New Beta Version - February 18th (2-18)

[Gizmoman]

I agree, I miss the hill farms (adjacent to fresh water) too.

I'm kinda glad they are gone, mainly because it screws with farm spam and forces you to adjust

 

[Rekk]

I'm still okay with losing freshwater hill farms.

 

[CrazyG]

It isn't just sheep. Cows are pretty mediocre too. They tend to be just barely better or barely worse than a farm on that tile would have been. Neither one of these resources are really worth positioning your cities for, unless you took god of the open sky.

Related note, I'd be fine with the herbalist just giving 1 food directly to forests/jungles. It's less work to micro manage. It was changed when farms were much worse than they currently are.

 

[Gidoza]

It isn't just sheep. Cows are pretty mediocre too. They tend to be just barely better or barely worse than a farm on that tile would have been. Neither one of these resources are really worth positioning your cities for, unless you took god of the open sky.

Related note, I'd be fine with the herbalist just giving 1 food directly to forests/jungles. It's less work to micro manage. It was changed when farms were much worse than they currently are.

Wasn't the Herbalist changed because we felt Forests/Jungles were too powerful from a full food each?

And true on Cows...I can't disagree, and I'm not sure Bison are that great either, but the other Camp resources seem fine.

I could throw Stone into this as well.

We're I to summarize: it seems to me that non-luxury non-strategic resource tiles are a nuisance because they prevent the existence of *normal* tiles which could actually be put to better use.

I guess this makes them natural choices for GPI. But at least intuitively, I would think it makes sense to regard resources of any kind as a bonus rather than a drawback, and that's not the vibe I'm getting.

@Gizmoman - I don't mind the idea of adjusting. Nevertheless, the farm adjacency bonus is partly there because farms aren't good enough by themselves and you sort of need to depend on the adjacency to make it worth your while. Moreover, farms don't even give non-food yields unless you have specific wonders or buildings, which defaults your city to only being useful much later in the game when the demand for specialists is very high. I actually don't even like Floodplain starts because my city can't build anything.

 

[crdvis16]

I would think Bison are a decent non strategic resource when combined with the early granary building? I tend to build granaries early pretty consistently so their bonus to bison is like a given to me.

Cow/sheep tend to be pretty decent with stables, right? Stables come much later in the game but not THAT late and if you have just 2 horse/sheep/cow then it's a pretty solid building I think.

I don't tend to work a lot of farm tiles (even clusters) for most of the game other than probably in my capital in a Tradition game. Even then I'm probably getting a lot of food from an internal trade route or two and might favor other tiles instead (like GPTI on pasture tiles, for instance).

I don't have numbers for any of this, though- just my gut. Entirely possible my gut is wrong and I should be using farms more than I am.

 

[Gidoza]

I would think Bison are a decent non strategic resource when combined with the early granary building? I tend to build granaries early pretty consistently so their bonus to bison is like a given to me.

Cow/sheep tend to be pretty decent with stables, right? Stables come much later in the game but not THAT late and if you have just 2 horse/sheep/cow then it's a pretty solid building I think.

I don't tend to work a lot of farm tiles (even clusters) for most of the game other than probably in my capital in a Tradition game. Even then I'm probably getting a lot of food from an internal trade route or two and might favor other tiles instead (like GPTI on pasture tiles, for instance).

I don't have numbers for any of this, though- just my gut. Entirely possible my gut is wrong and I should be using farms more than I am.

Just to be clear - Bison are a blessing right at the beginning, but they do not scale well. As for Cows - while it's true that they get a bonus with Stables, this bonus doesn't scale anywhere near as well as other things, and an improved Cow early in the game still only gives as much yields as *unimproved* Sugar or Cocoa. The same tile as a Farm with only 4 nearby farms without any tech improvements or rivers yields the same as the Cow's total yields. Farms can only go up from there.

Late in the game, I see no value in working Sheep tiles without a GPI. I'd rather have the option of telling the worker to murder the Sheep to get an instant 20 turns of Food in the nearby city and have the Sheep icon disappear forever.

