Summarized Suggestions for Post v.6-12

[Moi Magnus]

Pretty much this.

I'd also simplify happiness bonuses. We have needs reductions, unhappiness from needs reductions, urbanización reduction and direct happiness production. That's crazy hard to explain, folks.
I'd say to stick with modifiers reductions or unhappiness reductions, not both.

Unhappiness reduction are simpler, as they don't require to understand at all how the needs are computed. So if there is a choice, we should chose them.

The only reason why modifiers reduction still exist is that world wonder giving raw unhappiness reduction in every city would possibly be OP. But we want them to have an effect on the whole civilization rather than just the city who build it.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Pretty much this.

I'd also simplify happiness bonuses. We have needs reductions, unhappiness from needs reductions, urbanización reduction and direct happiness production. That's crazy hard to explain, folks.
I'd say to stick with modifiers reductions or unhappiness reductions, not both.

Iam on your side.
Did you remember when Gazebo said "the new system is local and use flat values, it's so easy"? Well, I knew it would go again into the direction we are now and I would prefer a simplified happiness system too. But when does Gazebo the things yi suggest? Maybe I should always say Gazebo the complete opposite what I want or think.

I think the the players will understand a modifier only based system together with flat positive happiness.

 

[pineappledan]

The only reason why modifiers reduction still exist is that world wonder giving raw unhappiness reduction in every city would possibly be OP. But we want them to have an effect on the whole civilization rather than just the city who build it.

Maybe wonders could give a global flat reduction modifier, but instead of affecting all cities they could give a flat -X global poverty/distress/etc.? This wasn’t possible/effective with city unhappiness being so important before, but if happiness isn’t going to cap specialist slots, then the total global unhappiness can have a few flat points knocked off it.

The equality tenet could do the same thing, maybe -2 unhappiness from all needs on empire, instead of -5% needs reduction in all cities

 

[Legen]

Trade routes:

• Instant yields from ITR removed from buildings
• Culture removed from external trade routes, gold and science slightly buffed

I don't think we should remove culture from ETRs. Besides being thematical that trading with other civilizations (city-states included) should result in new ideas circulating around, those culture yields help keeping ETRs useful without needing an excessively high gold output. I remember that one patch tried to reduce the gold available overall due to how easily everyone could invest in everything, lowering ETRs output among the adjustments, and the extra culture is important to keep ETRs competitive with ITRs despite that patch.

 

[Bhawb]

There has been a fairly unanimous agreement that India has a happiness isssue, and needs tools to deal with that, but none of the other things in your India rework have been discussed, much less been given popular assent.

Playing India right now, and India only needs early game help with happiness, particularly in non-capital cities (since Tradition capitals do fine). Adding a bit of flat happiness to their UB or tying it to their religion (gain +1 happiness per belief in each city?) would go a long way to allowing them to make it through the early game and work specialists without completely falling behind.

As far as making India more AI friendly, I think adjusting how they interact with religion would go a long way if they end up still having issues after the happiness/specialist changes and a bit of early happiness to offset the issues with early growth. But they honestly might not need it.

 

[dostillevi]

Maybe wonders could give a global flat reduction modifier, but instead of affecting all cities they could give a flat -X global poverty/distress/etc.? This wasn’t possible/effective with city unhappiness being so important before, but if happiness isn’t going to cap specialist slots, then the total global unhappiness can have a few flat points knocked off it.

I think this sounds about right. The meta I have around cities is that the bigger they are, the more specialists they should be able to support but also the more unhappiness they'll have. It feels wrong to me that big cities must be (and are typically) fully happy.

Would it make sense to consider an urbanization penalty to food/production output before the needs calculation, instead of a direct penalty to happiness?

 

[DeAnno]

With regards to Venice not taking up enough space, maybe we could give them something to supercharge their border expansion, even in puppets? I don't see any practical way to really give them more cities, but if you could make those cities blobbier then at least Venice won't be getting forward settled as badly. Often I see AIs settling right up in the face of Venician CS Puppets that were taken early and had their border expansion crippled.

You could go about it in a lot of ways. Reduced border cost, less culture penalty in puppets, maybe even a UI that helps claim territory.

 

[Bhawb]

With regards to Venice not taking up enough space, maybe we could give them something to supercharge their border expansion, even in puppets? I don't see any practical way to really give them more cities, but if you could make those cities blobbier then at least Venice won't be getting forward settled as badly. Often I see AIs settling right up in the face of Venician CS Puppets that were taken early and had their border expansion crippled.

You could go about it in a lot of ways. Reduced border cost, less culture penalty in puppets, maybe even a UI that helps claim territory.

You could have Venice's capital start with every possible tile claimed in the full 5 tile radius (which would be broken in its own way) and it is still significantly less space than a Tradition civ would take up, allowing their neighbor to still guarantee a 2nd luxury and extra cities. The issue isn't Venice caring about getting forward settled, the issue is every other civ in the game caring that Venice's neighbor gets tons of free expansion space without the standard risk.

The best suggestion I've seen so far is to have Venice force-spawn 2-3 extra CSs in the empty space that a normal Tradition civ would have taken up. This fills the space, reduces some of the annoyance of Venice stealing CSs early on, and gives Venice far less variable starts where sometimes you literally cannot find a CS to buy early on because of weird maps.

 

[dostillevi]

You could have Venice's capital start with every possible tile claimed in the full 5 tile radius (which would be broken in its own way) and it is still significantly less space than a Tradition civ would take up, allowing their neighbor to still guarantee a 2nd luxury and extra cities. The issue isn't Venice caring about getting forward settled, the issue is every other civ in the game caring that Venice's neighbor gets tons of free expansion space without the standard risk.

