Starting Cultures need rebalancing.

[ollj]

The utility of sea-faring focussed factions/traits always depends much on the world shape+settings.
While Phoenicians may get the short stick in ancient times, their momentum may just be great when you settle to other continents.

They may end up like the dutch, or they may end up like the usa.

 

[Taefin]

Lol, I recant some of what I said about Egypt after my last game. I had forgotten their LT gave +1 industry to tiles. I think this needs to be changed to either be this or 10% off districts. Or change it to work like the stone working building, and let Egypt focus on getting more production out of arid terrain. This would allow them to continue filling a role of boosting certain dismal starts.

 

[NombreyApellido]

the problem is that they nerfed other yields than IND badly.

population grows so slow and take so much food, agrarians can't compensate with slavery

money buyouts are so expensive, neither can merchants. same goes for INF... STAB is mostly a non issue. and religion is now irrelevant

knee jerk nerfing is ruining the economy

but egypt is also very good cause you can pick them way later into neolithic

 

[Taefin]

the problem is that they nerfed other yields than IND badly.

population grows so slow and take so much food, agrarians can't compensate with slavery

money buyouts are so expensive, neither can merchants. same goes for INF... STAB is mostly a non issue. and religion is now irrelevant

knee jerk nerfing is ruining the economy

but egypt is also very good cause you can pick them way later into neolithic

Certainly production helps in so many ways that it becomes very powerful. But I find that using a strong gold culture or two (most recently Persia > byzantines and 5 gemstones put me up to 2000k/turn without any ordinary market quarters) I can buyout at least a district per turn. But I always get some production early even if playing for gold.

I actually thought the yields seemed decently well balanced. Gold gives instantness of buyout and supplements production, while giving stars, Agrarian makes it trivial to stay at 100+ surplus for 70%+ growth, which will earn all stars most eras. Influence and especially faith have limited uses but the competition they create gives the winner pretty incredible advantages if they are willing to go to war.

In my last game it was actually Peoria’s EQ INF that allowed me to conquer an entire rival (2nd place AI) using two surprise wars.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Certainly production helps in so many ways that it becomes very powerful. But I find that using a strong gold culture or two (most recently Persia > byzantines and 5 gemstones put me up to 2000k/turn without any ordinary market quarters) I can buyout at least a district per turn. But I always get some production early even if playing for gold.

I actually thought the yields seemed decently well balanced. Gold gives instantness of buyout and supplements production, while giving stars, Agrarian makes it trivial to stay at 100+ surplus for 70%+ growth, which will earn all stars most eras. Influence and especially faith have limited uses but the competition they create gives the winner pretty incredible advantages if they are willing to go to war.

In my last game it was actually Peoria’s EQ INF that allowed me to conquer an entire rival (2nd place AI) using two surprise wars.

You can totally do a gold economy in this game (with the right culture picks), and it makes up for a lack of industry in the early/mid game when you can rush buy cheap districts and infrastructure for 2-3 times the industry cost.

Market Quarters are so abysmal early on though that you can't really do it without taking some Merchant cultures, unless you maybe had a crazy amount of porcelain/incense/gemstone (in which case you should seriously consider Carthage->Ghana). The Merchant EQs are generally a lot better than vanilla Markets.

Being able to upgrade your whole army on discovering a new tech can be game-changing in the right circumstances and isn't always possible with an industry-focused start. It's hard to turn industry into gold (because vanilla Markets need a load of adjacencies before they're any good).

You still need a decent amount of industry just to be able to build the Merchant EQs though, and as districts become more expensive the rush-buy cost ratio rises a lot, so you need lots of industry to drive your mid/late game growth.

 

[NombreyApellido]

i think it's about currency equivalency

surely we can all pull a so and so run... that's not the point

the economy of the game is the underlying problem, not faction balance

games like this usually let you use one currency to get ahold of the others

well, right now it only works for IND

 

[Victoria]

byzantines and 5 gemstones put me up to 2000k/turn without any ordinary market quarters)

the economy of the game is the underlying problem, not faction balance

It is not one thing, @Taefin slips in 5 gemstones, the spiffing Britt used Ebony. Luxes are by no means the only problem but they certainly are one of the issues.

 

[Taefin]

It is not one thing, @Taefin slips in 5 gemstones, the spiffing Britt used Ebony. Luxes are by no means the only problem but they certainly are one of the issues.

Has anyone tracked the exact conditions for lux trade to be interrupted? And when they just resume afterward vs when you have to buy them again? More interruption from third party wars may help

I mean, a decent explanation here, but I find I struggle to parse certain key criterion based around AI warring other AI at the resources site or territories along the trade route.

 

[Victoria]

More interruption from third party wars may help

It is not the wars so much as the difference in not having them. Everyone is theoretically equal in the game but a starting condition of a few sage means no bothering to use farmer specialists nor farmers quarters. Trading is a completely different thing where it has been made great so that war and lack of diplomacy has its punishments at a strong enough level. It is the integration of these different mechanics some good some bad where hobbling something to remove a bad effect also removes the good effect. Original design is so important. Even after my first game I thought this lot is hard to untangle now.