 

[JamesNinelives]

The AI does a great job of building villages on roads, but then it goes beyond to also sacrifice farm and lumbermill triangles to build non-road villages. I think these non-road villages should be severely discouraged and only considered if no farm or lumbermill triangles are possible, or if the rationalism village boost is present.

Honestly, I think people underestimate the value of the culture villages provides, particularly early on when sources of culture are rare. Also, if one in three civs picks rationalism that's not an insignificant things. I don't know if people feel that rationalism isn't appealing, but now it has more reasons to pick it.

Also worth noting is that many civs have Unique improvements which break up farms already. Yields on individual tiles are more important when you don't have farms everywhere. I feel that cows are decent tbh. Would be nice if they were buffed by something earlier than the stable, but they're still I will still work cattle over say a mine up until I get forges, or over a farm because as I mentioned UIs tend to break up farms. Don't forget that Open Sky isn't the only thing that buffs pastures pre-Stable. Fealty also gives them a bonus.

Seems rather odd as Forests and Jungles are often interspersed in a weird way that would often prevent triangles.

If you start on plains or grassland sure. If you play a civ with a forest or jungle bias though it's pretty common to have large areas. Keeping them that way is another matter, but that's another matter.

1. I miss farms on fresh water hills.

I have zero regrets personally. My hills are either on a city connection or they become mines. I think not being able to work freshwater hills also makes the Inca's UI more meaningful.

Eventually forests do become amazing because the zoo keeps getting strange buffs that no one asked for. I don't think lumbermills should get 1 culture as something all civs have access to.

I think the intention is to make keeping forest and jungle around a question of 'chop now and get immediate yields or keep around and get great yields later on'.

If you want more early on and less later on that's understandable. I don't think that's what Gazebo has in mind for woods/jungles though, given the general trend we're seen.

3. I agree with decreasing Forge bonus to Mines, but I would add that I think there's too many bonuses to things generally, until finally the overview screen simply looks like a mess. I actually want to do some backtracking to Vanilla a little and make all the tiles and buildings and techs more simple. This one is an excellent start.

I like the yields the Forge grants myself. Makes the building feel meaningful to me, kind of exciting in a way that it wouldn't be otherwise.

Neither one of these resources are really worth positioning your cities for

Sure, but they are bonus resources. They're supposed to be a bonus, not the main consideration.

I'm not sure Bison are that great either

Bison are great IMO. If the issue is that they break up farms I can't help but feel the whole farm adjacency thing is maybe defining the meta too much.

We're I to summarize: it seems to me that non-luxury non-strategic resource tiles are a nuisance because they prevent the existence of *normal* tiles which could actually be put to better use.

You don't any objection to wheat, right? Because you can build a farm on it.

I could throw Stone into this as well.

Stone gives you a bonus to wonders and provides important hammers on grassland starts. It also allows you to build Stoneworks, the only way to do production ITRs early-game. Seems pretty important to me.

I'd rather have the option of telling the worker to murder the Sheep to get an instant 20 turns of Food in the nearby city and have the Sheep icon disappear forever.

Harvesting resources like in Civ 6 would be OK. It would take a bit of work to implement though.

 

[crdvis16]

Just to be clear - Bison are a blessing right at the beginning, but they do not scale well. As for Cows - while it's true that they get a bonus with Stables, this bonus doesn't scale anywhere near as well as other things, and an improved Cow early in the game still only gives as much yields as *unimproved* Sugar or Cocoa. The same tile as a Farm with only 4 nearby farms without any tech improvements or rivers yields the same as the Cow's total yields. Farms can only go up from there.

Late in the game, I see no value in working Sheep tiles without a GPI. I'd rather have the option of telling the worker to murder the Sheep to get an instant 20 turns of Food in the nearby city and have the Sheep icon disappear forever.

It would be interesting to see each improvement compared side by side through the eras. Maybe a column of yields just from tech/buildings of that era along with another column that includes potential adjacency/policy/belief bonuses (sort of best case scenario). Everyone gets a mini snapshot of this as they play through a game but the comparison gets skewed due to policy/religion choices at times so it's tough to make larger statements on overall balance.

