Suggestions and Requests

[Leoreth]

is there a way of preventing a fort from being built next to another fort?

Yes, but the desert phenomenon should be addressed independent of that.

 

[cudfather]

Please don't ban forts on adjacent tiles; sometimes there is a 2 tile wide bottleneck and two forts are needed.

 

[Mouthwash]

I think you should put Knossos (east Crete) and Raphia (Sinai, on the hill) in the 3000 BC scenario as independents. Crete goes the whole game without being settled, and Raphia provides access through the Red Sea, which otherwise might never happen. The current naming mechanics for these are incomplete- in my WB scenarios Knossos never becomes Heraklion, and Raphia never becomes Rafah.

I do think they should be the same 'independent civ,' and not the one that Israel is represented by. The Philistines did come from Crete, and did attack Egypt with the Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC.

 

[Leoreth]

I thought the Philistines were one of the Sea Peoples?

 

[Mouthwash]

I thought the Philistines were one of the Sea Peoples?

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply they weren't.

 

[Panopticon]

Dear Leoreth,

I think that, for the purposes of the English UHV, all of North America should count as North America. I built Edmonton but it didn't.

Best regards, etc.

 

[Leoreth]

The Canada enlargement is probably not respected. I will check the target area.

 

[Big Heb]

It's game-changing so I can understand opposition to it, but I'm curious if there could be a future mechanic where food can be imported from one city to another city, hereby transferring population from high food cities to potentially high production or high commerce cities. Without this mechanic, cities like Memphis end up getting way higher population than Rome in the Classical age. And cities like Minneapolis, Rapid City, Omaha, etc. can get way higher populations than New York or Los Angeles in the modern era. Same goes for small island cities in the Carribean. The game-changing aspect is that it can be used to front-load most of your population in your core (imagine Cuzco with 20+ population).

To keep it from being too game-breaking and to keep it interesting, these are my proposals:

After the discovery of Pottery, you can export land food (any food obtained from a city by farms, pastures, windmills, plantations, grasslands, flood plains, etc.) from one city connected by trade route to another connected by trade route. By default, you can export as much food as you want, but only 1/2 of the food exported from city A will be appended to the total food obtained by city B, which makes it more advantageous to not export food but still gives an alternative to whipping population in the early game. If you run the Agrarianism civic, all food exported from city A can be used by city B.

After the discovery of Combustion, this 1/2 limitation also goes away (represents the creation of barges and trucks to haul food over long distances to limit spoilage, raids, etc.).

After the discovery of Refrigeration, both food generated from both land and sea tiles can be exported (represents refrigeration of fish).

What I like about this idea is that already-existing mechanics in the game can make this quite interesting. If you're Britain or France propping up your core cities with food from your colonies, a Privateer or enemy blockade can easily create disaster if they blockade your cities to break the trade route, thus breaking the food export. It also places a lot less importance on city placement for min-maxing population and allows you to plot cities based on historical, commercial and productive elements instead, which is a lot more realistic.

My only concerns with this idea are (1) how the AI would be able to handle it, if at all, and (2) how to rebalance the game with this mechanic in place. To make it less OP, the penalties and costs for exporting food could also be tweaked.

Any thoughts? Or am I too crazy and idealistic?

 

[cudfather]

Leoreth, please consider reverting some of the recent changes to forts. Since AIs now disregard their yield when it comes to deciding which improvement to build, the rest of the changes only hurt the human player. And this is not a game-breaking strategy to have a 2 wide wall of forts, or a fort adjacent to city. Sometimes, if you're on the defense, they really help and they also do a good job of representing trench war.

 

[Leoreth]

I don't want to encourage humans to plaster the desert with forts either, and this rule will also take care of the long canal exploit that I always found ugly.

I will continue to monitor this of course, and might lift the restriction on city proximity again. But I don't think this is too relevant to delay the release of 1.13, so I will await the feedback during further development and make adjustments later if necessary.

 

[char81]

Maybe forts could have some kind of small upkeep, to discourage players from spamming them.


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[Temujin8k]

I randomly suggest having Astronomy require Gunpowder. It looks so weird seeing only melee conquerors during American conqueror events, and sometimes they can't even succeed conquering them.

 

[Publicola]

Given that most European Trading Companies were often highly militarized to protect the valuable trade routes -- and given that those trade routes were only possible and profitable due to Europe's military/technological advantage -- perhaps we could have Gunpowder be a prerequisite for the 'Trading Companies' national wonder, rather than for the Astronomy tech as a whole.

 

[ezzlar]

I only build forts on resources outside bfc. Otherwise attacking is better.

 

[cudfather]

@ezzlar: in most cases, but not always. I have recently played a game as Babylon (1997 Secular URV). Since the 1700s onwards Russia had 30+ cities and I had 0.2, later 0.1 of their military strength. They warred me twice and I lost no cities at all: thanks to a fortified Constantinople and a fort in the Caucasus, both manned by riflemen and later machine guns.
So, in some cases where you can't afford a large military (200+% inflation ) and you are going for a peaceful victory condition, staying on the defense makes sense; I had no hope of attacking Russian forces.

 

[Panopticon]

Given that most European Trading Companies were often highly militarized to protect the valuable trade routes -- and given that those trade routes were only possible and profitable due to Europe's military/technological advantage -- perhaps we could have Gunpowder be a prerequisite for the 'Trading Companies' national wonder, rather than for the Astronomy tech as a whole.

Not everyone gets conquerors.

 

[cudfather]

Just now a thought came to me: perhaps there could be a global Trading Company limit, at 2 or 3? When 2 (or 3) TCs are completed, other civs can't build or trigger theirs. This would represent trade supremacy and monopoly.

Example:
1500 - Spain triggers its TC -> Philippines
1600 - Portugal triggers its TC -> China
1700 - The Netherlands trigger their TC -> Indonesia
1750 - Great Britain triggers its TC -> nothing happens, 3 TCs already.

If implemented, this would allow for the addition of TCs for civs that don't have them at present (say, HRE, Poland, Italy). They would rarely trigger them, since they would be tied to techs later than those that current TC event holders have. Most of the time, the games would play out just like they do right now, but one in n games something wacky would happen. Imagine a Holy Roman Equatorial Guinea, or Polish West Africa. I would compare this to Lubeck instead of Hamburg happening in 1 in 4 games; Leoreth said he'd like more of this kind of thing, so I share my idea

 

[DC123456789]

I don't think the trading company limit really makes sense; historically, even countries like Denmark that never had much a colonial empire had fairly successful trading companies by being middlemen and all that. There's plenty of room in South Asia and the Caribbean.

 

[Leoreth]

I think it's an interesting idea, let this stew at the back of my mind for a while.

 

[ezzlar]

An alternative could be region specific TC. For example the Indian Trading company, it can only be built once and initiates the conqueror event in India (when tech requirements are met). Each civ may only build one TC.

Edit: Also give a handicap for all AI initiated conqueror events. The player should get far fewer troops. This also applies for the Americas.