Making late game improvements (windmills, watermills, lumberthingies) better

[Ranos]

Why not build a workshop in this case? It has higher output of and it is not restricted to a river...

Workshops give -1 to the plot where watermills don't. It's a trade off you have to choose between and sometimes watermills are the better balance.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Workshops give -1 to the plot where watermills don't. It's a trade off you have to choose between and sometimes watermills are the better balance.

He was talking about plently of grasslands and no hills. The extra for a -1 is what you would be asking in this type of situation. When you need , you build farms, when you want you build cottage, when you want you build workshop. None of them are restricted to rivers. No reason to build watermills...

 

[Ranos]

He was talking about plently of grasslands and no hills. The extra for a -1 is what you would be asking in this type of situation. When you need , you build farms, when you want you build cottage, when you want you build workshop. None of them are restricted to rivers. No reason to build watermills...

Or if you want a combination of all three, you go with watermills. Workshops give good but at a cost of -1 . Farms give extra but nothing else. Cottages give lots of but nothing else. Watermills don't take away the food, give you 2 and 2 , a decent balance between all three if the situation calls for it.

 

[Imuratep]

Something that I miss from Alpha is the weather condenser which improves the food income of surrounding tiles (or more accurately improves the tiles themselves, which of course doesn't fit for a windmill). Windmills could have a similar function for surrounding farm land and it would make sense as it processes the outcomes of farms. So my suggestion is that a windmill in addition to its current effects increases the food income of each surrounding farm by one . To balance this out the effects of multiple windmills wouldn't be cumulative (so a tile adjectant to two windmills will only get a bonus of one , not two) This way a windmill would surely be used, but not on every possible tile.

 

[Capn Charlie]

Something that I miss from Alpha is the wheater condensator which improves the food income of surrounding tiles (or more accurately improves the tiles themselves, which of course doesn't fit for a windmill). Windmills could have a similar function for surrounding farm land and it would make sense as it processes the outcomes of farms. So my suggestion is that a windmill in addition to its current effects increases the food income of each surrounding farm by one . To balance this out the effects of multiple windmills wouldn't be cumulative (so a tile adjectant to two windmills will only get a bonus of one , not two) This way a windmill would surely be used, but not on every possible tile.

This is what I was thinking about, too. Condensers gave a food bonus, and those... solar whatevers, gave a bonus to energy.

I'd like to see the late game improvements do something similiar. Windmills mill grain, and boost nearby farm output, watermills boost nearby hammer production, and lumbermills... I dunno, I just wish there was a way I could keep hill forests, mines are just so much better.

 

[25Hour]

I think we may be going in the wrong direction with this-- our problem is that we want these new buildings to be different and worthwhile, but not so much that it's worth paving over every farm and mine for the sake of building them. But simply having these buildings be hybrids of farms/cottages/mines isn't very good; one could get the same or better results just by mixing, well, farms/cottages/mines. (Note: I actually support this for windmills, for the sake of variety in hilly areas, but not for the others.)

It seems to me that we should take a more civics-oriented approach to the problem, like Beyond the Sword had with bonuses from Environmentalism. For example, you could have the Conquest Economy based off of workshops:

Workshop:
Base production: +2 hammers, -1 food. (Basically turns flatland into the equivalent of forested hill. Not powerful, but not completely useless.)
+1 food from Conquest civic.
+2 commerce from Slavery civic.

The idea is that workshops would get you quite a powerful economy-- as long as you were warring with people. If you weren't, the main bonuses from Conquest (military production and experience) would go to waste, as would those from Slavery-- in such a position you'd be better off with the basic economy plus supporting civics. I'd advocate doing something similar with the other advanced improvements, so that one could trade flexibility for power. That way, these improvements could influence overall strategy, rather than just be there for the sake of being there.

(Sorry, I'm not sure how to put the hammer/food/etc. icons in there. Help?)

