I would place my Hacienda the same as you, which is sort of what I mean by it isn't really adding a decision, the correct locations are pretty obvious, you end up with Hacienda in most of the places a Shoshone encampment would be. IDK if you can really plan city placement for them either, as you put cities down before all resources are revealed, the Hacienda comes quite late, and the rewards are kind of small.
Encampments can't be built on hills or tundra.
This seems like an impossibly high bar for interest, the only other UIs in the game with dynamic yields are the Moai and Terrace Farm. if you aren't going to accept tile placement of a UI as a decision that is specific to the civ, then I don't know what to tell you. This is pretty plainly a devil's advocate, unless you find UIs utterly uninteresting and never use them.
Just because a decision is obvious doesn't mean it's not a decision. Teching to Chivalry is a decision for mission/conquistador is and yet teching to Civil Service for a Hacienda is not? Buying a building with faith when you have the necessary faith is an interesting decision, and yet tile placements with opportunity costs are not? Maximizing adjacency bonuses on the terrain isn't a decision, and switching your city to a gold focus for 1 turn when the city grows +1
for a gold dump is?
If it does happen, I think culture and faith should stay off of it (keep in mind it can science from autocracy, which means that in 4UC a Hacienda can produce every type of core yield). Its a slightly better farm/mine that you get in a few places, overall its a pretty weak unique trait. I would much rather have extra faith as Spain, IDK if I would even want access to a high food UI depending on the state of happiness.
I think Renaissance Spain is very much about
in theme, even if that's already the basis of the ability, whatever form it takes (it does have a good Faith sink, after all.) Haciendas thematically do seem to be about exploiting resources, so perhaps just trying to do that in a less tangled way? We could even avoid giving
to make them more of a choice, making life a bit more difficult for the individual city working them.
UI - Hacienda (Worker Improvement):
available at Civil Service
build time - 8 turns
+3
Faith, +3
Gold, +1
Culture
+3
Gold from each adjacent Resource (of any kind)
cannot be built adjacent to other Hacienda
+1
Culture at Architecture, +3
Gold at Fertilizer
I'm surprised to hear all this resistance to different yields coming from different adjacencies. I hadn't thought it was all that troublesome to people, and I've never heard this complaint for it in 4UC.
Medieval tile improvements base yields:
Polders: 3
2
1
Chateaus: 2
3
3
Feitoria: 3
3
Kasbah: 1
2
2
2
(look at that yield coverage!
SMITE IT!)
As you can see, 3
3
1
is right up there with feitoria and polder, but not as good as Chateau/Kasbah. If you add adjacency yields, the Hacienda would easily beat most GP tiles at that level.
For my part, I think
makes as much sense as
for Hacienda, and I would be loath to drop it. The Hacienda were glorified work camps/sweatshops after all. Also, I still believe that a 3rd yield type, aside from
and
, would really improve Spain's mouthfeel. Otherwise the yields are too homogeneous with the UA.
How about this?
UI - Hacienda (Worker Improvement):
available at Civil Service
build time - 8 turns
+1
Faith, +1
Gold, +1
Production
+1
Faith, +1
Culture from adjacent
City
+1
Gold and +1
Production from each adjacent
Resource
cannot be built adjacent to other Hacienda
+1
Culture at Architecture, +3
Gold at Fertilizer
That gets rid of the food, so Hacienda only has 3/4 yield types (same as Kasbah), and is the only *medieval* UI with
. That also reduces the yield adjacencies to only 2: cities and resources. As I said before, the UI could also be moved to compass to slim down Spain's tech progression, since that's the same tech as Caravels, so it's a priority tech for Spain.
The cities adjacency is both a nod to the
original mexico mod, which required city adjacency as a prerequisite, and has a historical basis. The Hacendado rarely actually lived at his Hacienda, preferring to live in the city, but they preferred to have the Hacienda close to the city in order to make travel to and from easier. A priest would often live at the Hacienda to convert the native workers, but a shorter distance to his local parish made his job easier as well.