Specific to the sheep vs farm comparison, though, I often find myself not as interested in the farm tiles. Without numbers to rely on I can't explain why, other than maybe I just inherently value yields other than food more most of the time?

 

[JamesNinelives]

Played another game, using the full settle bonuses this time. I was interesting. Very noticeably more difficult than the version with no bonuses on capital settle but full bonuses otherwise, but more so in some ways than others.

Specifically, early wonders get built sooner, patheons get adopted sooner, and the early-game goes faster (which was already the case with the bonus warrior). I daresay that ancient ruins get snapped up sooner, although I don't really have a large enough sample to confirm that. The major impact that I noticed from those things is that founding is a little harder. I think it's OK to have some yields on capital settling, but 1/3 sounds about right IMO. I'm fine with full yields on settling other cities.

Also, I was hoping that playing this version would avoid the CTD but no luck. Happened on turn 116, similar to last time.

Spoiler Last Known Entry :

 

[tu_79]

What do you mean for your map?

This raises the question for me as to whether VP should make basic edits to all the standard map scripts for general balance.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/communitu_79.648648/

I've tweaked Communitas mapscript to my tastes, with the help of @azum4roll for resources and bug fixes.
There's a way to force more forest clusters without making the map full of trees. Right now, they are rare, as they form basically around rivers.

VP already changes how luxuries are created in all map scripts, so I guess that it is possible to force all map scripts to have more forest clusters. I guess. I don't dare to touch VP.

 

[Gazebo]

It isn't just sheep. Cows are pretty mediocre too. They tend to be just barely better or barely worse than a farm on that tile would have been. Neither one of these resources are really worth positioning your cities for, unless you took god of the open sky.

Related note, I'd be fine with the herbalist just giving 1 food directly to forests/jungles. It's less work to micro manage. It was changed when farms were much worse than they currently are.

it always felt so good in civ4 when cows connected for +4 hammers. Mmm. Beef.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

My .02 $ : Terrain dependent pantheon exist for a reason; Most early game tiles besides unimproved forested plantations are pretty mediocre not just cows, Bison or sheep.
Bison with Goddess of the hunt gains +1,+1 and +1 making it a tile i don't mind working till medieval or even renaissance.
Improved cows yields 3 2 which is still fine for reasonable growth and a couple of too, not half bad but with open sky it's 3 3 2 1.5 .5 I get it, you have to work another grassland tile to get , you guys hate micromanaging.
Sheep .... well sheep suck, even with open sky, stables & serfdom they are still terrible and spawning on hills is counter productive for open sky reasons... i wish i could just chop them like forests and improve a regular mine instead

 

[Stalker0]

It isn't just sheep. Cows are pretty mediocre too. They tend to be just barely better or barely worse than a farm on that tile would have been. Neither one of these resources are really worth positioning your cities for, unless you took god of the open sky.

Related note, I'd be fine with the herbalist just giving 1 food directly to forests/jungles. It's less work to micro manage. It was changed when farms were much worse than they currently are.

How is +1f and +1p not better than +2f? Plus there are fealty and stable bonuses to consider. As we all know, yields early trump yields late. Even if late game farms are amazing, it doesn't mean that things like cows that provide nice yields for a good portion of the game are garbage.

With the herbalist vs farm....again your comparing a very late game farm. Herbalist forests are available very early in the game, which was why giving them a straight +1f was so strong.

 

[Stalker0]

The same tile as a Farm with only 4 nearby farms without any tech improvements or rivers yields the same as the Cow's total yields. Farms can only go up from there.

So out of curiosity, I just did a check in my current game to see how often these 5 farms rings are (aka a farm boosted by 4 other farms), as in general I have found them rare. Now this is of course map dependent, but on my current 7 city game....I found 2 spots. Everywhere else has something that prevents it (and I don't mean a forest that can be removed).

So at least on my current map, I'll take the cow

 

[Voremonger]

In the Ancient/Classical Era I think Pastures are fine.
They give you a combined yield of 5 vs. the combined yield of 4 you get from a Farm on Grasslands or Plains next to a River.
I think the opportunity cost of the alternative, building three Farms in a triangle, is often too expensive to make it worthwhile it in the Ancient Era (Worker is tied down, might need to purchase a Tile).

