Starting Luxuries Tier List

[CrazyG]

I think Bite has the right sentiment, but maybe not the right details. I do not think culture or science should be a base yield. Having culture as a base yield caused some big problems IIRC, there is a reason all culture has been moved behind monopolies or improvements. I would try faith on a base yield on exactly incense (but only incense).

are the premium yields, you should only get one of those from a lux, not two different kinds, UNLESS the luxury is flawed in some other way. For example the current incense is fine (actually a bit weak) even though it has faith and culture, because it's base sucks. Incense is well designed IMO, big upside but big downside. Changes how you approach things.

I think faith and culture ought to be a bit more rare too. It should be a nice treat when you get access to a rare yield, I feel like I get a faith monopoly every 4th game (and coral is almost a faith luxury too). All 3 faith plantations lead to very similar early game.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I think faith and culture ought to be a bit more rare too. It should be a nice treat when you get access to a rare yield, I feel like I get a faith monopoly every 4th game (and coral is almost a faith luxury too). All 3 faith plantations lead to very similar early game.

Just as a counterpoint, as someone with a jungle start bias I almost never have a faith monopoly lol. There are 31 possible starting luxuries if I count correctly, and only four of them grant faith.

It's one of the strong points of flatland plantations (similarly coffee giving science and tea giving lots of hammers), which can help to balance flat land being a bit weaker in other areas.

As for culture, it is a nice treat to get something worthwhile after I've chopped jungle or forest to get there. Perfume, cotton, and olives don't require chopping, but it's not like they stand out as being too strong (only appear on flatland). Similarly, maratime resources require a new boat for every lux, so getting culture as a reward seems appropriate. Furs are quite strong, but I feel that's an important part of tundra starts, which are otherwise a bit dull.

I guess I wouldn't mind gold getting a nerf. Coral is pretty strong too, although personally I kind of like that.

 

[andersw]

I'm not 100% sure its big enough that things HAVE to be changed, I see it more as, "do I need the handicap of reroll or not?".
But yes gold/faith calendar plantation could need some love (olives, tobacco and similar).
For me its the lack of production, I would need a flat hammer on these resources BEFORE improvement for them to be viable.
I this too much or am I overvaluing production?

 

[CrazyG]

Just as a counterpoint, as someone with a jungle start bias I almost never have a faith monopoly lol. There are 31 possible starting luxuries if I count correctly, and only four of them grant faith.

I would include the current coral as a high faith luxury, so its 5/31 luxuries give you a high faith start, 2 of which are boats, 2 of which are plantations in grassland or plains, 1 is a plantation for grassland/plains or desert.

Pearls and Coral, the 2 boats play out quite similarly. Wine and incense are very similar, same monopoly, culture on improvement, and buffed by temples. Tobacco is like wine except outright worse.

The goal of luxuries is to provide variety to your starts, so I think we should look at making coral and pearls less similar, and change one of the 3 plantations discussed above.

For me its the lack of production, I would need a flat hammer on these resources BEFORE improvement for them to be viable.
I this too much or am I overvaluing production?

Nope, production is great! But I think we need luxuries without production to provide variety.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

you know "I am" is two words, right?

I know, blame my auto correcture, it seems it's often not knowing if I writing english or german and changes it afterwards.

I appreciate where you are coming from, but I think such a methodological approach might make luxuries all feel a bit same-y rather than being something unique or special.

Yeah yeah, I am a German.
I think atleast 90% of the yields for luxuries are not really related to the luxury and we find them unique cause a long time ago someone decided to give some luxuries more valuable yields and some luxuries less valuable yields.

Incene generating faith may sound logic, cause the three kings brought Jesus some after his birth. But Iam a bit confused why tea should generate more hammers than stone or marble. From a point of view of a Japanese or Chinese, tea is for sure related to culture, cause it's there a big tradition, much more than in Westen hemisphere.

The yields in the end didn't matter, but it should be balanced, or?

 

[pineappledan]

Many of the weaker luxuries you guys are discussing are boosted by a fairly late building.
Citrus and Cocoa get 11 at gardens
tobacco gets 3 at Grocer
Compare this to ivory. Ivory has low yields, but they're camps (faster to unlock), and they get 3 at circus.

Citrus could maybe get 21 at gardens
Cocoa could get 22 at gardens
Tobacco could get 22 at grocer
Maybe those resources would feel more fair if they had strong building boosts? A grocer in all your cities is a huge investment if tobacco was your monopoly (happened to me last game)

I worry about playing with base yields/improvements because the yields given by certain resources are very flavourful. That historical flavor can be preserved if we just make some of the resources "late bloomers" with strong late yields.

