New Buildings: Final Stage

[Thalassicus]

I'm very careful. I've discussed the topic of adding new buildings in various threads for over a year, without doing anything yet.

I'm avoiding changes to gold income until vem's unit type specific maintenance is in the game, which should be sometime tomorrow.

 

[mystikx21]

I like the idea of skyscrapers as urban growth/density. Airports are more about commerce and tourism than growth or migration and occurred at a separate timeframe from steel and elevators. If we add buildings both seem like useful concepts to represent that are missing (or represented by other buildings like the med lab). One is very easy (additional food or growth) in exchange for modest cost and a possible resource requirement. I think the airport doesn't need to be very complicated and making it so makes it seem like some sort of superbuilding that it isn't in real life. Gold and happiness are already available mechanics, and both could be balanced against what is already available. Or it could add air defence bonuses or air unit xp along with commercial advantages.

 

[Babri]

It could be appealing to have a use for iron or horses in the late game. It would be appealing to have a use for oil or coal in the early game by the same logic however

Oil & coal are used 4 eras (industrial-future) while iron is used only in 2 eras (classical & medieval).

Secondly coal is used by a building which u r going to build many i.e it has high consumption while right now iron is used only by swords. So iron needs another use like a building.

And I wouldn't mind if airports consume oil as well. That would make oil more important & useful.

 

[Thalassicus]

It appears we did not come to a consensus in this discussion, so I'm going to set the topic aside for a while and focus on the new wonders, Armies component, and Leaders component of the mod. I will revisit the new buildings topic at a later time.

 

[mystikx21]

Buildings aren't as exciting as wonders. The lack of consensus is probably more from disinterest as units and leaders and policies went into motion. No trouble to come back to it later.

Nevertheless, the skyscraper was more appealing to me as a replacement for the med lab with a +10% food bonus instead of the growth bonus (that seemed like a modest consensus bonus even if resources weren't agreed upon). It should not be too hard to put these things in the mod and leave them disabled until needed or more formal agreements occur. I may look into this much at least at some point this weekend.

Airports and superhighways, or some kind of harbor-wide benefit are all appealing concepts that are currently missing, but we'd need to figure out what they should do in game before they're more than that.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree that the skyscraper is a logical population booster to replace the medlab, since the Hospital already represents advances in medical technology.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

for the airport, I'd go with the 80/20 design:

+1 happy
a bit of gold and/or trade route income % boost

( this will be somewhat useful for anyone )

XP for air units
production bonus for air units

( this will be mostly useful for some people )

another option, I guess this would replace the gold/trade income:

is there a way to give it the same ability to connect cities the harbour has, except make it work both on land and sea ( i.e. everywhere ) ?

that would allow to connect 2 cities with airport no matter how far away from each other, which seems fitting.

 

[Ahriman]

It appears we did not come to a consensus in this discussion, so I'm going to set the topic aside for a while and focus on the new wonders, Armies component, and Leaders component of the mod. I will revisit the new buildings topic at a later time.

I think this is a wise decision. There isn't a critical gameplay issue here.

 

[Thalassicus]

I suddenly thought of a good application for the Warehouse! We can split the Harbor into two buildings: one for the connection, another for the yield bonuses. The yields are important to help coastal cities, but made the building too powerful.

Harbor
cost: 120
maintenance: 1
Connects water to land trade routes.

Warehouse
cost: 140
maintenance: 2
production: +2
gold: +1 per water tile

The warehouse is basically a Watermill for ports. It's a little more expensive to get all the effects (old harbor was 180 cost / 3 upkeep), but also more rewarding, since the Merchant Navy policy can give +2 to both buildings.

 

[jacktannery]

I think this is a great idea Thal ; do you think that Carthage's UA might need to be tweaked with this change?

 

[Thalassicus]

I haven't given much attention to leader balance yet. I'm going to focus on that after finishing the Armies stage.

 

[mystikx21]

Would both get a science bonus from the knowledge tree?

Harbor doesn't seem like it offers much wide power as a network effect. For example if you have a lot of coastal cities on the same continent, the harbor is most likely useless as you can build roads. Why would you now build them except in isolated islands and one close to capital coastal city? Cities aren't likely to be that far apart from each other.

 

[Thalassicus]

I build most cities 3-4 tiles apart, so a harbor connection is cheaper than roads. I only build roads to coastal cities if I'm concerned about military movement.

 

[mystikx21]

You reduced the upkeep on me. That helps. I know the +2 production was there from merchant navy. I was curious if the science from free thought on harbors would go on both too?

 

[Thalassicus]

Yeah, the 3gpt maintenance was a typo. I intended to reduce it to 1gpt, so the two buildings sum up to the same maintenance cost as the original.

I think I will leave the Free Thought science bonus on harbors, because it makes more sense than on warehouses. It also gives us another reason to build harbors in ports if we're pursuing a science victory.

I also swapped the Lighthouse and Harbor. Coastal tiles start with more food in GEM than the unmodded game, so an early food bonus is unnecessary. It makes more sense on the tech level of Civil Service. It's somewhat weird to build a lighthouse in a city without any harbor traffic.

 

[mystikx21]

That will require some redesign on Carthage because they got harbors immediately, which was a powerful advantage to running wider coastal empires early in the game. That advantage will be more short lived if harbors appear earlier, and would make the Great Lighthouse more powerful (which is fine, just a note) when it appears an era ahead of the lighthouse. (Of course, Carthage would have required design changes anyway with GEM's more powerful Harbor of gold and production bonuses).

But as you said, that's a later stage.

 

[Thalassicus]

The GL has traditionally appeared one era ahead of the Lighthouse in these mods (used to be Ancient and Classical eras respectively). It helps make an often under-appreciated wonder more appealing.

 

[mystikx21]

It's a little further away this way. Used to be sailing-optics and now it would be compass (or whatever) from optics. At least 2 tech columns. But that's fine. Makes it a powerful wonder.

The Carthage issue was going to come up either way and I figured was more important. GL was more of a note to keep track of what can be impacted.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

edit: ninja'ed, please delete

 

[Ahriman]

If we're shuffling around these things, we should arguably make the Lighthouse give the trade route, Harbor give the food bonus and Warehouse give the gold bonus.

It makes more sense to me that a lighthouse enables trade (with a lighthouse, the harbor is now safe because people can avoid the rocks), and a harbor supports boats that boost fishing.