[NFP] Monopolies and Corporations Game Mode Discussion Thread

[kaspergm]

For that matter, the Ruhr Valley Wonder is really the Krupp Steel Corporation based in Essen originally: a Corporation disguised as a Wonder, so a lot more could be done relating Corporations, or at least their Headquarters and Bonuses, with On-Map Districts or Wonders.

Yeah, again as I see it, this is basically a consequence of the game-mode approach. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful we got corporations at all, and it has some interesting features that can hopefully be modded to make a more integrated implementation, but on the bottom line, there are a lot more things that would have been logical to do that's been left out. Like other have said, why does this feature have zero interaction with the Industrial Zone district?

 

[King of Prussia]

I just want to post and say, balance on tourism aside, i really enjoy this mode.

 

[Ansive]

Inquisitive Otter on YouTube did a turn 59 tourism victory as Rome. 2 Monopolies, I think 3 Heroic Relics, and I think they managed to buy a random relic from an AI.

Nice run. Very broken.

February's update was announced. Hopefully when the change log is revealed we'll see some updates to the monopoly tourism.
If not... I'll be getting the achievements and never touching it again.

 

[Thebard78]

Nice run. Very broken.

February's update was announced. Hopefully when the change log is revealed we'll see some updates to the monopoly tourism.
If not... I'll be getting the achievements and never touching it again.

I watched Boes win a tourism victory on turn 42 earlier today. To be fair, it requires a very lucky start to win that fast.

 

[kaspergm]

February's update was announced. Hopefully when the change log is revealed we'll see some updates to the monopoly tourism.
If not... I'll be getting the achievements and never touching it again.

Well I agree it should be fixed, but in most of my games with this feature so far, while I have been getting a cultural victory I shouldn't have gotten, it didn't happen super fast. So if you don't use Corporation AND Heroes at the same time, it seems to happen around the time where game starts to get boring anyway, so if the alternative was quitting the game and starting a new one ...

 

[Abaxial]

I'm not finding it super-broken myself. In the game just finished I had +480% tourism boost with four monopolies, It sounds a lot, but 2 + 480% of 2 is not a lot. My concerns are more

1. Products are not very useful. A product gets you 1 tourim, compared to a cultist's relic which is 12.
2. It would be a lot of fun if the AI civs actually competed. Think of having to wage war to break a monopoly.

It's clearly not the economics game people were expecting, but that's no reason not to embrace it on its own terms.

 

[UWHabs]

I'm not finding it super-broken myself. In the game just finished I had +480% tourism boost with four monopolies, It sounds a lot, but 2 + 480% of 2 is not a lot. My concerns are more

1. Products are not very useful. A product gets you 1 tourim, compared to a cultist's relic which is 12.
2. It would be a lot of fun if the AI civs actually competed. Think of having to wage war to break a monopoly.

It's clearly not the economics game people were expecting, but that's no reason not to embrace it on its own terms.

Products aren't meant for tourism - their primary purpose is to spread the industry benefit to cities outside of the corporation. So in that sense, it's working as designed and I have no problem there.

But yeah, the fact that when the mode is on, AI seemingly never improve their resources, limits the use. I think if the monopoly bonuses ended up cancelling out - so maybe I get +480% on an AI, but if they have +300% on me, then it's only effectively +180%, which is still high but certainly closer to manageable. My non-monoplies game I'm in now, the AI is at least doing a slightly better job at resources, so I'm guessing it's a case where the AI was too excited to put industries down that they forget they needed those first improvements in first before they could upgrade.

 

[Uberfrog]

I just finished a Monopolies & Corporations game (Deity, Online speed) on the TSL Asia map as Vietnam.

It’s a good map for it, as the civ and resource distribution makes monopolies a little harder to get for all but two resources (Spices in Indonesia and Jade in China — with these having tight clusters of only five resource nodes). I was peaceful apart from an early war with China, Vietnam having plenty of growing room when Khmer isn’t in the game.

As I approached cultural victory around T175, I had barely two monopolies: Ivory and Spices (thanks to a pleasingly historical spice colony I went for in the late game after I noticed Gitarja hadn’t settled one of the spice islands).

A war with Mongolia and India would have helped me get a crucial monopoly multiplier earlier, but I found it worked quite well with the game mode not breaking the game.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Well I agree it should be fixed, but in most of my games with this feature so far, while I have been getting a cultural victory I shouldn't have gotten, it didn't happen super fast. So if you don't use Corporation AND Heroes at the same time, it seems to happen around the time where game starts to get boring anyway, so if the alternative was quitting the game and starting a new one ...

I've noticed most of these games are not only Heroes and Corporations but they also play Secret Societies.
Talk about Trifecta Overkill.
They seem to like to play on a Small Map to get the Four Bagger.

 

[greenOak]

For anyone who doesn't think the monopoly tourism boost is broken, I take it you'd be fine with losing a culture victory to an AI you haven't met before turn 100. Because right now, the only thing stopping that from happening is the bug where the AI won't improve multiple copies of luxuries with this mode enabled. Worst of all, its totally map dependant whether or not this would happen.

It's easy to play a game where you don't get any monopolies, or don't get a monopoly until late in the game and think "its not actually that bad", but the reality is that it is utterly broken on certain map configurations. These maps aren't particularly rare either as evidenced by the numerous sub-100 culture wins achieved by decent but far from elite players (myself included).

 

[Blutark]

Yeah I really dont know how people could think this isnt broken. Turn 42 wins. Culture wins with zero Theatre Squares before Flight and the other techs and civics, whilst going full war machine. It's as broken as you get. I keep CV's off...but that meant I had to do a SV last game. Oh wow, do I hate how they drag out.