The best suggestion I've seen so far is to have Venice force-spawn 2-3 extra CSs in the empty space that a normal Tradition civ would have taken up. This fills the space, reduces some of the annoyance of Venice stealing CSs early on, and gives Venice far less variable starts where sometimes you literally cannot find a CS to buy early on because of weird maps.

I like that idea. Do you think the spawned city states should be forced to appear near Venice, or simply increase the count of city states based on map size when Venice is on the map?

 

[Gazebo]

Iam on your side.
Did you remember when Gazebo said "the new system is local and use flat values, it's so easy"? Well, I knew it would go again into the direction we are now and I would prefer a simplified happiness system too. But when does Gazebo the things yi suggest? Maybe I should always say Gazebo the complete opposite what I want or think.

I think the the players will understand a modifier only based system together with flat positive happiness.

The only constant in the universe is that you so repeatedly jam your foot in your mouth that I'm fairly certain we could run the civfanatics server on the kinetic energy therein provided.

G

 

[Gazebo]

You could have Venice's capital start with every possible tile claimed in the full 5 tile radius (which would be broken in its own way) and it is still significantly less space than a Tradition civ would take up, allowing their neighbor to still guarantee a 2nd luxury and extra cities. The issue isn't Venice caring about getting forward settled, the issue is every other civ in the game caring that Venice's neighbor gets tons of free expansion space without the standard risk.

The best suggestion I've seen so far is to have Venice force-spawn 2-3 extra CSs in the empty space that a normal Tradition civ would have taken up. This fills the space, reduces some of the annoyance of Venice stealing CSs early on, and gives Venice far less variable starts where sometimes you literally cannot find a CS to buy early on because of weird maps.

Spawning extra CSs isn't possible because the properties are set at game start before we know if Venice is in the game or not. So it's a no-go.

I do have a plan for Venetia, however, and it involves the merchant...

G

 

[Bhawb]

Works for me. I was hoping something could be done similar to how RAS works but that makes sense. Looking forward to what you've come up with.

 

[Omen of Peace]

Maybe wonders could give a global flat reduction modifier, but instead of affecting all cities they could give a flat -X global poverty/distress/etc.? This wasn’t possible/effective with city unhappiness being so important before, but if happiness isn’t going to cap specialist slots, then the total global unhappiness can have a few flat points knocked off it.

The equality tenet could do the same thing, maybe -2 unhappiness from all needs on empire, instead of -5% needs reduction in all cities

Would it stay at global level only, or be spread across cities like +global Happiness is?
I like the latter.

 

[pineappledan]

Dunno, that’s up to G.

Thinking a bit more on it though, with the switch to flat need reductions on all buildings, Equality really should be switched back to its old +1 per X citizens on empire mechanic. The -% needs reduction is now out of place.

Mandate of Heaven could be changed to a flat -1 boredom in all cities. Secularism could be changed to -2 religious tension in all cities

 

[Gazebo]

Dunno, that’s up to G.

Thinking a bit more on it though, with the switch to flat need reductions on all buildings, Equality really should be switched back to its old +1 per X citizens on empire mechanic. The -% needs reduction is now out of place.

Mandate of Heaven could be changed to a flat -1 boredom in all cities. Secularism could be changed to -2 religious tension in all cities

There's nothing wrong with mixing % bonuses with flat bonuses. % bonuses at the empire level are easier to balance than flat values (or 'spread' values as you've illustrated). Flat = local, % = global. This is how I outlined it when I created the new 'local' system, and it's vastly more simple than before. Anyone who says that I 'misled' WRT this is using me as a straw man.

G

 

[pineappledan]

I’m not accusing you of being inconsistent. However, i preferred the old equality policy, with the flat per mechanic. It was unique, and I feel it could make a return with the new local/empire happiness system.

 

[zeofig]

I would like to say that I quite like the new happiness system. Having specialist bonuses on buildings and wonders makes building them feel quite impactful. My only complaint is that distress sometimes seems a bit bananas, in the early/classical game. I play standard immortal games. But in most cases the level of unhappiness is reasonable for me. Perhaps more could be done to emphasise that the player has a strategic choice between different levels of unhappiness. Hovering at 60% is quite viable if you benefit from the extra population, and you won't be crippled by some war.

I like the gameplay of instant/flat yields a lot, since they are produced through different mechanisms than normal yields (i.e. pop growth, border expansion, building construction). However I do feel that the recent happiness changes have made instant population yields less attractive (i.e. cooperation belief). Then again, it's hard for me to understand when such bonuses are "good" i.e. strong compared to whatever you are missing out on. Especially since they scale with era i.e. is it good to plan on growing later and getting some fat instant yields, or is that overall ineffective (compared to scholarship, for instance)?

 

[CrazyG]

A far simpler change to India would be to replace +2 food on farms with +1 food, +1 hammer. I think the issue India faces is that you aren't actually rewarded that much for a bigger city, he can happily give up a little bit of food for some extra production. Especially if your farms are on grassland (which I think India has a start bias towards) or you don't take cathedrals, those farms just don't contribute much.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

A far simpler change to India would be to replace +2 food on farms with +1 food, +1 hammer. I think the issue India faces is that you aren't actually rewarded that much for a bigger city, he can happily give up a little bit of food for some extra production. Especially if your farms are on grassland (which I think India has a start bias towards) or you don't take cathedrals, those farms just don't contribute much.

Yesterday I thought the same but Iam not 100% sure if this would really help. In best case, you work only few super farm triangles and the rest are hills, forests and GPTI.

As long as you are not able to get significant (and 1 isn't) hammers from relative flat locations, even +1 hammer will not help, cause it's linked to tremendous amount of food you probably don't need or is counterproductive for you median.

 

[chicorbeef]

I have no problems with happiness with Tradition tall India. I fear changing to +1/+1 would make them kind of OP.