 

[Chimera]

So I think the big problem is that these improvements don't offer any hard decisions. The trade offs for using them are clear, but in almost all situations are negative (occasionally they break even). As most people specialize cities, they only use farms, mines and cottages. Not much else is ever really needed as the lumbermill, windmill, and watermill improvements are a combination of the others.

What is really needed is to offer some civics and techs that increase their bonuses dramatically and make them 'overpowered'. For example, farms with sanitation and agrarianism connected to freshwater produce a lot of food, but with a large opportunity cost as you have to give up both tech path and civics to get this. This is what makes FFH fun, getting to choose what over the top strategy you want to use, knowing that you have to give up some equally good strategy and wanting to try that one the next time.

What I think would make the improvements interesting is to have some sort of city wide bonus for each one along with a small increase in yields like they do now, but have these linked to a tech or civic. Maybe start with a small bonus, such as 5% for each of these improvements to either (windmill), (watermill), or (lumber mill) and then increase this to 10% for running a civic unlocked 50% of the way through the tech tree, and add + 1,2, or 3 , , or for the improvements yield at different techs spread across the tech tree. This would really force players to choose what they wanted to increase and focus on, and make building these improvements a viable strategy and something to consider when placing cities and improving the land.

Edit:
I should also add that this could be extended to workshops as well. Give them no overall bonus until the civic that increases the other from 5% to 10% and then give workshops 5%. This has the effect of trading early from chopping, but with - 1 and overall production late in the game reduced, by using workshops, with the stronger late game and synergy with FOL using lumbermills.

 

[Imuratep]

I think we may be going in the wrong direction with this-- our problem is that we want these new buildings to be different and worthwhile, but not so much that it's worth paving over every farm and mine for the sake of building them. But simply having these buildings be hybrids of farms/cottages/mines isn't very good; one could get the same or better results just by mixing, well, farms/cottages/mines. (Note: I actually support this for windmills, for the sake of variety in hilly areas, but not for the others.)

In my suggestion you wouldn't pave them over every farm, that would be nonsense. In fact they would be synergistic with farms as the best strategy would be to build a lot of farms around them, so you would have 2 or 3 windmills in your city radius and the rest would be farms and mines.
I also like your suggestion as it adds bigger diversity to the game if every civic offers different interesting choices. Slavery could boost all -improvements except mining because that would decrease the diversity.

 

[renardargent]

Something that I miss from Alpha is the weather condensator which improves the food income of surrounding tiles (or more accurately improves the tiles themselves, which of course doesn't fit for a windmill). Windmills could have a similar function for surrounding farm land and it would make sense as it processes the outcomes of farms. So my suggestion is that a windmill in addition to its current effects increases the food income of each surrounding farm by one . To balance this out the effects of multiple windmills wouldn't be cumulative (so a tile adjectant to two windmills will only get a bonus of one , not two) This way a windmill would surely be used, but not on every possible tile.

I really like your idea, but I am afraid that it would nerf the cottage economy further more by strengthening the farm economy.
Thus, I think windmills should provide bonuses on maybe villages and towns too, to balance the things out.

 

[Kjara]

We could do the same thing with cottages and either the workshop or the watermill perhaps? Not sure exactly what we would want to do, but could link one of the buildings to cottages, and give them an extra commerce, or a hammer, and link the windmills or watermills to farms, and give it an extra food, or something. Heck could link watermills to both, workshops to cottages, and windmills to farms. Then, have windmills and workshops have close to the current yield, and watermills have a reduced yield, so they are closer to pure support buildings.

 

[Capn Charlie]

mines are just so much better.

Guess I'll be careful what I say in the future.

34. Lumbermills moved form Iron Working to Archery, Iron Working gives an addition +1 hammers.
35. Workshops moved from Smelting to Construction, the +1 hammer moved from Construction to Smelting.
36. Watermill moved from Engineering to Calendar, given +1 food, Machinery reduced from +2 commerce to +1 commerce.
37. Mines reduced from +2 hammers to +1 hammers.

