Landmarks

[tothePAIN]

Public Service Announcement / Question for the Vox Populi Community:

PSA - If you're wide or otherwise struggling with happiness in the industrial era, archaeology is the strongest technology for happiness, bar none, because a landmark gives one happiness per city. With a wide empire of 9 cities, this is 9 happiness. This is one of the few happiness remedies that truly scales with the number of cities. All happiness issues with core cities should disappear after building a few landmarks. I even build landmarks in foreign lands because the builder of the landmark gets the happiness. One happiness per city is really strong. (Note - I believe that the one happiness per city only applies to currently owned cities, not future cities, so be careful about an infinite conquering spree after digging up landmarks.) This is also one way to make wide artistry work - fealty may get one happiness per city with castles, which can beat artistry after 9 cities, but a single landmark from a hidden architect site will remedy this.

Question - is this too strong?

I'd say no - I love it as a player who tends to go wide and struggle with happiness as I grow larger. It would be too strong if it occurred earlier but its important that this occurs later in the game when happiness isn't intended to be a limit on growth or conquering in the same way as earlier in the game. By the time I'm in the industrial era, I enjoy landmarks because they allow me to ignore happiness (which I'm fine with as a mechanic, since its the industrial era.) I've also noticed that the AI builds many landmarks.

 

[Stalker0]

Considering there is nothing else in the game that provides this kind of power short of certain policies (actually are there even any that do that?), that seems incredibly strong to me.

 

[Enginseer]

Keep in mind that you have to find these antiquity sites which are a one-time thing.

On average I only get about 80 antiquity sites(unique antiquity sites who knows) on Huge Map. That's +80 happiness per city only if I can reach them which are not they all in my territory to claim.

You have two archaeologists to even have in the first place and they have a low base move along with the fact they have to travel there. You can't purchase them. You have to train them.

So the only time you can excavate antiquity sites are landmarks in your cities (or in mutual OB'ed territory) or City-States. If you have a lot of cities then you have a lot of potential Landmarks. No problems with this.

If we want to nerf it, we can restrict Archaeologists from excavating without being Friendly with the City-State first.

 

[Stalker0]

Keep in mind that you have to find these antiquity sites which are a one-time thing.

On average I only get about 80 antiquity sites(unique antiquity sites who knows) on Huge Map. That's +80 happiness per city only if I can reach them which are not they all in my territory to claim.

You have two archaeologists to even have in the first place and they have a low base move along with the fact they have to travel there. You can't purchase them. You have to train them.

So the only time you can excavate antiquity sites are landmarks in your cities (or in mutual OB'ed territory) or City-States. If you have a lot of cities then you have a lot of potential Landmarks. No problems with this.

If we want to nerf it, we can restrict Archaeologists from excavating without being Friendly with the City-State first.

Even if I get just 5 landmarks in a game, which I have easily done, thst is +5 happy per city. That is crazy powerful

 

[Bhawb]

5 happiness per city is nice, but at the point in the game that landmarks unlocked happiness is basically just allowing you to grow your cities a handful of pop higher or act as buffers for Ideological Pressure or War Weariness. FWIW, I had over 70 WW unhappiness during a war with Germany (roughly around the time you'd unlock Landmarks) where I captured two of their cities and wasn't harmed myself except a handful of dead units meaning his WW was massive, so unhappiness can certainly swing hard depending on situation.

I'd generally say they aren't too strong considering the general increase in unhappiness quantities late game if you are going wide enough to care about unhappiness still. Plus, there is a tradeoff you have to make, it isn't like the happiness comes without any cost.

 

[andersw]

The amount of happiness they produce when going wide is just bonkers.
Feels out of balanace compared to other happiness stuff.
It does force a warmonger to grind some of the upper techs.

 

[Stalker0]

I'd generally say they aren't too strong considering the general increase in unhappiness quantities late game if you are going wide enough to care about unhappiness still. Plus, there is a tradeoff you have to make, it isn't like the happiness comes without any cost.