 

[Gazebo]

This thread is good but hard to follow. What specific resources are we looking at? We don’t need to go crazy on changes I don’t think.


G

 

[JamesNinelives]

This thread is good but hard to follow. What specific resources are we looking at? We don’t need to go crazy on changes I don’t think.

G

Tbh we have discussed a lot of things. I read through the comments again and tried to do a review focusing on specifica luxuries. I did my best to ignore comments that I made myself in an attempt to account for confirmation bias.

There seems to be some consensus that Tobacco and Silk could use improvement. There is some consensus that Ivory could be improved, although a counterpoint has been presented. There is some agreement that Perfume could be improved in some way. There is some agreement they dyes could be better, although counterpoints have been made. There is also some agreement that coral is quite strong, and suggestion for it to be reviewed.

In conclusion, Tobacco being weak seems to be the most agreed-on topic, followed by Coral being strong. Silk and Perfume being a little weak seems uncontraversial. Ivory and Dyes also have some agreement to need improvement, but with debate on those subjects. Hope that is a somewhat fair summary!

(Good night from the Southern Hemisphere!)

 

[Blue Ghost]

I think it’s perfectly fine that some luxuries are stronger than others. I don’t see any gross imbalances now, so I wouldn’t change anything. I wish sometimes we could have a discussion of relative power levels of a certain aspect of the game as just a way of experiencing the game, without prompting a new spate of rebalancing.

 

[Randomized]

Agreed, having some luxuries better than others makes the game interesting. I don't think any are game winning by themselves, and if you get a bad monopoly you can just restart.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

A minor suggestion I have is to move the Bank resource (Gems, Gold, Silver) Yields to the Customs House.

 

[CrazyG]

This is what I'd do:

Weaken Coral (change the improvement to +1,+1, replacing +1+1)
Buff Tobacco by having the market give it +1 ,+1 (instead of +3 at the grocer)
Move forest chopping to bronze working.
Move the other grocer luxuries (tea and I forget what else) the customs house if you wish.

Coral would still be strong but more reasonable. Tobacco would still be tough but more playable. Forest luxuries would be easier. The goal isn't perfect equality, just nothing too bad and nothing too good.

 

[randomnub]

Weaken Coral (change the improvement to +1,+1, replacing +1+1)

I don't mind the faith on Coral tbh, I think science is the main issue there. I also like the fact sea resources all provide a different yield on upgrade. Weakening only coral also leaves pearls as a serious balance offender.

Spoiler :

Monopoly bonus:
Whales +10%
Pearls +2
Crab +3
Coral +2

Sea resource monopolies are in my experience the easiest to connect (when you have the opportunity of pre-building boats in your capital and sending them to early expos, or gold allows rushbuy, where workers take their time) hence an early flat +2 / on pearls/coral play a big role in snowballing; it also makes whales with their science focus worse at science than coral for a long time and that just feels wrong.

I'd leave the sea resource improvements as they are and change the monopolies to make them all late game boomers, such as:

Whales +10%
Pearls +2 and +25% GA length
Crab +10%
Coral +10%

A minor suggestion I have is to move the Bank resource (Gems, Gold, Silver) Yields to the Customs House.

Buff Tobacco by having the market give it +1 ,+1 (instead of +3 at the grocer)
Move the other grocer luxuries (tea and I forget what else) the customs house if you wish.

I like the sound of these ideas. Bank and Grocer indeed come too late, and the yields they provide aren't great at that point. I also find myself building Banks before Custom Houses even when I'm not on sitting on silver/gold/gems because the base building is plain better (and Custom Houses without the Bank +3 aren't worth the hammers imo).

So moving Gems, Gold, Silver to Custom House feels worth a try.

About getting rid of Grocer as a resource upgrade building, my suggestions:

Tobacco to Market and +1, +1 feels good
Tea to Caravanserary with +2 only
Coffee to Garden with +1 , +1 only

Bananas are no longer upgraded by a second building (Granary should be enough), instead they receive a +1 before improvement; it's weird a banana jungle and a plain jungle tile provide the same 2/1, afterall bison/deer/wheat are all better than a resourceless tile. Plantation bonus lowered to +2/1.

That would leave only Silk as the party pooper resource. Its base yields are alright but it's a pita to improve for what are minor gains. You must chop a forest, then you get +2 on plantation, +1/1 on the amphitheater (not an early building, nor a #1 priority for all cities either), +10% gold (possibly worst monopoly? comes online late compared to flat ones).

I'd first change a bit the Amphitheater.