Well, nerfing mines is definitely ONE way to make sure we're using the other improvements.

Nothing said for windmills yet, not sure if that's good or bad, but even with blasting powder I might take a windmill over a mine now.

Good job?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Let's see.

I'm going to start cottaging grassland hills now. Plains hills become pretty much junk terrain if they don't have a forest or resource or city or financial riverside on them. The unforested ones get mines, which are bulldozed for windmills in the case of riverside + financial. In any case, I put off working them before grassland hills, flat floodplains/plains/grassland, anything forested.... basically anything traditionally thought of as useful.

Production cities will change from areas with lots of hills to areas with lots of forest and/or riverside plains.

Riverside tiles will still get farms/cottages in commerce cities, while they'll get farms/watermills in production cities. The more forest there is, the more likely it is to go production. Forests won't get chopped anymore. Lumbermills all the way.

Workshops still suck dick. Yay, when you get smelting + construction they'll become exactly what they are now when you have those two techs, and you'll be able to build an inferior version at construction! Never built them before, so of course that won't change. Unless.... can you build them on plains hills? If so, they'll become superior to mines at smelting... wow.

Arete's becomes garbage, so RoK suffers. You won't need to ancientize forests to make them useful to work anymore, so FoL suffers as a permanent religion (maybe Zechnophobe will shut his mouth about how awesome it is for non-elven civs now.) A golden age popped at priesthood might be useful so you can revolt to FoL, build a couple of their priests, then change back before the GA expires. GA not needed if spiritual. Pillage unnecessary farms/cottages in your production cities, pillage plains hills. Bloom the tiles they were on. Add lumbermills. Badass as hell with the Malakim because they can revolt for the minimum amount of time and upgrade a bunch of lightbringers while in FoL, and they have spiritual so they can do it whenever.

Changes I'd make:

- Give workshops more love. Their "buff" is pathetic.
- Increase chopping yield, or maybe just the bonus to yield provided by ... math, was it? Chopping sucking at first really helps with the slow, dangerous early phase of FfH, but the proposed changes, by themselves, will make preserving and lumbermilling all your resourceless forests a no brainer throughout the entire game.

 

[renardargent]

I think Khazard would have a harder time, once mines were nerfed.

 

[War Chicken]

I find lumbermills pointless, honestly. Either people go FoL, or they have no forests.

I don't. When you're short of hills, Lumbermills give you at least some Production and Forest reduces sickness a little, so I always leave at least 4 tiles of forest in my cities if possible.

Only exception: Sheanim. Sheanim tend to raise hell anyway, and since theres no hell-forest it is pointless to rely on Forest while playing sheanim.

 

[Karnja]

this will end up in alot of micromanagement which is annoying as hell: priest have to plant alot of new trees which i will have to upgrade with lumbermills. this ends up in "work", no fun anymore. pretty disappointing

 

[Blackmantle]

I also have to say nerfing mines is a really! bad idea imo.
That's the wrong way (as in using a big berta versus a gnat.).
And I'm rather sure of it.

The existing good improvements (after! the nerf to cottages) weren't to strong (by a long shot imo, i have not even prioritized mines up until now even though they were quite useful. And i did just fine in my games. From now on i'll go out of my way to avoid them and hilly terrain.), the advanced ones were to weak (and by a long shot).
Balancing by reduction is only really useful if something is broken.

Possible real fix for the underlying problem: Put mines back up to +2 hammers and put a third progression of the advanced improvements (so an additional +1 hammer on Lumbermills at Iron working, an additional +1 hammer for Workshops at Machinery, and an additional step for improving watermills.)

Yes i'm seriously thinking that ultra-late-game very powerful improvements are fine. And im rather certain of it. + I think that the potential damage of that is miles less problematic than what is proposed for the upcoming patch.

As is, nerfing is the wrong (plain and simple without much uncertainty) option. As in making the game less fun.
Karnja and Monkeyfinger have outlined some of the reasons.



