New Version - May 19th (5-19)

Generally speaking I agree with you. I think distress is an important part of game balance and also of the game narrative (at least for me).

I am disheartened when luxury or stragic resources (particularly oil and luxuries like crabs or whales) can only be worked by island cities that are difficult to keep happy though.

Particularly because if I don't settle them the AI always seems to.

 

Why? Don't you like island puppets?

 

Yo I was rebutting the idea that distress should be all food. And I stand by what I say, what is its purpose at that point? "Happiness is mild" doesn't explain that. There are other options for happiness such as just increasing poverty/illiteracy/boredom. I don't have happiness issues and I haven't for a while, but I also don't work much food.

Well the math is accurate, its basic division.

I think actually granaries and aqueducts make hammers better and food worse. They directly reward you for waiting to grow, as do councils and other effects which scale with era. Progress or Authority provide enough bonus food to pretty much ignore per turn food. This food source isn't affected by growth bonuses or Temple of Artemis, which is why I find those bonuses irrelevant in most games.

@Stalker did a good job of explaining this earlier, there are just a ton of reasons not to work food early on. There are some exceptions (obviously food is good on turn 1), and a tradition capital loves food, but generally food is the worst of the core yields.

 

You’re asking for distress to be removed, I’m saying that the consequences of that are pretty far reaching, especially since I don’t see any evidence that’s distress is causing issue.

I’m honestly tempted to go with my earlier idea of making all units food production like settlers and making the distribution 50/50 for value. Would definitely increase the value of food.

G

 

I don't think that tension between growth and happiness that food creates is necessarily bad. It's like a drug. It gives more worked tiles or more specialists. It directly fights distress. But at the same time, extra population makes it harder to stay happy. While it's true that the by product of food does not help happiness, it still increases yields. Extra workers or extra specialists become extra yields. You could say that a building is better than the extra pop. But the extra pop helps building buildings faster.

It's not so easy to make the maths when everything is so interlinked. That's why simulations (AI games) are needed.

 

Are you saying my growth stalls if I build a spearman?

 

You are risking that we ask for different ratios for different units. Melee units bought basically with food, boats and catapults bought with hammers mostly.

 

Gandhi has something to say about food being used for unit production. I'm not sure we're ready for a late game Gandhi with +50% unit production.

 

That suggestion comes directly from @Stalker's post, not mine. I'm very clearly asking a different question, one that I've asked in previous threads as well. I don't know what depth is added to the game by measuring food and losing happiness for not having enough. I'm trying to ask you because I really respect your knowledge of this mod and game design. It makes my happiness really hard to predict, even with as many hours as I've put into this mod I never feel confident that I can grow and stay happy. These values get changed so much every patch that I just avoid high growth strategies to play it safe. One thing your AI games don't capture is how frustrating losing to unhappiness is and how unpredictable this system is. I actually enjoy when the AI when manages to overwhelm me, but lately I've been struggling with just happiness. I feel like I have very few late game choices, because happiness removes a ton of options (I've been winning by tourism every game)

The system doesn't factor the bonus yields of progress or authority. I've had cities where these yields are 80-90% of my growth. When I look at distress, it screams to me that you aren't factoring these yields and it throws the whole system off. With progress you can actually have a city be starving turn for turn but still grow (and the AI doesn't know this!) It being mild isn't a good rebuttal, if its flawed but small its still flawed.




On the note of Ghandi, people realize that he is only balanced is because food sucks, right? If another civ could do what Ghandi does with food to production/science/culture it would be the best civ in the game.

 

The main thing I dislike about the specialist thing is that it can actually cripple your ability to use specialists via Growth, which seems counter-intuitive. Specialist unhappiness regulated growth, Specialist unhappiness combined with the high Food cost already regulated Growth inherently. I don't think we need yet another mechanic to limit this. I think Growth should be self-regulating, not discouraged via other mechanics.

