Summarized Suggestions for Post v.6-12

[BiteInTheMark]

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

Imperialism tree is able to buff farms by +21, but I didn't hear any voices calling it op. Something I would call op is the +1+2 on ocean tiles.

 

[crdvis16]

Imperialism tree is able to buff farms by +21, but I didn't hear any voices calling it op. Something I would call op is the +1+2 on ocean tiles.

A bonus on farms in the early game is not at all the same as a bonus on farms that comes from an Industrial era tree.

Having said that, I don't think a production bonus on farms in India's early game would jump them from mediocre to OP.

 

[Bhawb]

I don't think a +1 hammer would really do much, nor do I think it is particularly interesting.

I really think India just needs something more to scale with population, other than getting more population. The civ is set up to be entirely based around tons of growth, but it can't capitalize on any more than another civ except that food is particularly easy to come by. It also has a strong nod towards having a unique religious experience, but that falls really flat when you realize that you can't really utilize religious pressure in an engaging way except to keep your cities converted and annoy neighbors. So you end up with cheap Great Prophets and guaranteed religion choices, which end up resulting in almost identical religions (except Reformation) every game; spam Holy Sites for either WC votes or Tourism. Unfortunately, leaning more into the religion is probably not a good idea for AI-friendliness so I'm not sure what could be done there.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I don't think a +1 hammer would really do much, nor do I think it is particularly interesting.

I really think India just needs something more to scale with population, other than getting more population. The civ is set up to be entirely based around tons of growth, but it can't capitalize on any more than another civ except that food is particularly easy to come by. It also has a strong nod towards having a unique religious experience, but that falls really flat when you realize that you can't really utilize religious pressure in an engaging way except to keep your cities converted and annoy neighbors. So you end up with cheap Great Prophets and guaranteed religion choices, which end up resulting in almost identical religions (except Reformation) every game; spam Holy Sites for either WC votes or Tourism. Unfortunately, leaning more into the religion is probably not a good idea for AI-friendliness so I'm not sure what could be done there.

I was trying to buff India without changing it that much, but I got the feeling it would be relative similar with Spain or China. Something I really want to see going is that missionary prohibition, but instead something in return to help with unhappiness fighting.

Just a thought thrown into the room, what if India couldnt work specialists or say atleast need 10 population in a city to be allowed to work 1 specialist. Instead labourer gets greatly buffed as universal yield generator.
The restriction of working specialist would also lead the AI to go for strong growth instead of spending the food for specialist, naturally forcing the AI to play a growth oriented game.

 

[CrazyG]

I was trying to buff India without changing it that much, but I got the feeling it would be relative similar with Spain or China. Something I really want to see going is that missionary prohibition, but instead something in return to help with unhappiness fighting.

How was your suggestion not changing too much?

Really I think India is fine so long as farms are fine, and they are a bit weak this patch.
Also the new happiness system gives +5% growth ina city for all extra happiness, and its very easy for tradition to get +40% growth (I got as high as 140%) in the capital from happiness, which means that the Indian UA is a lot less special.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Really I think India is fine so long as farms are fine, and they are a bit weak this patch.
Also the new happiness system gives +5% growth ina city for all extra happiness, and its very easy for tradition to get +40% growth (I got as high as 140%) in the capital from happiness, which means that the Indian UA is a lot less special.

-pantheon on turn 1
Nice thing, but half the pantheons are depending on improvements or buildings. Till you have researched those and constructed, you may have a pantheon without any use.
-Growth by population
If you stop growth, this ability is gone. It's simply gone, you are forced to grow all time or throw away one of your UA
-Pressure by population
Life on scattered islands or small continents and this ability is completely useless
- prophet cost reduction and no missionary
Expanding over a scattered continent or island chain really hurts, cause for every city you will probably need an own charge of one of your prophets. Those are cheaper, but that benefit is eaten the first half of the game if you have to waste 2000 faith prophets to simply convert your own cities when 2x200 faith missionary would be enough
And the option to get a use of the prophet cost reduction is very limited, leading to very similar belief picks.

So the whole set you have is able to be not very useful, can completely dissapear or is able to even backfire.

 

[CrazyG]

-pantheon on turn 1
Nice thing, but half the pantheons are depending on improvements or buildings. Till you have researched those and constructed, you may have a pantheon without any use.

I won't have a pantheon without any use. If you do that's your choice, don't blame Ghandi. There are plenty of options with immediate impact, heck the AI can make good choices for pantheons with India.

