New Version - September 9th (9/9)

[Funak]

Any conclusions on improvement changes for next version? This discussion seemed to go in circles.

I think most of them are fine really, the most painful luxuries to get is the ones with monopolies tied to GA duration and growth. Ivory imho stands out as the worst luxury in the game. Most of the 10% Ga resources feel pretty weak as well, gold, gems, silver, lapiz, spice but I don't think that indicates that mines are bad, more that the monopoly bonus is weak and that the mint gold doesn't feel very useful.

I would buff or change the 10% GA-duration monopoly and probably the base yields of the ivory resource (it really suffers from the other camp-resources spawning in forest/jungle) and/or possibly the bonus ivory gets from the circus.

I also really don't like the 10% growth, as mentioned earlier, it feels a lot weaker than all other effects (except the 10% GA-D). However the luxuries in the 10% growth pile usually have better yields than those in the 10% GA-D pile so that might be the main reason why I feel that way. On the other hand I can't remember any resource in the 10% growth pile except for salt, so maybe that last part was untrue .
I'd still bump the number up a bit, 10% growth feels a lot worse than 10% production or 10% culture, for example. Maybe redistribute the 10% growth resources into the other monopoly piles would be a better solution however.

Seems we can't even reach a agreement on the current state .

What should be the design for mine vs. lumber mill (without ressources)?

Should they be same strength? Balanced that one is better early, the other late game? Or should one be better than the other?

I feel like the balance is fine, forests aren't as common as hills and a lot of the time you're forces to tear the forest down anyways. Keeping it around should give you a benefit, which it currently does imo

 

[Strigvir]

What should be the design for mine vs. lumber mill (without ressources)?

Why should it be "versus"? Forest/jungle tiles on hills are quite rare.

I also really don't like the 10% growth, as mentioned earlier, it feels a lot weaker than all other effects (except the 10% GA-D). However the luxuries in the 10% growth pile usually have better yields than those in the 10% GA-D pile so that might be the main reason why I feel that way. On the other hand I can't remember any resource in the 10% growth pile except for salt, so maybe that last part was untrue .
I'd still bump the number up a bit, 10% growth feels a lot worse than 10% production or 10% culture, for example. Maybe redistribute the 10% growth resources into the other monopoly piles would be a better solution however.

Funny enough I think growth > flat food, because it works on all cities, unlike the the food bonus for selected tiles.
But I agree that GA monopoly bonus is just meh.

 

[Funak]

Funny enough I think growth > flat food, because it works on all cities, unlike the the food bonus for selected tiles.

Weird indeed, I think the flat food is one of the strongest monopolies, as it creates strong tiles and imo 3 food is better than 3 gold or 3 hammers(if only slightly) the +3 culture ones are great as well, hard to decide between them.
Anyways the +3 yield bonuses generally gives you a really strong start, I mean most of the time you're going to be working those tiles anyways, and now you get an extra 3 yields per tile you're working.

Out of all the +10% yield bonuses I find growth the absolute weakest, I mean it's half the tradition scaler, and less than half of the rationalism finisher, while you're not going to find any of the other percentual bonuses in the policy-tree, mostly a mutilated version of it in the liberty/honor tree.
I guess piety gives you 15% gold in all cities now as well, but meh, still feels stronger.

 

[Strigvir]

Anyways the +3 yield bonuses generally gives you a really strong start

And that's all. Those +12 food (2-3 maritime CS allies) get more irrelevant as your empire get bigger. While the growth bonus doesn't depend on worked tiles and scales with the food output.

Out of all the +10% yield bonuses I find growth the absolute weakest

Because it's hard to calculate the end result of this multiplier. 10% may not sound that much, but faster growth means population will get start working tiles earlier, which in turn means more yields overall.

I mean it's half the tradition scaler

The same as the pantheon belief and Temple of Artemis.

 

[Apostremo]

Why should it be "versus"? Forest/jungle tiles on hills are quite rare.

