New Beta Version - September 15th (9-15)

[BiteInTheMark]

Played now some games after a break, I have to say, the lost population is still annoying.
I also think, losing population AND stopping growth while producing settlers is a bit too much.

Iam also not sure why the production process of settlers have to be so strange. Not needing any food while generating settlers but getting more hammers if I would exceed the natural food consumption is such a strange, illogical process, that I would simply normalise the whole thing.
While producing settlers, your people still consume food and your city can grow, but you will lose population if the settler is finished.
An other thing could be also, that at the end of the process, you lose an increasing amount of food instead population, while the production cost stays the same.

 

[Takagi Hiro]

I will merely state that I agree with BITM. I hate building settlers because it's always such a chore to have to optimize this process due to its whole production formula change, having to switch around yields and make sure no random factors like city-state food gets in the way of optimal play. If we're keeping the lost population, not only would it eliminate an annoying source of micromanagement that isn't even very intuitive, it partially alleviates the lost population change.

 

[Borya]

While producing settlers, your people still consume food and your city can grow, but you will lose population if the settler is finished.

I even agree to lose 2 pop with this option

 

[Recursive]

Played now some games after a break, I have to say, the lost population is still annoying.
I also think, losing population AND stopping growth while producing settlers is a bit too much.

Iam also not sure why the production process of settlers have to be so strange. Not needing any food while generating settlers but getting more hammers if I would exceed the natural food consumption is such a strange, illogical process, that I would simply normalise the whole thing.
While producing settlers, your people still consume food and your city can grow, but you will lose population if the settler is finished.
An other thing could be also, that at the end of the process, you lose an increasing amount of food instead population, while the production cost stays the same.

For once, I agree with you, BITM. I think the scaling costs and population loss are sufficient; it feels like a double penalty to also halt growth while producing the Settler.

 

[Earf]

I'm ok with losing pop and stopping growth only because all civs have to deal with it. I find that it adds another level of decision making towards when to create settlers, and which cities to use for creating settlers. Granaries are more important early game (before this, I sometimes found I wasn't building granaries till after early game and initial expansion), having a good source of food is important to get the population up (instead of just building some mines with your first worker so you can rush those settlers), I think even delaying expansion to get more pop in your capital can help speed up overall expansion (like getting to 6 pop instead of 4 before starting to build settlers). Losing a pop with a new settler also limits how quickly civs can settle. You can't just chain produce settlers when you're ready to expand. The new mechanic forces more decision-making in the early game with expansion, and I'm all for adding more options for how to strategize expansion (or with adding more options to any aspect of the game).

 

[Yaviel]

I think it should be either no city growth during settler production or lose one population on completion, not both. I'm heavily in the favor of losing one pop because this would also fix the manual production focus for every settler which is annoying on giant maps and also if you forget switching back, you wonder why your city did not grow in all this time.

 

[crdvis16]

This is an example of why I can never get excited about the Factory.

View attachment 535987

In my best city, this Factory will net me +20 hammers per turn (+12 base, +4 for manufactories, +25% prod in the city). Because of the -7 GPT maintenance, we will subtract 3 hammers (common believe is 2 gold roughly equals 1 hammer, and I'll round down for the benefit of the doubt). So that's +17 hpt.

At a cost of 1250, it will take 74 turns to pay for itself. The game is almost over by then!

Now the factory can be more optimized than this its true, but considering this is my best city in this run through, its significantly less in other cities.

To be fair, the factory also gives an engineer slot and I believe there are some policies that boost it? And doesn't it have a synergy with GE improvements? But I agree with your general point that factories are usually not worth building outside of probably the capital.

Edit: though I did build factories in all of my cities in my current game just because I ran out of things to build otherwise and coal is so easy to come by.

 

[tu_79]

To be fair, the factory also gives an engineer slot and I believe there are some policies that boost it? And doesn't it have a synergy with GE improvements? But I agree with your general point that factories are usually not worth building outside of probably the capital.

Edit: though I did build factories in all of my cities in my current game just because I ran out of things to build otherwise and coal is so easy to come by.

Probably you build factories because you want spaceship factories, for which they are a requirement.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm ok with losing pop and stopping growth only because all civs have to deal with it.

I personally like the current slowdown of expansion, but I can respect the annoying element of stopping growth (and the "cheesy" factor of being able to starve your people without consequence during that time).

Ultimately I would be fine if growth is turned back on, it may require settlers to get a slight cost increase or some other adjustment, but I agree it would be a smoother experience.

 

[pineappledan]

Settlers scaling production AND stopping growth AND shrinking a city is just... too many punishes. Three’s a crowd. Even if it is slowing down expansion by the proper amount and working well it’s just too many mechanics doing the same thing at once.

 

[John.B.C]

I have no problem with the settler situation as it is.

 

[Gazebo]

- For ranged mounted, I've actually been testing a slight CS bump for them across the line. They fold for the AI.

- For Factories, I've considered a +1 Production for every owned Factory for each Factory, so that's a 'self-propelling' building chain. Makes sense to me - industrialization benefits from industrialization, etc. Also means that a wide empire with tons of Coal and Factories will require a bigger investment, but will gain more from it in the long term.

G

 

[pineappledan]

- For ranged mounted, I've actually been testing a slight CS bump for them across the line. They fold for the AI.

G

Had you considered making the mounted ranged line’s main attraction higher mobility instead?

It feels like mounted range is just competing for hits with every other unit type. I think the movement penalty change was a step backwards, and the post-skirmishers units should lean in to high movement with low damage output.

Too much energy has been spent balancing archers against skirmishers, and balancing mounted melee vs mounted ranged Strictly on CS/RCS. Let archers deal the main ranged damage, and the skirmishers can focus on harassing, scouting, pillaging... you know, skirmishing. Then it won’t feel so much like we have 2 tools that more or less do the same thing.