-pantheon on turn 1
-Growth by population
If you stop growth, this ability is gone. It's simply gone, you are forced to grow all time or throw away one of your UA
-Pressure by population
Life on scattered islands or small continents and this ability is completely useless
- prophet cost reduction and no missionary
Expanding over a scattered continent or island chain really hurts, cause for every city you will probably need an own charge of one of your prophets. Those are cheaper, but that benefit is eaten the first half of the game if you have to waste 2000 faith prophets to simply convert your own cities when 2x200 faith missionary would be enough
And the option to get a use of the prophet cost reduction is very limited, leading to very similar belief picks.

So the whole set you have is able to be not very useful, can completely dissapear or is able to even backfire.

I think you haven't figured out how to play India. If you use cheaper great prophets to mean you get 1 more holy site than a normal civ would, you'll be disappointed with India. If instead, you try to get an enhanced religion before turn 100 with beliefs that don't require spreading, you'll find India to be strong.

The main issue I find is mid-game the extra food just isn't very useful, but that's on the happiness system, not Ghandi. Maybe we could talk about letting fresh water hills have farms again? That change hurt India quite a bit, so did Cathedrals being changed. Who remembers when they gave farms +1 gold and +1 hammer? Back when farms were the standard strategy, oh how the mod has changed.

 

[tu_79]

Really I think India is fine so long as farms are fine, and they are a bit weak this patch.

In absence of happiness mechanics, more population is always better, unless you have to pay an opportunity cost. If you have to slow some buildings in order to get more population, then you have to compare which path is best in short-long term. Thing with India (and in minor effect, Spain and China) is that she gets some extra growth for free, so taking the growth path is supposed to be better than the infrastructure or the military path. But actually it is not, due to unhappiness.
Some issues will be over once specialists are no longer limited by happiness.

Spain is fine with her rapid early growth (free food from new/captured cities) since her kit is more conquest oriented, but China and India really want bigger cities to reflect their reality. If they are going to grow bigger, then they need more happiness in addition to the extra growth. China is already able to produce big happiness thanks to her culture production, so that leaves India growing and sad. (Well, technically you can avoid this situation, but then you are not exploiting India's toolkit).

Font of Dharma gives extra growth from followers.
Harappan Reservoir gives extra food from farms.
None gives happiness.

Id suggest changing Font of Dharma to
"Each Follower of your primary Religion in a City increases Religious Pressure and reduces Needs."
The same effect of walls, but increasing upon the number of followers. No extra growth needed, India has already massive food at her hands if she wants to.

 

[azum4roll]

I'd say keep their growth in addition to pressure increase and needs reduction. Having massive cities is fun, and it doesn't make them broken.

 

[tu_79]

I'd say keep their growth in addition to pressure increase and needs reduction. Having massive cities is fun, and it doesn't make them broken.

I was trading one bonus for another and trying to keep the length of the description under control

 

[pineappledan]

I've never had an issue with Ghandi's religious pressure range, but I play continents. What if his religion's range was increased by pop as well?

 

[tu_79]

I've never had an issue with Ghandi's religious pressure range, but I play continents. What if his religion's range was increased by pop as well?

That won't work. Pathfinder doesn't use water tiles, I think. Only way is through trade routes.

 

[Bhawb]

You don't require scaling needs reductions unless you're not playing India well or you're in a situation where you're probably going to lose anyway. Needs are only an issue in very early game before you get the capital spamming GPTIs, and scaling needs off of pop is just going to do nothing later on when all your needs are met from Holy Sites with 40+ yields on a tile. At most maybe India needs +1 happiness on its UB to help with the earlier issues and make India's early game a bit more stable since it feels bad to have to freeze early growth on a growth based civ.

Also, remember that added growth isn't just a way to grow a lot, in the early game it means you can work more low-food tiles until you are getting enough GPTIs to have needs met.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

You don't require scaling needs reductions unless you're not playing India well or you're in a situation where you're probably going to lose anyway. Needs are only an issue in very early game before you get the capital spamming GPTIs, and scaling needs off of pop is just going to do nothing later on when all your needs are met from Holy Sites with 40+ yields on a tile. At most maybe India needs +1 happiness on its UB to help with the earlier issues and make India's early game a bit more stable since it feels bad to have to freeze early growth on a growth based civ.

Also, remember that added growth isn't just a way to grow a lot, in the early game it means you can work more low-food tiles until you are getting enough GPTIs to have needs met.

That disappointment to reduce growth and throw away the growth bonus could be easily solved by changing it to 1% food bonus instead of 2% growth bonus.

If you are right, then this creates the weird situation, that only not fully using the UA of India leads to an optimal play. In the end, everything seems to leads to the conclusion, use as many specialists as possible to win the game. And the extra food from the UB and UA is only there to enable you to feed more specialists while you can keep growing like everyone else. That's sad, but may be true.

