New buildings!

[Thalassicus]

Those are all good ideas for new buildings. I want to give more time for discussion before settling on one.

Since the gameplay effect of bridges/hydro is similar, I'll talk about the realism aspect.

• Both bridges and hydro plants make sense for a river requirement.
• Neither one is logical for a production bonus, since they don't build things like workshops.
• Bridges are a much bigger consumer of iron than hydro plants.
• Hydro power market share will continue to shrink from solar power's current expansion into the mainstream, which will accelerate as solar drops below the price of coal & gas over the next few years.
• Few countries use extensive hydro power: it generates less than 10% of the US's electricity right now, and we're the world's fourth biggest user. The big users of hydro have big dams like the Itaipu. I believe these rare massive dams would be better represented by a world wonder.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Forgive me for not reading the whole thread, but I've got an idea or two.

Prison: Available with Electricity.

- Somewhat high in hammer cost, expensive to buy and maintain.
- Should lower base unhappiness instead of increasing happiness or lowering unhappiness from population so it can stack and be used with cities already rich in local happiness.
- Could be really good for wide empires.

Well: Available with Masonry.

- Cost 40, and provides 2 food for one gold maintenance.
- Expensive to buy but cheap to construct thanks to high buyout multiplier and low base cost.
- Not quite as good as a granary, but can be built with a granary. Meant for tall empires.

Mayo Clinic: Available with Refrigeration.

- Basically a Circus Maximus for Hospitals, not sure exactly what it should do.

 

[Thibaulthc]

Thal, we were also talking in the threads beginning about adding an airfield/airport building as an improvement for air units or possibly a commercial/trade rout building (or both), and about warehouses as earlier, coastal commercial buildings requiring a harbor.

And again, about the suspension bridge, it seems to me that simply changing the hydro plant SR makes much more sense than changing the buildings name and icon (and probably description). Besides, in my opinion a hydro plant as a production building makes much more sense than a bridge.

+1


hydro plant-> more electricity -> more production
following your reasoning, we'd get rid of coal factories as well ?
and I like the logic of the hydro plant: the longer the river is, the more power is produced

ideas for bridges:

• World Wonder (San Fran's) (+ and )
• bridges into the city (+0.2 / (less traffic jams) in a city with river)
• the idea I really like: bridges for fret trains, would be required to have the +25% from railroads connections, or a better bonus; tile improvement, could have a nice design on the maps; but all that probably require a lot of codding

 

[Thibaulthc]

one unit like the workboat, but that would construct big bridges across sea tiles?
high production cost, require iron, and the work boat improve any coastal tiles with a large suspension bridge between two land tiles!

 

[mitsho]

The big thing about Hydro Dams however is that they allow you to store the electricity. No other power factory does that. For example Swizerland is regularly buying French Nuclear Power during the night when it's not used by the cities and pumps up the water into the dams in the mountains. Then during the day, the water is let flown down, producing electricity that can be sold back to the French. As it's way to costly to shut a Nuclear Power down and it'd take to long, that makes perfect sense.Of course, these Hydro Plants are different in that they are not large river dams but mountain valley projects.

The Production on Nuclear/Solar/Hydro Plants does make sense in the way that there's no power concept in civ 5 as opposed to civ 4 or 3. So it's the next best thing. And Hydro Plants are common, so I wouldn't want to lose them Although the suspension brige works as well. Also will Aluminium not be too common now, with the lost requirement and the Recycling Center?

The dichotomony between using your iron for food or production is an interesting one though. I'm not sure about the skyscraper replacing the Medical Lab, although that would move it earlier which is a good thing imho. I'm just asking myself wether we may not want an additional growth building. But probably unnecessary.

Why do we only have 3 slots for new buildings btw?

If we go by redesigns. The constabulary (that's just the english term for Gendarmerie, right?) feels a bit underpowered right now to me. Maybe because I haven't played that many espionage games so far but mostly because it doesn't give you anything positive, right? It only makes other civs espionage missions harder, so it denies other civs something instead of giving you something, like any other building in the game.

Is it possible to give it a chance for promotion for spies stationed in that city (Every x turns, one level up?). Or else I would combine it with my earlier idea on postal services (renaming it) and make it use one horse, give it a (trade) and (knowledge transfer) per trade route bonus. For historical background see the Thurn-and-Taxis-Post (yes, that's where the word taxi comes from), Pony Express, etc.). Though those might work better as a national wonder. In any case, I would like to see a positive effect on that line of buildings.