No mention of it in Feb update too. What's going on?

 

[Datian]

Products are really nice, there are only so many % multipliers in the game - which was one of the differences with Civ5, and prevented you from having the mega-city that gave you enough science to win the game by itself.
I somehow went overboard in my last game, with a single city earning 3500 gpt : Phoenicia, OOH, Great Zimbabwe... I don't need to say more. It could have been much more but when you earn 10k gpt there's no point.

And that's where the products are somehow limited, they don't shine until very late in the game, and you will use them to amplify your own strengths. What's the point of adding 25% science in a handful of cities when you're already earning 1500 or 2000 per turn ?

They could have more impact if they were available earlier. However, we would then go back to Civ5 and the 3-4 cities that are enough to win.

 

[aieeegrunt]

For anyone who doesn't think the monopoly tourism boost is broken, I take it you'd be fine with losing a culture victory to an AI you haven't met before turn 100. Because right now, the only thing stopping that from happening is the bug where the AI won't improve multiple copies of luxuries with this mode enabled. Worst of all, its totally map dependant whether or not this would happen.

It's easy to play a game where you don't get any monopolies, or don't get a monopoly until late in the game and think "its not actually that bad", but the reality is that it is utterly broken on certain map configurations. These maps aren't particularly rare either as evidenced by the numerous sub-100 culture wins achieved by decent but far from elite players (myself included).

Bug or Panic Balance?

 

[IsabelBraganca]

I really got confused about how the tourism modifier is calculated. I had 510% modifier, then I got more one monopoly and it went to 2200%. It was a big monopoly (11/17) but I wasn't expecting that much increase. I though it would be around 800-1000%... I had built 2 spice products, maybe that helped?

My monopolies....

Spoiler :

Tourism modifier before....

Spoiler :

Tourism modifier after...

Spoiler :

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

I love this mode! An additional economic layer makes the game super fun. But. The Tourism bonus for monopolies is way too high and makes Culture games too easy.
"A monopolized resource will boost Tourism by 5% times the number of improved nodes times the number of civilizations who do not control an instance of that resource."
This is stacking like crazy. I would propose something like this:
1. It should not boost global Tourism but only tourism for Civilization just like a +25% open borders modifier.
2. It should not be 5% TIMES the number of improved luxuries, but x% (less than 5 perhaps 2?) for each improved luxury. So if I have 4 Silver Mines and Monopoly it would make 8% (if we assume it is 2% for each improved luxury) Tourism bonus for all Civilizations that have improved any Silver.
Or I would just remove this general tourism bonus and just buff Tourism bonus for Products in Stock Exchange and Seaport.
Anything but please nerf it

 

[IsabelBraganca]

Before I improved the amber, considering all other resources I improved - 19*5*6=570% - That is near 510%, the difference is the resources other civilization controlled, so it is small.
After I improved the amber, the increase was 2200%-510%=1690% but it should have been at most 5%*11*6=330%. It was a big monopoly, but the increase was bigger than I expected.

 

[greenOak]

IMO it should just be 5% x Number of resources in the monopply, and then that number gets applied to any civ who doesn't have that resource. Also, if you trade a civ that luxury, you lose the tourism modifier. This would put monopolies more inline with other tourism modifiers in the game.

 

[Deggial]

I don’t think, a linear nerf across the board will be the solution.

Controlling one ore two monopolies will not screw tourism. It’s multiple monopolies that lead to the absurd percentages in the thousands. They come with an extended militaristic play style; players aiming for a peaceful game (and hence more likely those aiming for a Cultural Victory) will never “benefit” from a multitude of monopolies but will be stuck to just a few.

I think it’s important to tackle the tourism issue for conquest players without devaluating the game mechanic completely for peaceful players limiting themselves to a smaller territory.

My proposed solution for this: diminishing returns.

The first two monopolies could both add 100% to tourism each.
The third one would only add 50%.
A fourth one 25%. And so on.
(All numbers just as an example. They could even mean “100% of what the current formula does”)

With such an approach, players aiming for a Conquest Victory will not unintentionally win a Cultural Victory, while those aiming for the later still have an incentive to establish a small amount of monopolies.

 

[Kwami]

I don’t think, a linear nerf across the board will be the solution.

Controlling one ore two monopolies will not screw tourism. It’s multiple monopolies that lead to the absurd percentages in the thousands. They come with an extended militaristic play style; players aiming for a peaceful game (and hence more likely those aiming for a Cultural Victory) will never “benefit” from a multitude of monopolies but will be stuck to just a few.

I think it’s important to tackle the tourism issue for conquest players without devaluating the game mechanic completely for peaceful players limiting themselves to a smaller territory.

My proposed solution for this: diminishing returns.

The first two monopolies could both add 100% to tourism each.
The third one would only add 50%.
A fourth one 25%. And so on.
(All numbers just as an example. They could even mean “100% of what the current formula does”)

With such an approach, players aiming for a Conquest Victory will not unintentionally win a Cultural Victory, while those aiming for the later still have an incentive to establish a small amount of monopolies.

Even 100% is too much, though. Consider all of the other modifiers that you could possibly get through open borders, same governments, techs, civics, etc. They're all quite small. Then, you'll just add a big 100% modifier for a single monopoly? One that's probably easy to get if you control your area, or have Maui, or whatever? It's just too much.

 

[Elhoim]

times the number of civilizations who do not control an instance of that resource

And since the AI is not improving resources most of the time, that means all civilizations in many cases.