

i always wanted the agriculture civic to add +1 health per farm in the city radius myself, though it being an economic civic does suggest some commerce might make sense