 

If you aren’t asking for distress to be removed, what exactly are you asking for? I’m genuinely curious, I thought your posts were clearly asking for food and production to no longer have a bearing on unhappiness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m always open to ideas. I just worry that removing distress will be a bigger change than is realized.

G

 

I still believe this worths at least an experiment or two (unless it halts City growth which would be slightly dubious... on the other hand it would increase the utility of buying Units with Gold ). We could even mess around with something like some units classes require more food (like melee) while others (like ships) more / solely production. This would create certain "workshops" for different Unit productions. Just a wild braimstorming idea

Regarding India, it gives Growth, right? If "raw" yields can be separated from modifiers there shouldn't be a problem (if not then India would be truly scary)

 

I have the opposite opinion, I think making 1 island cities useful would be a strength not a drawback. Its not like they become super cities, they still would have very ******** infrastructure and no culture, they are just providing gold for the most part. Nice....but not flipping the apple cart.

 

If distress is gone, a slew of buildings, wonders, policies, and tenets are nerfed, some will need a complete rework. Players will actually have even less incentive to grow cities because there’s no penalty for being close to zero food at the city level. Food will have one purpose, growth, and that’s it.

The happiness mechanics exist as a regulated method of hitting certain yield averages in each city. If a city is skewed, it will suffer. I think that’s is a valid goal and I think we achieved that.

Now, that said, if players still feel hamstrung by unhappiness on the current system, I’m open to reducing modifiers further or other adjustments. But I really don’t think we need to go so far as to remove distress.

I’ve happily stripped out busted systems before, as you well know. This is one of those times, however, where I urge caution and moderate change in lieu of a sledgehammer.

G

 

I agree with you, I also noted in my earlier post that removing distress may be too unwieldy or create weird issues.

I personally am more focused on urbanization; I still question its very existence, and I think it penalizes growth cities far more than distress does at this point.

 

I like the new specialist system quite a bit. I’m not looking to remove it. I do think specialists could use a base yield balance pass.

G

 

IIRC, distress was made up of food plus production because it was swinging wildly, and this combination was supposed to be more stable. It was. But now the swings seems to be under control.
Thematically, it makes a whole sense that people become unhappy if their tables are under served.

I remember I was advocating back then to use growth as the need source, but food would do too.

 

I'm fine with Urbanization, but I don't like the Specialist cap part of it. Unhappiness already limits Growth, so by working too many specialists, even if you have a decent amount of raw , you are killing your Growth, and thus your ability to work future Specialists/tiles.

The main issue I see us: you grow, you increase unhappiness, then you can work less specialists than before you grew because of the cap. This is very counter-intuitive and I don't really like it.

 

Makes sense to me - specialists = content urban centers with creative outlets for great people to emerge. If your people become unhappy because the city grows, this environment shrinks.

G

 

Why should you take that aspect out? Fealty gives happiness to buildings, but happiness from buildings isnt unique too. That is no arguement.
And you dont need heavy investment, cause everyone is working culture specialists anyway, else you would have problems to stay on par with the other civs or meet the policy requirements for wonders. You will reach the same happiness as statecraft with ease, and as a tall civ, outperform fealty by the double amount. And this only by the original happiness sources. Not even counted the free specialists or the extra landmarks.

Additionally, Artistry offers happiness wise more for warmongers, than fealty. Puppet cities cant use the extra hapiness from fealty, cause they cant generate happiness, a reason why specialists cant be worked by puppet cities in the first place. But Artistry enables every puppet city to work atleast 2 specialists, long before common buildings with specialist unhappiness reduction comes into the game.

I simply want to note again, theres a point in the game, where needs and the median are getting completly irrelevant. (Iam always forgetting to keep tracking, at which time it occurs exactly, but its around renaissance/industrial).
Simply everyone in your city is unhappy, cause you would need to hit 300-400% of the global median, in every city. And only the Unhappiness limitation for distress/poverty/.... matters.
How relevant is in this case, if distress is made by food/hammer or only food?