 

[Gazebo]

Had you considered making the mounted ranged line’s main attraction higher mobility instead?

It feels like mounted range is just competing for hits with every other unit type. I think the movement penalty change was a step backwards, and the post-skirmishers units should lean in to high movement with low damage output.

Too much energy has been spent balancing archers against skirmishers, and balancing mounted melee vs mounted ranged. Let archers deal the main ranged damage, and the skirmishers can focus on harassing, scouting, pillaging... you know, skirmishing. Then it won’t feel so much like we have 2 tools that more or less do the same thing.

Tons of mobility is more human friendly, and also runs the risk of making Mongolia a little too mobile.

G

 

[Stalker0]

Had you considered making the mounted ranged line’s main attraction higher mobility instead?

It feels like mounted range is just competing for hits with every other unit type. I think the movement penalty change was a step backwards, and the post-skirmishers units should lean in to high movement with low damage output.

Too much energy has been spent balancing archers against skirmishers, and balancing mounted melee vs mounted ranged. Let archers deal the main ranged damage, and the skirmishers can focus on harassing, scouting, pillaging... you know, skirmishing. Then it won’t feel so much like we have 2 tools that more or less do the same thing.

Your not wrong, but at the same I could use the argument for a different conclusion...why not just remove the skirmisher line entirely?

Fundamentally the high mobile, low damage skirmisher has the same problem as the previous frigate....sure its a beesting, but its invincible. In human hands, these units will never be hurt, so yes its annoying to apply their damage, but apply you will, and you will win.

If we want to take another look at a focus for terrain for the unit, you could do something like "+25% RCS when attacking open terrain" or "-25% RCS in rough terrain if you want to go opposite, whichever". In open fields, the skimisher can skirmisher very well, so does lots of damage. In rough terrain, its limited, which lowers its damage. So that's one option to make it a strong but niche unit, very powerful in the open, weak in the rough.

 

[pineappledan]

Tons of mobility is more human friendly, and also runs the risk of making Mongolia a little too mobile.

If you pushed it to 5 moves, that would just be +1 more moves than current. If AI can handle Mongolia then that's certainly within reason.

Why not make Mongolia’s Power +1 move and +1 attack on all mounted ranged instead of the +2 and ZOC?

• If we lower the damage on skirmishers, then they won’t have the damage output for temujin to make them core unless he can augment their damage.
• Brings back Mongolian Keshik's Quick study as a civ-wide trait (effectively 2x promotion on mounted ranged units)
• Movement cap unchanged at 6 (7 with Parthian Tactics)
• Unstacks Mongolia's UA from the Parthian tactics promotion

Fundamentally the high mobile, low damage skirmisher has the same problem as the previous frigate....sure its a beesting, but its invincible. In human hands, these units will never be hurt, so yes its annoying to apply their damage, but apply you will, and you will win.

I think they are different enough that it wouldn't be a problem.

• shoot 'n' scoot was a fine enough mechanic for years, until it wasn't. So firstly, it couldn't have been THAT bad.
• skirmishers are dealing with veeeery different environments than shoot'n'scoot frigates were
  • rough terrain exists, even if the penalty is removed (which it should be)
  • High enemy mobility can be countered by a defending civ simply by using their roads. There's no corresponding mechanic for naval units.
  • high visibility on land due to borders. This nullifies much of the problem with frigates hitting a target then retreating into fog of war. It simply isn't possible for skirmishers
  • Mongol Skirmishers are capped at 7 moves at max promotions (with my proposed UA change). Frigates hit 6-7 moves for any civ; up to 8 with England or Venice. Once again, no rough terrain to slow them down either.

 

[tu_79]

Agree.
No need to remove skirmishers. Rather make them more skirmisher alike. Stinky bees. Efficient pillaging. Not much damage dealt, but none received. Until there's no way to retreat. These are fun things to do.

Movement cost is fine. We can move, shoot and retreat in flat terrain, thanks to 4 movement points, and the damage dealt seems fair for no retaliation perk. It's almost useless in rough, though. We can move and shoot, but retaliation is guaranteed, and the damage dealt is not enough. This forces the unit to be used in flat terrain as much as possible. That's a very strong counterweight: you may use an almost invincible unit as long as you keep it in flat terrain / roads (and you learn how to not expose it). On the other hand, archers love hills.
Maybe the damage is just too low now for a niche role?

Any of these tweaks would be fine:
a) One more movement point, weaker attack, or
b) Same movement, stronger attack.

I guess option b is easier, though option a is more accurate for the role. No strong preference.

 

[pineappledan]

chariots could stay fairly tough for their level. Rough terrain penalty, but good CS/RCS
Naga malla could go completely unchanged, except dropping the rough terrain penalty.
The rest:
CS roughly equivalent to an archer unit of the same era.
RCS lowered to be only 1-2 points above the previous era’s archer unit
5 moves
a “skirmisher” promotion which gives a 40-50% chance of retreating from melee.

This squares better with the current state of a lot of the uniques, like Comanches only being sort of mobile, with their unique promotions and no move to pillage wasted on a unit with rough terrain penalties. and Berber cavalry having both a rough terrain penalty AND ignoring rough terrain is just... wut?

 

[LifeOfBrian]

- For Factories, I've considered a +1 Production for every owned Factory for each Factory, so that's a 'self-propelling' building chain. Makes sense to me - industrialization benefits from industrialization, etc. Also means that a wide empire with tons of Coal and Factories will require a bigger investment, but will gain more from it in the long term.

G

I think this doesn't go far enough to make Factories truly worthwhile unless you have a huge empire.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

As for the skirmisher line, I'd (also) give them "no cost to pillage".