Generally, I do like the idea of one line of building enhancing trade routes, namely Warehouses (sea), Main Stations (railroad) and Airports (all). The last one is certainly a necessity, we just need a good effect for it. Would those enhanced trade routes effects be technically possible? In % or per population affected as we don't want to buff wide empires?

 

[Thibaulthc]

buildings improving trade routes are the biggest lack
right now we only have the Matshu Pitshu (+25% on trade routes)

 

[mitsho]

By the way, how does ressource scarcitiy affect buildings? If for example I lose the iron supply that I got from a city state which I lost, will I first lose the building or the unit effectiveness? And is the building just turned off or just less effective?

 

[mystikx21]

Those are all good ideas for new buildings. I want to give more time for discussion before settling on one.

Since the gameplay effect of bridges/hydro is similar, I'll talk about the realism aspect.

Both bridges and hydro plants make sense for a river requirement. Neither one is logical for a production bonus, since they don't build things like workshops. Bridges are a much bigger consumer of iron than hydro plants. Hydro power market share will continue to shrink from solar power's current expansion into the mainstream, which will accelerate as solar drops below the price of coal & gas over the next few years. Few countries use extensive hydro power: it generates less than 10% of the US's electricity right now, and we're the world's fourth biggest user. The big users of hydro have big dams like the Itaipu. I believe these rare massive dams would be better represented by a world wonder.

One reason hydro doesn't generate much power is the same reason nuclear doesn't: regulatory scale requires that you build only very large power production to pay for fees. The fees won't scale to size so it makes no sense to build a smaller one. It isn't large by design. It's large because we said it has to be. Unlike nuclear however which would need new smaller reactors to be approved AND installed, there are lots of dams (for reservoirs, river diversion, etc) already built that could have attached generators and turbines to add up some power to the grid but don't right now. I suspect we will see this happening in developing countries along side solar/wind as a cheaper way to get cleaner electricity, especially in rural areas (and Africa which has a ton of possible projects). It's also, as mitsho said, the only one with storable potential energy right now with our current battery technologies.

What you're overlooking by noting the US production is that water generates the majority of electricity in a lot of places and that the resources that solar/wind will (ideally) be scaling down are carbon-intensive (coal/oil), not renewables like water. US generation may be mostly complete (say 80% of potential) but the rest of the world is not. That is to say, it's clearly important to the world's economy and deserves to be a non-wonder structure.

How that translates to the game suggests that it has to be large, but not necessarily massive. I'm fine with it being in the game and I personally think it makes more sense than suspension bridges. River valley cities are liable to be low on production as is and bridges are more about commerce rather than hammers. Maybe that's an argument for more commerce intensity focuses, but I don't think these need to be exclusive either.

(I would however be fine with removing med labs and possibly spreading that bonus to be across hospitals/skyscrapers, 10/15 on them on top of food?)

 

[Ahriman]

Few countries use extensive hydro power: it generates less than 10% of the US's electricity right now, and we're the world's fourth biggest user.

This is not quite right. Many countries extensively use hydropower. Fourth biggest user must refer to total generation by hydropower (China, Canada and Brazil produce more); 10% is not the fourth largest share. But that isn't surprising, since the US has the highest total power generation in the world.

In more than 60 countries, hydropower covers at least 50 % of the electricity supply.

Now, most countries don't have giant mega-dams a la 3 gorges, but they have lots of medium-large sized dams (200-600 MW, say).

Hydroplant absolutely makes sense as a building, and I think it makes sense as a production booster (electric power most certainly provides production - or rather increases productive capacity) and I think the current design makes sense as it favors areas with lots of river. [In reality, hydropower favors countries with lots of vertical drop, but that is hard to model.]

I don't think major bridges are nearly as significant. I think it would be ok to include a bridge wonder as a prestige thing (at least as interesting as Eiffel Tower), but it doesn't seem like a priority.

 

[Ahriman]

By the way, how does ressource scarcitiy affect buildings? If for example I lose the iron supply that I got from a city state which I lost, will I first lose the building or the unit effectiveness? And is the building just turned off or just less effective?

I think you're just prevented from building more; I *think* that you can trade for coal, build your factories, then let the trade deal expire.