But that's a good illustration why calling something overpowered as soon as something seems to work nice is actually a bad idea. Be sure you don't get more than you bargain for with the team. Before! actually making a call.


Other problems:
Dwarves just got seriously nerfed and Arete just got seriously nerfed.
Possible hotfix: Dwarven Palace either gives + 1 hammer to Hills or to Mines.
Give Arete +2 Hammers for Mines. (only problem whould be a combiniation of the 2. Not sure if that's worse than what is proposed in the changelog though.)
No dwarves are not much stronger than the elves. On the contrary. Anyone seriously doubting that one? Now on that note, elves not exactely got stronger with that patch. But will suffer a lot less than others. Especially dwarves.

FoL + serious Micromanagement just got improved further (not exactly the worst religion up until now. Especially glaring in comparison to RoK/Arete which was even a bit weaker before usually. For most civs.)

Also the Flavor is now gimped because the high-tech-improvements are actually better from the start. With FFH2 being medival fantasy mostly. Not steampunk. (At least until very late into the game.)


All in all a nice recipe for community disorder if you ask me. (and this time it whould be justified. As in the game will be objectively worse after the change.)



@ Kael + possibly Team?:
Perhaps instead jumping on any notion from the community lately
(sorry but that change very much looks like it, because i can't spot all to many voices seriously calling for that change. At least not from someone who did seriously consider the consequences),
you should start actually asking the broader community what they think of such
(like you did with Chariots and the magic system) prior to undertaking such a massive change.
(i assure you both are actually marginal / minor! changes in comparison.)

This one might be the most! serious change of a core aspect of the mod in the history! of FFH 2. Ever (and there have been zounds of modifications so that is telling something...).
Which negatively effects every! single! civ in every! single! game which is not lost in the first 50-100 Turns and even 2 Religions in addition to it + city placement (and early religions which are seen in most games to add to that.).

And in that case here it wasn't even as strong a cry for nerf as usual... Nearly uncalled for and adding completely unnecessary complexity for its own sake.


I can assure you here that the majority of the community would rather see the other improvements changed / enhanced later in the game than to gimp / change the balance of the improvements / flow early game.
(anyone care to do a poll to show what i will predict will be a 90/10 ratio against such a change?
Maybe I'm totally mistaken but i have serious! doubts about that one.
But! if you do:
Please! take care to do a good! one with many balanced! and well! thought out options! not just black and white polarization (as much as i personally feel polarized on the matter). The thing at hand is a very! serious matter for the mod so any time taken to do a stellar poll with much contemplated options is not wasted. I assure you.)


Honestly farms have always been among the top contenders of any improvements (especially after cottages got nerfed) in question with the many uses for food in FFH2 are you seriously considering nerfing those as well?
I see a negative nerf-spiral of the worst sort coming our / your way (and i feared something like that might happen when cottages first got nerfed with which I overall can understand. Looks like fear just materialized.) in the coming discussions if the change goes ahead.

I don't think this is remotely a good idea from any angle. The mod has precisely been fun because! good improvements are available + useful for the whole game and not just in the end. The call here was to make late game improvements more viable (And i think it was basically exclusively about late game. Maybe im starkly mistaken? Early game = mostly fine as is.
It isn't broke by any means? Don't fix it.)

Reverse that and you have: balance ---> fun (both very much in bold). Are you sure you'll want that for your mod?


Don't get me wrong. Its your mod, its your call.
I like it much.
I'll likely continue to play it (especially because i'm a player not all so much overfond of mines. I rather dig farms + cottages and civics which use food and other things for production / recruiting units / generating hammers).
For the rest of the community on the other hand (especially new players and players enjoying shorter games in terms of time and turns), I'm far from so sure.