In the Medieval Era I think Pastures are pretty good if you take Fealty.

Late game I think Farms and Pastures are about equal if you take both Fealty and Imperialism.
I think it's usually possible to plan out your improvements in such a way that the Pastures don't get in the way.

Ultimately I think Pastures are fine as is.
If you wanted to buff them I think the most sensible approach would be to include them in the synergy between Farms.
So Pastures would give food to adjacent Farms and vice versa.

 

[andersw]

(discussion is a bit offtopic but...)
There are situations where I find lumber mills very nice, but it requires rather large forest belts, in the best scenario I'm also playing Iroqois with god of renewal.
Similar with cattle, its okish but a bit lackluster especially if you're not going into fealty, stable helps a bit (ducal stable even better) while god of the open sky feels a bit so so for the pastures.

 

[CrazyG]

How is +1f and +1p not better than +2f? Plus there are fealty and stable bonuses to consider. As we all know, yields early trump yields late. Even if late game farms are amazing, it doesn't mean that things like cows that provide nice yields for a good portion of the game are garbage.

With the herbalist vs farm....again your comparing a very late game farm. Herbalist forests are available very early in the game, which was why giving them a straight +1f was so strong.

Are you intentionally misrepresenting what I said?

I called cows "pretty mediocre" not garbage. I specifically said "barely better or barely worse", which I think is accurate. A cow hits 32 improved. Farms on grassland (there are no plains cows in VP for some reason) start at 3, 4 if fresh water, 5 if adjacency bonus. Is a 5 worse than a 32? Sometimes its a bit better, sometimes its a bit worse. It's basically a variation on the farm. What part of my comment mentioned the late game? Late game pastures get the bonus from agribusiness too so I don't see your point either way.


I don't understand your herbalist comment. How am I comparing to a very late game farm? Jungles with herbalist are 2.5 1. A farm on a plains river already has 31 without the condition of working another jungle (which the city manager doesn't do on his own). That farm gets triangle bonuses and boost other farms too. This is an early game against early game comparison.

 

[Stalker0]

Are you intentionally misrepresenting what I said?

I called cows "pretty mediocre" not garbage. I specifically said "barely better or barely worse", which I think is accurate. A cow hits 32 improved. Farms on grassland (there are no plains cows in VP for some reason) start at 3, 4 if fresh water, 5 if adjacency bonus. Is a 5 worse than a 32? Sometimes its a bit better, sometimes its a bit worse. It's basically a variation on the farm. What part of my comment mentioned the late game? Late game pastures get the bonus from agribusiness too so I don't see your point either way.

I don't understand your herbalist comment. How am I comparing to a very late game farm? Jungles with herbalist are 2.5 1. A farm on a plains river already has 31 without the condition of working another jungle (which the city manager doesn't do on his own). That farm gets triangle bonuses and boost other farms too. This is an early game against early game comparison.

Come on my man, you've known my posts long enough, do you really think I'm trying to twist your words?

My point was a counter to the question you just noted: Is a 5 worse than a 32? I would say in most cases yes....and that is the perfect freshwater farm triangle, not just any old farm.

As for the herbalist, I think the forest is the real point of comparison instead of the jungle.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Just on the herbalist point, I think the straight +1 food on jungle/forest is very strong. I would like to see the bonus changed so that you can work one forest and one jungle and still get the bonus though. I don't know how hard that would be code-wise, but it makes intuitive sense to me. Similarly, if Open Sky gave a bonus when working 1 plains and 1 grassland it would require less micro. Don't know if that would make it too strong?

 

[JamesNinelives]

Played one more on the original version posted. Early game was actually not that different from what I'm used to this time except that the AI were stronger in policies/techs and started expanding a touch earlier. This is only on King difficulty though (went down 2 steps from the last beta). CTD on turn 80 unfortunately, similar to the previous ones.

Spoiler Ooh Shaka. :