 

[Bhawb]

It is fully using the UA of India, you are still using the growth bonus to benefit your civ. Just because a UA gives you a bonus towards something doesn't mean your entire gameplay is based on pushing that even more every single turn.

 

[Rekk]

Isn't one theme of India to have larger cities than most other civs? Optimal strategies that result in India having the same size of cities as normal isn't playing into that theme.

 

[Bhawb]

Isn't one theme of India to have larger cities than most other civs? Optimal strategies that result in India having the same size of cities as normal isn't playing into that theme.

Reducing growth a bit to start won't hurt you long-term, it is just a temporary way to avoid unhappiness issues until Artistry. I did it in my current playthrough and my capital is about to hit 70 pop in late modern, #1 in pop almost the entire game so it doesn't feel like I'm not playing India or a unique civ in any way.

 

[Revolutionist_8]

Sry that this is probably not directly linked to the most recent discussion here, but a crazy wild idea came to my mind: what if Population size would actually decrease the Need modifiers slightly? (and let's say Tech penalty increased for compensation)

This would encourage growing and food in general, and would prevent using 'locking growth' ever again (which is just silly imo), would prevent mandatory choosing of Policies, among other things. Since science is so important that no one would really slow it down, I don't think it could create too much imbalance. It'd be an easy change compared to 'reforming' a lot of aspects of the game, both balance- and code-wise (I think, G knows this better).

Some things however that must be taken into account:
- since a new pop works extra tiles, and those yields result in reducing unhappiness, the counter to it similiarly should be something 'smooth', aka no big jumps
- finding a solution to newly founded cities, that their low population wouldn't hurt them (can be issue for cities settled in mid- late game)
- finding a good curve that slower late game growing wouldn't create too much unhappiness (but by then at least there are methods to solve it: public works, importing luxuries, etc.)
- finding a good balance overall, which might be rough (like growth is not too strong, cities with low growth aren't hurt too much, etc.)
(and a bunch of other things that I missed)

Just a wild brainstorming idea, it might be a complete nonsense Any thoughts?

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Sry that this is probably not directly linked to the most recent discussion here, but a crazy wild idea came to my mind: what if Population size would actually decrease the Need modifiers slightly? (and let's say Tech penalty increased for compensation)

This would encourage growing and food in general, and would prevent using 'locking growth' ever again (which is just silly imo), would prevent mandatory choosing of Policies, among other things. Since science is so important that no one would really slow it down, I don't think it could create too much imbalance. It'd be an easy change compared to 'reforming' a lot of aspects of the game, both balance- and code-wise (I think, G knows this better).

Some things however that must be taken into account:
- since a new pop works extra tiles, and those yields result in reducing unhappiness, the counter to it similiarly should be something 'smooth', aka no big jumps
- finding a solution to newly founded cities, that their low population wouldn't hurt them (can be issue for cities settled in mid- late game)
- finding a good curve that slower late game growing wouldn't create too much unhappiness (but by then at least there are methods to solve it: public works, importing luxuries, etc.)
- finding a good balance overall, which might be rough (like growth is not too strong, cities with low growth aren't hurt too much, etc.)
(and a bunch of other things that I missed)

Just a wild brainstorming idea, it might be a complete nonsense Any thoughts?

Its an idea, and not more unrealistic than cities without any population modifier or with a population penalty. The tendency of humans moving into the cities and away from the land shows, that people seems to be more happy in bigger cities.
Growing much was nerfed hard. And as you can see in the previous posts, growth, especially in the late game is seen as something bad. Something you can do if you want by flavor, but not if you want to play optimally.

Your idea is interesting, new founded cities wouldnt be that big problem, cause the unhappiness cap forbids more unhappiness in a city than population. Newly founded cities are always a happiness drain, cause the infrastructure isnt up to date and needs to be pushed, so no difference to now. If this change would be enough to make strong growth competitive against massive specialist spam is questionable. It will mainly depends on the difficulty of the happiness system. If gaining happiness is hard, this feature would help to make growth better than simple using as much specialist as you can.

 

[Stalker0]

I still think debating most of the civs is a waste of time until we firm up other changes, so going back to some of the other notes we have been debating.

I'm pulling this in from the previous thread:

Lets start with ITRs. Based on suggestions, we have a few paths we can consider:

1) Do nothing. Leave them as is.
2) Remove their instant yield bonuses in favor of per-turn bonuses.
3) Remove the food (market) instant yield, but keep the production (workshop) instant yield.
4) Keep the instant yields, but move them to different buildings.

Currently from the other thread, we have 5 votes for #1, and 7 votes for number 7. Id say not really definitive enough yet, so we need more people to weigh in.