Just noting, it wasn't like landmarks were weak before this change. Now people were arguing for reasons to build them outside of your borders, which was a legitimate complaint. But I built landmarks before all the time in my borders. Now I get all that, and a +10% unit production/+10% growth in all cities (because I just cannot keep cities happy when wide)

For context, on turn 300 of my current game I was at 52% Global. Now at Turn 340 I'm at 85% Global, even though my cities have actually gotten more unhappiness. I have not received any cool new buildings or really anything that addresses happiness. I have gotten 1 thing...landmarks. I now have an additional +7 happiness in every city. For context my happiness before this change was +8. I was received almost a 100% bonus to my happiness in every city just because of landmarks.

That is too good. And if its not than we are saying happiness is worthless.

 

[chicorbeef]

We could change Landmark happiness to be +6 flat like the happiness luxury monopoly, that way it's more tall-friendly and doesn't have wide-scaling issues (wide usually has more landmarks so it balances out). I mean, we changed Runestones, Colosseums, Acropoli to be more tall-friendly (I know they're not quite the same thing but still) so why not this?

 

[BiteInTheMark]

We could change Landmark happiness to be +6 flat like the happiness luxury monopoly, that way it's more tall-friendly and doesn't have wide-scaling issues (wide usually has more landmarks so it balances out). I mean, we changed Runestones, Colosseums, Acropoli to be more tall-friendly (I know they're not quite the same thing but still) so why not this?

Absolutly agree. The amount of happiness from landmarks is ridicoulus. Why did we nerf the mentioned buildings to stop exponential per city yields, and then invent next version something, what is doing exactly the same.

Serious people! You are arguing, that happiness from landmarks is ok cause you have late game happiness issues.... But a happiness system which needs such happiness steroids out of the blue is imbalanced.
I dont want to say the system is bad, but like in the previoius system, the numbers have to be adjusted right, cause the needs and its modifiers are the core of the happiness system.
If the modifiers wouldnt rise by such huge amounts, we wouldnt have such happiness problems in the lategame. And if the numbers would be set right, we wouldnt need any unhappiness cap in the cities.

Why should I focus on happiness by buildings, policies and religion, if all I have to do is focus on archeology and be the first which is simply spamming archeologist. And be able to double my happiness alone by landmarks, making every effort in previous generated happiness to a farce.

You can't purchase them. You have to train them.

Knowledge through devotion allows you to buy them by faith. At that time, its only 450 faith and also adds +4 faith and science to the landmarks. Cheap.

 

[Rafs]

This is all from my pov as a player on huge maps, don't know if this is exactly like this on standard size:

We could change Landmark happiness to be +6 flat like the happiness luxury monopoly, that way it's more tall-friendly and doesn't have wide-scaling issues (wide usually has more landmarks so it balances out). I mean, we changed Runestones, Colosseums, Acropoli to be more tall-friendly (I know they're not quite the same thing but still) so why not this?

Making the landmarks give a flat happiness bonus without considering map size scalability way too good for tall and mediocre for wide. These past few games I've played if you really want landmarks you have to get open borders from the AI and get their digsites or neutral digsites (cs/non claimed land), the amount of digsites on my controlled territory doesn't even amount to 15% of the digsites I can dig (even if I am first on the territory amount). As the archeologists are capped at 3 at the same time, there is almost no advantage for wide compared to tall if you can manage to get open borders or scout the dig sites on neutral/non claimed lands.

Absolutly agree. The amount of happiness from landmarks is ridicoulus. Why did we nerf the mentioned buildings to stop exponential per city yields, and then invent next version something, what is doing exactly the same.

Serious people! You are arguing, that happiness from landmarks is ok cause you have late game happiness issues.... But a happiness system which needs such happiness steroids out of the blue is imbalanced.
I dont want to say the system is bad, but like in the previoius system, the numbers have to be adjusted right, cause the needs and its modifiers are the core of the happiness system.
If the modifiers wouldnt rise by such huge amounts, we wouldnt have such happiness problems in the lategame. And if the numbers would be set right, we wouldnt need any unhappiness cap in the cities.

Why should I focus on happiness by buildings, policies and religion, if all I have to do is focus on archeology and be the first which is simply spamming archeologist. And be able to double my happiness alone by landmarks, making every effort in previous generated happiness to a farce.