Spoiler :

Its yields haven't been changed in like forever, before Lapis received a pretty good buff (+1,+2 upon improvement, great but balanced by the fact it's a quarry resource... anyway having science, culture and GAP monopoly makes Lapis a bit too good imo). My suggestion:

Dye +1, +1
Silk +2
Lapis +2

I'd also buff silk plantation from +2 to +3, make it worth lose the hammers from the forest.

Move forest chopping to bronze working mining.

Hell yeah.

 

[CrazyG]

I like randomnub's suggestions more than my own.

Dye +1, +1
Silk +2
Lapis +2

Personally I wouldn't mind all the boosts from the same building being the same (with exceptions if necessary), I feel like its just simpler, more elegant, and we don't really lose much. I don't really want to learn all the different boosts anyways. So like +1, +1 for all the amphitheater ones.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Agreed, having some luxuries better than others makes the game interesting. I don't think any are game winning by themselves, and if you get a bad monopoly you can just restart.

It would be nice if certain luxuries didn't make you want to restart though. It seems we have some good suggestions. We don't need to make big changes, but if we can agree on a couple of little things that would improve gameplay that sounds good to me .

I agree with randomnub's suggestions for Silk, and that seems like a good place to start. I mostly agree with their suggestion for tobacco - it's perfect in terms of balance. It feels strange for the resource to generate any food though, given how incredibly toxic it is to humans (like, it's genuinely amazing). I would prefer for it to get more gold or production instead, i.e. +3 gold or +1 gold +1 production.

I think Coral should generate at least some science, because coral reefs are known to be havens of biodiversity.That said I think it might be easier to agree on how to improve some of the weaker resources than how to balance the strong ones, so it may be useful to focus on those first.

I like the idea of moving Bank resource buffs to the Customs House. I think moving resource buffs from the Grocer is good for those resources, but without them the Grocer isn't particularly strong (whereas the Bank will be fine).

 

[Stalker0]

I think moving resource buffs from the Grocer is good for those resources, but without them the Grocer isn't particularly strong

I think the Grocer stands fine on its own, just the +1 happiness alone is very important at that point in the game. This is not me saying resource bonuses should be removed from the Grocer...just that I think we have the flexibility to do so without invalidating the building.

 

[MarvelOfRain]

Best Rating:
Bottom:
Kinda all "gold" plantations, like cotton, dies, silk, tobacco and especially parfume. Parfume end in the hexxon refinery corporation, which is in my eyes completly useless and lead to an immidiatly restart from my side.

They are not that bad. If you get a bunch of them improved early you get quite nice gold income - just the number of yields on them can be insane even though gold is not that valuable. I had Cotton in my current game as Mongolia and was able to use it to get up a nice military and absorb my neighboring civ (Montezuma who was number 2 on soldiers). Plantation luxuries, in general, are all quite good early in my opinion but fall off late game since they only get more gold which is low value - I usually end up putting GP on them.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

They are not that bad. If you get a bunch of them improved early you get quite nice gold income - just the number of yields on them can be insane even though gold is not that valuable. I had Cotton in my current game as Mongolia and was able to use it to get up a nice military and absorb my neighboring civ (Montezuma who was number 2 on soldiers). Plantation luxuries, in general, are all quite good early in my opinion but fall off late game since they only get more gold which is low value - I usually end up putting GP on them.

If we agree that 1 hammer is comparable to 2 gold in the early stage, I would always prefer tea over gold only luxuries, cause even with its monopol +3 gold, you end with 7 gold which is worth less than the 4 hammers from base tea and its improvement and you get that percentual culture bonus, which can be ridiculous in the late game and/or with lot of puppets.

 

[MarvelOfRain]

If we agree that 1 hammer is comparable to 2 gold in the early stage, I would always prefer tea over gold only luxuries, cause even with its monopol +3 gold, you end with 7 gold which is worth less than the 4 hammers from base tea and its improvement and you get that percentual culture bonus, which can be ridiculous in the late game and/or with lot of puppets.

Don't get me wrong I would never exchange Tea for Cotton I just said that they are not all bad and getting 6-7 Cotton plantations might actually be quite good - certainly not demanding of a restart.

Also gold early is a lot better then people give it credit for. It is not as effective as production, but since you can pool it together it gets a bit better - you can invest it into new cities to get them running faster and 3 cities working a couple of 5-7 gold tiles might give you quite a reasonable military while still working on infrastructure (because of authority).

 

[MarvelOfRain]

Move forest chopping to bronze working.

Yes, please! This is probably the only thing that still annoys me about the early game. I don't think it should be at mining, but it currently comes way too late in the game.