[NFP] Monopolies need to be balanced!

civfan_999

Chieftain
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
99
Love the new monopolies and corporations pack. Tons of fun. The idea to create products and be able to ship them around from city to city and trade them with different players is great.

I have a few recommendations:

(1) Monopolies should provide +25% tourism with each civ that does not have the luxury resource, at most.

Monopolies are OP for a culture victory. The tourism boost is way over tuned. I was still quite early in my game, working on a culture victory with a dozen or so great works. Then I grabbed an extra city that gave me a couple more dyes and another tobaccos. This gave me two monopolies. I checked to victory tab, curious how much of a boost it gave me, only to find I was getting +900% with every civ in the game. This is ludicrously OP. Normally I am working hard to get trade routes with as many different civs as possible just to get +25% for each trade route, a boost that I am never able to get with all the civs in the game. This gave me +900% across the board with one move.

I developed two more monopolies (I had been working towards getting these given I was playing the new pack for the first time) and my tourism per civ went up to +1,350% and then +1,800%. Insane! I went from a dozen great works still relatively early on the path to my victory to a win 8 turns after I dropped my first two monopolies and I didn't need the second two monopolies at all.

I suggest that it should be more on par with other tourism boost. Trade routes provide +25%. Monopolies providing +25% would also make sense. Whatever is done, it needs to be dialed way down.

(2) Corporations shouldn't consume a great merchant.

This feature basically means you are choosing between the old game mechanic (using great merchant charges) and the new game mechanic (creating corporations). I would argue that corporations are better than all the great merchants, with a few possible exceptions (like the ones that create the unique luxury resource and the one that provides a bank with great work slots). As a result, you have essentially overwritten the old function.

Why not have each great merchant able to create one corporation prior to using its charge for whatever power it normally had? I.e. each great merchant can create one corporation and use its power like normal. I think this would be far superior.

(3) The number of each luxury resource in the game needs to be more balanced.

In my game, there were 14 dyes and 14 tobacco, which made me work quite hard to expand across my continent strategically to attain a monopoly. Meanwhile, there 2 citrus and 2 honey both super close to each other so Korea had access to two easy monopolies. (She didn't develop the second copy of either, which is another annoyance of the game - i.e. the the AI doesn't use builders efficiently - but none the less, it points to a lack of balance.) On the other extreme, there were 84 turtles, so there was no chance of monopolizing that resource.

This is not something that has mattered before now, but with the monopolies and corporations pack, the game should be tuned to be more balanced in regards to total numbers of each luxury resource. Even within bounds would be good. Something like a minimum of 8 and maximum of 20 of each luxury resource can spawn on a map.

(4) Can the devs make a new economic victory condition?


Likely something around monopolies and the creation of products.
 
getting +900% with every civ in the game.
+1,350% and then +1,800%

This seems to be a bug specific to PC versions or the PS4 version is bugged because I had a 150% modifier with two monopolies and then a 330% modifier in another game with three monopolies. They do need to fixed either way because I got an accidental culture win on a huge map with the 330% modifier. Not fun.
 
accidental culture win

That's exactly what I was thinking could easily happen as I was playing my game. I was going for a culture victory, but had I been going for a tech victory, I bet I would have won culture before I could get halfway to tech just off the fact that I would still have had wonders and heroic relics that would be magnified by 900-1800%.

Even going for a culture victory, I found it very anti climactic. I was fairly far into my game, but still so early relative to where a culture victory usually becomes possible. I had so many things I was working on and planning to do and then all the sudden the game was just over because I got OP boosted to a victory.
 
+25% from open borders (on a Civ by Civ basis)
+25% from a trade route (again for each Civ - meaning to get this significant bonus, you need to plan out your international trade carefully from fairly early in the game)
Very late in the game there's a policy for +50% on trade routes, which is very high value
A great merchant who gives +25% to trade routes

Compared with +900% for two monopolies and +1,800% for four monopolies. It's not even close!
 
I was going for a culture victory, but had I been going for a tech victory

I actually was going for a science victory and won like the turn before I unlocked Off World Mission. The first game, the 150% one, I won an intentional culture victory two or three turns before unlocking Democracy.
 
Why not have each great merchant able to create one corporation prior to using its charge for whatever power it normally had?
Corporations are so powerful I'm not sure removing their one downside is a good idea!
 
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