I agree the scaling is kind of wonky in the end (imho), and I haven't played a tall game because I always play Huge maps, is the endgame happiness that bad for tall?
For me, most of the time the limiting factor for acheologists is getting them to the digsite and hoping nothing happens (nobody claims it, claims the land). The turns you save buying them amount, in my experience, to less than 10% of the time the archeologist takes to be produced, move and work the digsite so to speak (this last task being by far the longest one unless you are playing progress and have pyramids). A very small saving that defintely doesn't cut it. What is stoping tall players from rushing archeologists and getting open borders / sending archeologists to non claimed lands?
I'll also add that despite the how good the landmarks are for wide play, you absolutely cannot depend on them and will always have to buy happiness buildings and get the correct policies. The landmarks you make only give happiness to existing cities in your empire, not future cities, as such they cannot replace policies/religion/buildings (trust me, I wish it was that easy), and on top of that the AI can settle on top a digsite and make it disapear forever.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll also add that despite the how good the landmarks are for wide play, you absolutely cannot depend on them and will always have to buy happiness buildings and get the correct policies.

This is another reason I don't like the current balance. If the AI grabs a lot of landmarks early on, your happiness experience could be night and day compared to someone who rushed Archeology. Contrast that to Great Musicians. They also provide happiness, but you are in complete control of their generation and so can decide how and when to use them. And I believe they only provide +1 happiness period, but I could be wrong on that one.

 

[Borussia]

Your citizen are not happy because you discovered something as the first country in the past but because they can use the positive effects of the discovery in everyday life.
Other countries would copy the discovery und use it themselves. The latter ist not possible with how landmarks work now.

I guess we should remove happiness from landmarks and give them high culture / tourism yields for the city that works the tile.

In my current game I will reload a savegame 3 turns ago and use all digsites for landmarks and not great works.
I hope this issue will get fixed / balanced in the next version.

 

[Gazebo]

Don’t worry about it. Landmarks exist as is because I didn’t want to add a new memory variable and break save games in the prior version. They weren’t intended to stay as they are now.

 

[Omen of Peace]

I agree the scaling is kind of wonky in the end (imho), and I haven't played a tall game because I always play Huge maps, is the endgame happiness that bad for tall?

My experience has been 0 happiness issues with Tall (on Standard, not Huge, but I don't think map size changes as much for Tall as for Wide). I haven't seen anybody reporting happiness issues with Tall.

In fact, I think the recent change to have some Specialists not create Unhappiness is perhaps even more of a boon for Wide than for Tall - since before many of the cities in a wide empire would be unhappy, and working Specialists would worsen the problem.
Even so, Wide happiness is perhaps still in need of a tweak, based on feedback from various people in this thread and others. Perhaps Landmarks should be nerfed (to a fixed value between 2 and 6), but the per-city Empire penalty percentage lowered a bit as well.

After that, Tall might still have too much happiness, but I'm not sure how to lower it without penalizing Tall too much.

 

[tothePAIN]

Don’t worry about it. Landmarks exist as is because I didn’t want to add a new memory variable and break save games in the prior version. They weren’t intended to stay as they are now.

They're over tuned right now but I still enjoy them a ton as a remedy for happiness over expansion. They're the only mechanic in the game right now that enables my fantasies of going wide and owning half the map. On deity, there is pretty much nothing else that will remedy the happiness problems of a wide warmongerer. I raised the issue because they seemed inconsistent with the other trends in the game. However, late game happiness is otherwise immensely challenging - growth is pretty much done and every expansion is incredibly challenging.

 

[Stalker0]

They're over tuned right now but I still enjoy them a ton as a remedy for happiness over expansion. They're the only mechanic in the game right now that enables my fantasies of going wide and owning half the map. On deity, there is pretty much nothing else that will remedy the happiness problems of a wide warmongerer. I raised the issue because they seemed inconsistent with the other trends in the game. However, late game happiness is otherwise immensely challenging - growth is pretty much done and every expansion is incredibly challenging.

I agree this is a problem, but landmarks are not the solution. There are better ways to solve this than a mechanic that is highly variable game to game.