 

[Zaldron]

I think you're just prevented from building more; I *think* that you can trade for coal, build your factories, then let the trade deal expire.

I always assumed the building quit working in this case. I'll have to check sometime.

 

[Seek]

Ahriman has it right: the building keeps working even if in the negative.

 

[mystikx21]

Ahriman has it right: the building keeps working even if in the negative.

But any units would still get a penalty.

Of course, nobody cares if its coal in most cases.

 

[mitsho]

So I guess that's a real problem that should be fixed... Or otherwise we just all agree not to exploit it?

 

[Ahriman]

So I guess that's a real problem that should be fixed... Or otherwise we just all agree not to exploit it?

I am guessing that it isn't easy to fix in code and UI. There is no mechanism for "disabling" a building. You could remove it completely I guess, but that seems too harsh. You could create a temporary "out of fuel" building that had a penalty effect and was removed once you broke even on the resources, but that would be very clunky.

 

[mitsho]

Yes, I agree, that's very clunky. If I had a better idea, I would've written it. On the other hand, it has probably been that way since the beginning and why should it bother us just now

EDIT: Another new modern building I could imagine is a City Park, most famous example being the Central Park in New York. Public Parks are rather big public projects and the public space grows ever more important for free time usage. But of course, it doesn't lend itself to a particular new in-game effect.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'd be okay with skyscrapers as a building separate from medical labs, if we think tall empires need that much food in the late game. In general, though, I like to combine the effects of similar buildings so everything has a distinct and unique purpose.

GenjiKhan has a good point that tall empires can fall behind in faith generation. It might be worthwhile to change temples so they give say... +1 and +0.5 per pop?

Also will Aluminium not be too common now, with the lost requirement and the Recycling Center?

Aluminum is used solely for aircraft, which are stackable, so an abundance of it is usually not a problem.

Why do we only have 3 slots for new buildings btw?

It keeps things focused, and I think it's very hard to come up with 3 parts of the game missing a fundamental gameplay aspect. It should provide a critical role we cannot get any other way. A good example of that is the Aqueduct. There just wasn't anywhere else to put that effect, so I added the building to the game. The same thing applied to the Mentors' Hall: the best way to make science depend more on development was to move some from population to a new building.

Following that train of thought, what fundamental role could airports provide? I wish we could make them just like Civ 4:

• Airlift units
• Connect trade routes
• Double aircraft stack sizes

Sadly none of that is feasible with our current modding tools, so we need to come up with alternatives. Moving aircraft experience bonuses to the airport is one obvious choice. I don't know what we could do for an economic bonus (enhancing trade routes is not possible at a local scale). Maybe gold per population?


I think the racetrack or ranch is a good way to consume horses in the late game.

 

[wobuffet]

EDIT: Another new modern building I could imagine is a City Park, most famous example being the Central Park in New York. Public Parks are rather big public projects and the public space grows ever more important for free time usage. But of course, it doesn't lend itself to a particular new in-game effect.

Hmm... maybe high maintenance but -10% from Population in this City and, say, 0.5 per ?

GenjiKhan has a good point that tall empires can fall behind in faith generation. It might be worthwhile to change temples so they give say... +1 and +0.5 per pop?

I do like the idea of giving tall Civs more of a chance in the religion wars, but going from a flat 2 to 1 + 0.5 per would really mess up game balance, I would think, no?

Alternatively, an "or" choice between Faith buildings could be interesting (as with Hydro Plants and Nuclear Plants in vanilla). One could give a flat amount of Faith, and the other + per . This choice might be better suited for the Belief-requiring buildings though, I suppose.


Heck, I think introducing more "or" choices in buildings would be fun in general. More tough decisions!

 

[Seek]

GenjiKhan has a good point that tall empires can fall behind in faith generation. It might be worthwhile to change temples so they give say... +1 and +0.5 per pop?

Hmm, interesting idea! I've been troubled that faith buildings have no relation to people following pantheons/religions. Could faith from Temples be based on number of citizens following a pantheon/religion, because I think that would be ideal.

 

[Stalker0]

[*]Hydro power market share will continue to shrink from solar power's current expansion into the mainstream, which will accelerate as solar drops below the price of coal & gas over the next few years.

Very OT, but there is a lot of counter research that suggests solar is going to have a lot of trouble competing with coal/oil for a long time, especially as more of a power grid becomes based on it and the indeterminacy problem becomes more noticeable.