It's not solely about that. I choose a location without forests for my main unit production hub and later noticed that it wasn't quite so good as I hoped. Felt like with forests, i would had a stronger start and earlier buffs from techs. But was just one impression.

 

[Gazebo]

Ivory imho stands out as the worst luxury in the game.

You can get really powerful elephant units from Ivory, so there's that. Only luxury with such a bonus (and, by design, that's why the monopoly is a little weaker).

G

 

[Funak]

And that's all. Those +12 food (2-3 maritime CS allies) get more irrelevant as your empire get bigger. While the growth bonus doesn't depend on worked tiles and scales with the food output.

The same as the pantheon belief and Temple of Artemis.

The pantheon also provides faith and flat food, and it's just a pantheon. trust me if there was a pantheon giving you a flat 10% production, you would grab it

The Temple of Artemis doesn't actually give you 10% growth, it gives you 10% food, which is about 1200% better as it multiplies the food before it is consumed by citizens instead of after it.
In fact the more I think about it, the worse the 10% growth starts to sound, U mean you were talking of +12 food from the flat bonus, your city would have to create 120 food after citizen consumption to match that, which sounds close to impossible.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the growth stat is useless, but there is a reason why the Chinese +50% growth during golden ages isn't completely overpowered, because growth just isn't amazing.

 

[Funak]

You can get really powerful elephant units from Ivory, so there's that. Only luxury with such a bonus (and, by design, that's why the monopoly is a little weaker).

That monopoly applies to a lot of other resources however. And while I can't really complain about the power of the elephant unit (it is pretty decent) I wouldn't say that it makes up for how extremely meh the resource feels, especially since you only need 1 ivory to build any number of elephants. Making ivory as a monopoly-resource even worse.
Also the elephant goes obsolete pretty quickly.

 

[ModsFan]

I'm playing the 9-5/9-4 version as Songhai on Emperor and I noticed a few odd things.

1) With the Might policy that rewards players with a unit every time a multiple of 6 citizens is born, that actually works the other way too; I've been rewarded with free units for razing a city down to size 6, not sure about size 12.

2) This was a bit of a diplomatic failure on my part, but I made a DoF with Portugal, Germany asked me to declare war 11 maybe even 10 turns exactly before the DoF expired, and I ended up backstabbing Portugal. It's almost enough to make me question the wisdom of allowing the AI to ask you to declare war on a friend, but whatever. More to the point, Germany ended up declaring war on me after I had taken 2 cities. That behavior just seemed a little off to me.

3) If a city changes hands a few times, surrounding AIs treat that as you settling in lands they consider to be theirs, even if you're razing the city. So I took a city, Polynesia asked me to stop settling near them, then I had to re-take it and Polynesia denounced me for settling near them after they asked me to stop. I didn't raze that city, but later on, a city changed hands several times (I never stopped razing it every time I re-captured it) and Portugal asked me to stop settling near them, although I re-took it several times after the request (however, they were my vassal state).

Just to throw in my two cents, it's worth remembering that a buff to mines makes river cities all that much more powerful. Between workshops, hydro plants, and various bonuses, rivers along hills can be hugely productive. I don't know how common these areas are in Communitas/other maps since all I play is standard vanilla Earth, but the Sichuan/Chongqing area in mid-Southern China is pretty much all river hills. I'm not sure how well the AI uses those tiles, but if they put a bunch of mines there, a Southeast Asia start could be overwhelmingly powerful, especially on higher difficulties and later into the game.

Also, I think forests and lumber mills are fine.

 

[Strigvir]

The pantheon also provides faith and flat food

And monopoly provides a corporation.

The Temple of Artemis doesn't actually give you 10% growth, it gives you 10% food, which is about 1200% better as it multiplies the food before it is consumed by citizens instead of after it.

You are thinking vanilla there, all growth bonuses work after the consumption.
At least ToA bonus is listed among there.

Spoiler :

In fact the more I think about it, the worse the 10% growth starts to sound, U mean you were talking of +12 food from the flat bonus, your city would have to create 120 food after citizen consumption to match that, which sounds close to impossible.