But i do precisely speak so clearly and starkly because i care and I'm thinking you'll do a potentially devastating thing here ultimately eating alot of your time + resources for trying to fix a relatively minor problem (big bertas and gnats come up again. ) with a major long-drawn balancing mess where a good outcome is far from certain in the end (most likely far worse in the beginning) when so many other far more pressing things await (AI-issues come to mind.).
(yes, improvements are an important aspect of the game. Yes its worthwhile to tune their balance so most are viable. Very much so.
But when the cure for the "minor cold" of underpowered late game improvements is the "black death and pocks" of junked early game + broken flavor and i'll rather stick with a "minor cold". Thank you!
And I'm not even digging into short games so much like many other more aggressively minded players...)

Edit: tuned down a bit so sensibilities are not touched that hard... On review, I guess its better to stick to "dead" plagues instead of modern still raging ones.



If your real issue with mines is that they get way to powerful with gunpowder (i don't exactly agree here, but that notion seems much! more reasonable.) then by all means axe +1 hammer for mines on gunpowder so they don't overshadow other improvements anymore. Lategame!
Not the best of changes imo but miles and away better than what was proposed for next patch + that's much more up to opinion and can be a very reasonable debate where i can very well understand all sides of the argument (with me being in the camp of people who say late-game improvements need a boost not the rest a nerf / less improvements over the cause of the game.).

 

[Grey Fox]

Mines should stay the way they are and workshop need a civic to boost them by +1 hammer or so. I like the sound of the other changes, will need some testing to feel how it's all going to work however. But I agree with Monkeyfinger's asumptions and like I posted in the bug thread. Cutting forests need a boost to the hammers on some tech(s).

Cottages need a late game civic to boost their growth rate. Maybe Republic.

 

[Senethro]

Balancing with civics has been the best idea suggested. A penalty to the three mills with Agrarianism and different bonus from civics like Republic, Mercantilism and Guilds might be nice.

 

[Kael]

I laid out the major improvements and just as people had realized their was little reason to use the late game improvements. The early improvements were as good, if not better. Here are the stats Im looking at:

Note: Yields are always Food/Hammers/Commerce. I ignore some specific civ/civic options (like arete or kurio town upgrade) because we are focusing on the base.

Farm +2 (plus resources)
[tab]req: Agriculture
[tab]+1/0/0 with irrigation
[tab]+1/0/0 with sanitation
[tab]hooks up wheat/corn/etc
[tab]Carries irrigation

Mine +2 (plus resources)
[tab]req: Mining
[tab]0/+1/0 (changed from 0/+2/0)
[tab]0/+1/0 with Blasting Powder
[tab]hooks up copper/iron/etc

Lumbermill +2/+3 (with rivers)
[tab]req: Archery (changed from Iron Working)
[tab]0/+1/0
[tab]0/0/+1 with a river
[tab]being able to build on a forest is effectively another 0/+1/0

Workshop +3
[tab]req: Construction (changed from smelting)
[tab]-1/+2/0 (changed from -1/+1/0)
[tab]0/+1/0 with Smelting (changed from construction)
[tab]0/+1/0 with Guilds

Watermill +4
[tab]req: Calendar (changed from engineering)
[tab]+1/+1/0 (changed from 0/+1/0)
[tab]0/+1/+1 with Machinery (changed from 0/+1/+2)

Windmill +4
[tab]req: Engineering
[tab]+1/+0/+1
[tab]0/+1/+1 with Machinery

Town +5
[tab]req: Education
[tab]0/0/+4
[tab]0/0/+1 with Taxation
[tab]takes a considerable time to grow to this level, makes it very vulnerable to pillaging

In this system:

1. Farms and Mines are early game improvements that serve specific purposes but will be obsoleted by later improvements.

2. Farm and Mine build times may be reduced.

3. It may be best to cut 1/2 of these improvements (windmills for example and then move watermills to later in the game)

 

[Bitwise]

I think this may weaken Arete overall. I'd like to have Arete be competitive in the late game running mostly mines since it's more in theme with RoK. Maybe increase the mine bonus for that civic to +2 ?