I find I struggle to parse certain key criterion based around AI warring other AI at the resources site or territories along the trade route

I have not looked at causes and the game is so young that any list created would likely be outdated quickly. Not sure what you are trying to say but if it is about trade routes being disabled due to war, I have no issue with this.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Has anyone tracked the exact conditions for lux trade to be interrupted? And when they just resume afterward vs when you have to buy them again? More interruption from third party wars may help

I mean, a decent explanation here, but I find I struggle to parse certain key criterion based around AI warring other AI at the resources site or territories along the trade route.

I've been assuming that interrupted trade is due to a trade route passing through a territory of another empire that has become hostile to one of the trading partners, and a destroyed trade route is either an outpost or city being ransacked, or because you're at war with the person you were trading with.

Once we start to get more interesting maps (especially with large seas) there'll be natural points where a lot of trade has to pass through. At the moment with basically oval continents it's not very interesting to look at where the routes go. Sometimes I'll pay extra for a land route if it looks safer than a sea one, or avoid paying for trades that go through a potential enemy's territory, but that's about it.

 

[NombreyApellido]

it stops the moment a demand is put forward

destroying a route breaks the agreement but brings a lot of money, nets a grievance to the buyers so it may be desirable to say lure nubians to a war. that's why i usually burn down a trading outpost after they agree to my counter: it denies them the LUX bonuses and sets war in motion

 

[Victoria]

it stops the moment a demand is put forward

3rd party trade routes is what I suspect @Taefin was talking about.

 

[Taefin]

3rd party trade routes is what I suspect @Taefin was talking about.

Ah yes under what conditions the war between two AI interrupts your trade either with one of them, or with yet another AI. It sounds then like routes being destroyed is only when part of the route is ransacked, or you get into war with the trading partner. It was unclear also when sieges/bombardment suspend or destroy routes.

It’s certainly interesting the few times trade has all but forced peace between me and the top 3-4 AI. And when the leader AI who’s conquered another continent has all the resources you need to boost you economy enough to threaten them, it puts some good stability and economic pressure when you try to build war support against them.

Probably the biggest incentive to invest in gold is to trivialize purchasing every lux.

 

[NombreyApellido]

main gold income during ancient is war reparations that can net you several hundreds. then comes ransacking, particularly if you get the thief stars. then curiosities, some of which can weight 60 coins

to me, the fact that powerful reparations can be made out of thin air is again part of the basic economy imbalance

i wonder what the criteria is... when a main plaza can only output 3 coins, a demand can be 200 or more

it's like the game designer refuses to make things have some semblance of internal logic

early farmers eat more than they grow. armies don't need food. outposts build extractors out of INF instead of IND

 

[Karmah]

outposts build extractors out of INF instead of IND

And yet this mechanics is the one forcing me to take consequential decisions early game where inf is sparsed and you are competing for land,every turn can be a risk to get a piece of land snatched , industry is not that high so having a lux instantly can mean a world of difference (looking at you sage or other flat bonuses) . I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like it as it is a huge part of my fun !

 

[NombreyApellido]

i get fun. i'm all in favor of fun

the point isn't to take fun out of the game but for it to have a consistent logic as every story telling device should

it's puzzling because the lead designer himself spoke of the importance of this yet we're not that far from having to "pay" with food and eat religion followers because balance

 

[fortydayweekend]

i get fun. i'm all in favor of fun

the point isn't to take fun out of the game but for it to have a consistent logic as every story telling device should

it's puzzling because the lead designer himself spoke of the importance of this yet we're not that far from having to "pay" with food and eat religion followers because balance

Personally I think it's crazy that citizens in these games are all treated like homogeneous nationalists, I'd love to see some Vicky 2 mechanics in a 4X with distinct workers, priests, soldiers, nobility etc pops with their own stability, housing and luxury needs, and competing interests.

The way I read the "farmers eat more than they produce" thing is that the Quarters themselves add some form of underlying population and the FIMS workers are just an extra layer of specialists you have on top that can be shifted around or turned into troops. This also "explains" how quarters produce yields (because they represent population as well as infrastructure). Why population would be added by building houses I don't know, but I don't know why collecting food stores would add population either and that's the 4X standard.

 

[Siptah]

I think paying for something with influence is the least offender when it comes to internal consistency. Using your influence to get something done instead of doing it yourself is not so far out of the box, I‘m doing it at least on a weekly basis and it happened throughout in history on a larger scale. Maybe it could still take a turn instead of instantaneous appearance, however.

As to simulated pops: while I‘m putting so much hope into Vicky 3, I‘m not sure if simulated pops with individual jobs and needs are the right scope for HK, which seems to keep many mechanics on a more abstracted and higher level (which is also why I hope, for internal consistency, we won‘t see individual people, heroes, generals, except maybe in events).

 

[NombreyApellido]

i think INF is a huge offender when it comes to get stuff built in outposts compared to cities. it's instant and cheap as dirt even in ancient times especially for harbors, the most expensive regular quarter there is

this is a "plot hole" in the game story

we can all come up with fanfiction on why is this and say it makes perfect sense

it's just not canon