You are again ignoring that it works on all cities.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the growth stat is useless, but there is a reason why the Chinese +50% growth during golden ages isn't completely overpowered, because growth just isn't amazing.

Not completely you meant? I guess that explains my 100 pop capital and 3 other 80 pop cities without using a single internal trade route.

Spoiler :

 

[Gazebo]

Spoiler :

That's a glorious city, and is exactly what I wanted China to do. Also, the 55 WLTKD bonus turns answers my earlier question about whether or not WLTKD is stacking. It is.

G

 

[Strigvir]

That's the screenshot from the old version, back when GMs didn't provide WLTKD on bulb, so I don't know if the bonus from their use stacks.
Although I didn't notice any anomalies in my Russian playthrough regarding it, but I didn't check very carefully either.

 

[Atlas627]

Mines provide 1 hammer for far too long, though lategame they are excellent. Remember when you build a mine on a hill you are turning a 2h tile into a 3h tile. Early game you can barely afford to work a non-food tile anyway, and 3h is easily provided by an Engineer. In addition, production only helps with happiness in a roundabout way as opposed to any other yield (except food) that you put there.

I think we should consider moving one of the later mine boosts to the Workshop or early-medieval tech. Unfortunately that also affects mined luxuries and strategics, but I don't think adding 1 production to each mined luxury or strategic is a big deal. More important is each individual tile, where currently mines are a last resort imo

 

[Apostremo]

China's UA should be renamend "Land of Unemployment"

Just to make it clear, i didn't want to say that there's something wrong with mines or lumber mills. Haven't grasped the balance of improvements myself until now, that's why i asked.

 

[Gazebo]

China's UA should be renamend "Land of Unemployment"

Just to make it clear, i didn't want to say that there's something wrong with mines or lumber mills. Haven't grasped the balance of improvements myself until now, that's why i asked.

Well, I did rename 'unemployed' citizens as 'labor' a while back...

G

 

[Funak]

You are thinking vanilla there, all growth bonuses work after the consumption.
At least ToA bonus is listed among there.

You have way too many bonuses for be to bother actually counting if it provides 10% food or 10% growth, but I did try it out myself maybe 5 versions ago and at that point it did count before consumption (And yes at that point it was also located at the same place as the other growthbonuses)

Not completely you meant? I guess that explains my 100 pop capital and 3 other 80 pop cities without using a single internal trade route.

That sure is a big city, however, you are 520 turns in, and I've had similar sized cities at that point as well.

I really don't think we are arguing about the right thing here, I'm telling you that I find 10% growth worse than either 10% production, 10% culture, 10% science or 10% gold. Do you disagree with that?

Also, the 55 WLTKD bonus turns answers my earlier question about whether or not WLTKD is stacking. It is.

I guess I will try it out again, however I was pretty damn sure that in my last china-game 3 days ago most of the GP pops were just ignored. Could have been something else I guess, like policyspawning or E&D spawning great people are ignored. But I really don't think that was the case.

 

[Gazebo]

I guess I will try it out again, however I was pretty damn sure that in my last china-game 3 days ago most of the GP pops were just ignored. Could have been something else I guess, like policyspawning or E&D spawning great people are ignored. But I really don't think that was the case.

GM WLTKD pop may still be bugging out. Who knows.
G

 

[Strigvir]

I really don't think we are arguing about the right thing here, I'm telling you that I find 10% growth worse than either 10% production, 10% culture, 10% science or 10% gold. Do you disagree with that?

We are arguing over +3 food monopoly versus +10% food one.

 

[Edaka]

I think that mines are okay, but they take a long time to really kick in. You can get the farm stacking bonus right away, which is the reason why I almost always prefer farms over mines on river hills.
I also think that jungle mills share the same problem - they start as mediocre, but get much better with techs that come much later. But I haven't had extensive experience with jungle mills, so can't really say much about that topic.

 

[Funak]

We are arguing over +3 food monopoly versus +10% food one.

It's +10% growth not +10% food, as mentioned earlier.
And again that still is not the point