Rationalism change and usual "balance changes" leading to no balance at all

[enKage]

So as far as I understand, rationalism will work now with 15pop cities and +4 adjecencies.

I really like rising population needed, but...
The main thing here is +4 adjecency, which is pretty hard to achieve without being lucky with map generator granting a lot of mountains, reefs, geotherms or plantations in case of Maya.

Till now, every civ except Gauls could make +3 campus everywhere, just by building dostricts around. Now it would be limited only to Gov Plaza region, and only if this region has no luxuries/strategics, so districts are not blocked.
There are few civs though, that will not suffer from this change:
- Korea - guaranteed +4 campus (except conquered cities), Seowon also boost farms around, so growth to 15 is easier than other civs
- Australia, again binus yields to campuses and more housing
- Japan - +1 adj per district makes it still easy to reach +4
- sometimes Netherlands - less consistent than others, but still Netherlands can sexure a lot f +4 campuses


and that is all

Who suffers the most?
The Gauls
It was hard to make a +3 campus with Gauls with no adj from districts. +4 is impossible without reef clussters. Were Gauls strong enough till now? I don't think so.

So in my opinion introducing +4 rationalism is a huge nerf to nearly every civ.
Except 3: Korea, Australia, Japan - all 3 being OP prior to change. Now they will become even more OP.
All civs, except those already very strong civs, would be limited with campuses only to mountain ranges / reefs. Korea, Australia, Japan can still campuses everywhere and fully benefit from rationalism card


It recalls a little work ethic changes. This balance change made OP Russia even more OP.

So what is next? Boosting back Gran Colombia or any other very strong civ to make it even stronger? I wonder what are your candidates

Wouldnt be better to increase population requirement only?

 

[8housesofelixir]

Exactly my thought. For a +4 Campus, one need a long and twisted mountain range, a cluster of Geothermal Fissures, a cluster of Coral Reefs, or a cluster of Ley Lines - which completely throw the player at the mercy of map generation RNG.

A player's own agency (investment) cannot really help them achieve +4 Campus, and things can get worse when you are playing Gaul.

Wouldnt be better to increase population requirement only?

To be honest that will certainly be a lot better.

 

[Minou]

Doesn’t the Natural History double adjacency count here? I think that means you only need +2 adjacency. I think the 15 pop is the problem. That takes a LONG time for most cities and you’ll just end up hurting your happiness along the way.

 

[The Highwayman]

It's the natural adjacency that contributes to the +4 (formerly +3). So it would need to be +4 before policy cards to kick in the 50%, which also sucks for most civs.

 

[Minou]

If true that seems pretty horrible. It is really hard to get a natural +4, I think between this and 15 pop I’ll mostly ignore Rationalism as it will hit so few cities. Maybe a more balanced way to do this would be +25% at 10pop, another +25% at 15pop, +25% at 2 adjacency, and another +25% at 4 adjacency.

 

[kryat]

On the plus side, maybe this will free up a policy slot for something more interesting

 

[enKage]

Free policy slot would not allow you to keep contact with Korea, Australia, Japan.

Maybe if you play India or especially Cree allowing fast hitting 15 pop, you can compete. but Gauls? Georgia? Ethiopia? Good luck

 

[8housesofelixir]

Free policy slot would not allow you to keep contact with Korea, Australia, Japan. Maybe if you play India or especially Cree allowing fast hitting 15 pop, you can compete. but Gauls? Georgia? Ethiopia? Good luck

IMHO the initial design of Rationalism is to let non-science civs compete in science. It then turns to a must have card, a min-maxers' toy, and finally a, ehhhh, I don't know, simply playing Tall can only let you have a +50%.

 

[AntSou]

I'm not convinced of this assessment. You should be able to find a handful of +4 adjacency spots. Those are the cities you want to grow to 15 Pop.

Edit: speaking of the devil, just founded this city.

 

[UWHabs]

I'm not convinced of this assessment. You should be able to find a handful of +4 adjacency spots. Those are the cities you want to grow to 15 Pop.

The +4 and the 15 pop don't actually have to be in the same cities, though. Basically, to use the new rationalism, you either need really large cities, or beautiful campus sites. So if I have 6 campuses, 2 of them +4 or more, and 2 of them in large cities, it doesn't matter if those overlap or not.