 

[tothePAIN]

They may be a 70% solution - not perfect - but they're still a solution and one that has to be earned. They're highly variable but that variability can be reduced by going wide and obtaining a lot of land or by staying peaceful so as to have mutual open borders with other civilizations. I'd also point out that this solution occurs in the industrial era - which is the point where the happiness system is supposed to be less relevant, no?

The new happiness system was advertised as doing happiness by city and ultimately enabling players to go tall or wide. In practice, however, going wide is very tough at the higher difficulties due to happiness. The AI seems to grow its cities without any difficulties but luxuries and other one off happiness effects like the Circus Maximums don't scale well enough as a player goes wide..

I'm open to some sort of nerf to landmarks - perhaps the happiness should only be if the landmark is in a player's territory - but not a complete elimination without the late game happiness being somewhat easier.


If landmarks were earlier in the game, I'd feel differently - like they were a complete cheat code. But as is, they're the only thing enabling the late game conquering spree or growth.

 

[Stalker0]

Sorry I know I'm talking up this subject a lot...but I want to go back to why landmarks were changed in the first place.

Personally I thought landmarks were solid before, they gave a nice boost of yields to your cities, basically creating a GPTI tile. And there were resolutions and religious beliefs to make them stronger if you want to focus on them.

It seemed the only real concern about them was that there was never a time to build them in another player's borders. Personally I have never understood why that needs to be appealing, to me the whole point of the archeology race is to snag as many sites as you can. The strategy is managing to grab the works from your opponents before they do it to you. I don't know why landmarks need to be competitive with works in enemy territory in terms of bonuses....if you want a diplomatic benefit, get a landmark. If you want bonuses, get a great work. Simple, clean, and easy. And if the diplomatic benefit wasn't potent enough we could make it stronger, or maybe add in some CS influence when doing it with a CS.

But it feels like landmarks got lobbed into the happiness camp....and not everything needs to be connected. I would much rather revert landmarks to what they used to be....a solid enhancement to your terrain, and then focus on balancing the happiness system without them.

 

[tothePAIN]

Sorry I know I'm talking up this subject a lot...but I want to go back to why landmarks were changed in the first place.

Personally I thought landmarks were solid before, they gave a nice boost of yields to your cities, basically creating a GPTI tile. And there were resolutions and religious beliefs to make them stronger if you want to focus on them.

It seemed the only real concern about them was that there was never a time to build them in another player's borders. Personally I have never understood why that needs to be appealing, to me the whole point of the archeology race is to snag as many sites as you can. The strategy is managing to grab the works from your opponents before they do it to you. I don't know why landmarks need to be competitive with works in enemy territory in terms of bonuses....if you want a diplomatic benefit, get a landmark. If you want bonuses, get a great work. Simple, clean, and easy. And if the diplomatic benefit wasn't potent enough we could make it stronger, or maybe add in some CS influence when doing it with a CS.

But it feels like landmarks got lobbed into the happiness camp....and not everything needs to be connected. I would much rather revert landmarks to what they used to be....a solid enhancement to your terrain, and then focus on balancing the happiness system without them.

I get what you're saying. I partially raised the issue of landmarks because I see frequent posts about happiness and how to deal with it. For me, landmarks have been the only real solution to late game happiness. But if landmarks were simply effectively a GPTI competing with an artifact, that would also be fine if... late game happiness were easier to solve.

The public works concept was nice in theory but in practice, it usually doesn't reduce unhappiness as the needs modifiers are too much.

It does seem that this has devolved into a happiness discussion, like many of these threads.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

In practice, however, going wide is very tough at the higher difficulties due to happiness.

Shouldnt it be like that? I think in this case, it has achieved its goal.

I'm open to some sort of nerf to landmarks - perhaps the happiness should only be if the landmark is in a player's territory - but not a complete elimination without the late game happiness being somewhat easier.

Easy solution. Reduce the modifiers. Especially the empire modifier (which rises with more cities). Iam really looking forward to a new adjustment of the landmark and the modifiers. But I get the feeling we are going again away more and more from the initially "its new and easy" claim and create more and more artificial mechanics and rules.
If it is really necessary, I would took, what we already have. Something like techs also unlock more happiness from luxuries or a world congress resolution.