The big problem that this does is before, you would try hard for either a +3 campus, or if not, then it doesn't really matter. If your civ is putting out 120 science, then there's functionally no difference between a +1 and a +2 campus site. Now, it can still be worth search for the +4 sites, but now it makes 0/+1/+2/+3 all basically the same. I do wish there was some reason, like we do for harbors and IZ, to have a real reason for going for a +3 campus instead of a +2. That's why I wished the change was more like "+10% science per adjacency up to +50%", so that every point of adjacency had a big impact down the road.

 

[criZp]

You should be able to find a handful of +4 adjacency spots. Those are the cities you want to grow to 15 Pop.

You don't need both the adjacency and the population in order to get the +50% bonus from adjacency. Getting to 15 pop in these won't give you more benefit than getting 15 pop in any other city with a campus.

 

[bengalryan9]

Just change the Seowon to be an +3 instead of +4. They were probably OP as it is anyways IMO.

For Australia I think it's kind of odd how quickly we go back and forth between "Land Down Under is really easy to get max value out of" and "Land Down Under is really hard to get max value out of" around here. I've always found it strong and never had problems getting +4 or more adjacency campuses, but some folk around here will swear up and down it doesn't happen all that often despite my counter arguments.

Japan at least needs to put some work into getting their campuses to +4 or more and are also incentivized to build other districts instead. I'm not as convinced it's going to be as powerful for them as the others.

Maybe the Gauls take a hit here but I don't really have an issue with it TBH. They're still pretty good at culture so they're not exactly hopeless.

 

[UWHabs]

Just change the Seowon to be an +3 instead of +4. They were probably OP as it is anyways IMO.

For Australia I think it's kind of odd how quickly we go back and forth between "Land Down Under is really easy to get max value out of" and "Land Down Under is really hard to get max value out of" around here. I've always found it strong and never had problems getting +4 or more adjacency campuses, but some folk around here will swear up and down it doesn't happen all that often despite my counter arguments.

Japan at least needs to put some work into getting their campuses to +4 or more and are also incentivized to build other districts instead. I'm not as convinced it's going to be as powerful for them as the others.

Maybe the Gauls take a hit here but I don't really have an issue with it TBH. They're still pretty good at culture so they're not exactly hopeless.

I haven't played Korea recently, but once you get past the early stages of the game, it's going to get trickier to keep your Seowons without any districts near them to keep them at +4. Previously, you had one leeway, so you didn't mind dropping to +3, but now it's going to be even trickier for planning.

Not to say they don't still have it easier than other civs, but Korea did lose the wiggle room they used to have to max out their bonuses.

 

[greenOak]

Just change the Seowon to be an +3 instead of +4. They were probably OP as it is anyways IMO.

For Australia I think it's kind of odd how quickly we go back and forth between "Land Down Under is really easy to get max value out of" and "Land Down Under is really hard to get max value out of" around here. I've always found it strong and never had problems getting +4 or more adjacency campuses, but some folk around here will swear up and down it doesn't happen all that often despite my counter arguments.

Japan at least needs to put some work into getting their campuses to +4 or more and are also incentivized to build other districts instead. I'm not as convinced it's going to be as powerful for them as the others.

Maybe the Gauls take a hit here but I don't really have an issue with it TBH. They're still pretty good at culture so they're not exactly hopeless.

The problem for Australia is that even on a good map they'll have a number of cities that simply won't be able to reach +4. Even though it takes time, Japan can get +4 adjacency pretty much anywhere. Japan and Korea seem like the only civs that are capable of building +4 campuses in every city (at least without ss).

 

[enKage]

Australia can +4 everywhere. Both HS and Theatre increase appeal, so you build a triangle (with+! from ditricts as well). Australia also don't lose appel on mines and if still low, can plant forests

 

[Stringer1313]

enough about "balance" - asymmetry is fun. balance between all civs is not and should not be the goal. being challenging and fun is

 

[criZp]

enough about "balance" - asymmetry is fun.

these are not mutually exclusive.

 

[The Highwayman]

There are more than enough tools in the game for Australia to force +4 campuses (or better). Even if you have to do the Liang city park tour thing, it can happen. I'm confident Curtain can reliably leverage half the Rationalism bonus by the time Enlightenment rolls around. However, do you really want to get 15 pop cities? Maybe a space port city and a Mausoleum city but not beyond that for all the reasons people have mentioned.

 

[chazzycat]

As a roleplayer who doesn't care about fast win times, I love this. I like to grow my cities because capping them at a certain size seems super gamey and kills the immersion for me. So yeah it's all good in my book. Love the change to neighborhoods as well. I actually build those! And will build more now.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I like the population part of the change. I'm not sure about the adjacency part.