The Unique Improvement situation

[Funak]

Well, I just assumed they already had a start bias towards jungle. I know it doesn't always work, though.

Bias means they are more likely to spawn within range of the mentioned tile. Afaik they already have a jungle bias and just like Brazil's jungle-bias it's not really helpful.

 

[Horvath Broncos]

I think kuna is good as it is. It has the same problem that many other civs have with their UA, UU or UI that it is a bit situational. But there is usually enough forests in all normal maps nearby that you can benefit from Kuna more than enough. And if you nerf it to be better spawning in the middle of jungle means you win the game. I have had two such starts on immortal and I knew I would win rather easily and I did. The amount of faith and science you can get from say 4 kunas in your capital very early on makes the game almost too easy. And combined that with one of the best UA in a game can be very powerful.

 

[Funak]

I think kuna is good as it is. It has the same problem that many other civs have with their UA, UU or UI that it is a bit situational. But there is usually enough forests in all normal maps nearby that you can benefit from Kuna more than enough. And if you nerf it to be better spawning in the middle of jungle means you win the game. I have had too such starts on immortal and I knew I would win rather easily and I did. The amount of faith and science you can get from say 4 kunas in your capital very early on makes the game almost too easy. And combined that with one of the best UA in a game can be very powerful.

The thing is that it isn't even very situational, finding a forest or two near every city isn't by any means hard. Compare that for example with the Terrace farm, that's fairly useless without proper mountains in proper places, or the Brazilwood camp that needs a ton of jungle everywhere.
The problem here is that the yields provided by the Kuna just aren't interesting. They are all global yields, making the tiles boring to work, and on top of that the yields are just pathetic.

Compare the Kuna and the Brazilwood camp, for example, in the renaissance era, the Kuna provides you with 3science and 2 faith while the Brazilwood camp provides you with 5 culture and 2 gold, which one of those feel more interesting to work?
This also completely ignores the fact that Brazilwood camps can be build adjacent to each other.

 

[Horvath Broncos]

The thing is that it isn't even very situational, finding a forest or two near every city isn't by any means hard. Compare that for example with the Terrace farm, that's fairly useless without proper mountains in proper places, or the Brazilwood camp that needs a ton of jungle everywhere.
The problem here is that the yields provided by the Kuna just aren't interesting. They are all global yields, making the tiles boring to work, and on top of that the yields are just pathetic.

Compare the Kuna and the Brazilwood camp, for example, in the renaissance era, the Kuna provides you with 3science and 2 faith while the Brazilwood camp provides you with 5 culture and 2 gold, which one of those feel more interesting to work?
This also completely ignores the fact that Brazilwood camps can be build adjacent to each other.

I don't know about boring. The early tech lead which you will get with kunas opens up so many possibilities and if and when you have other ways to get culture and money (religion. which you are going to get among first thanks to kunas) you can keep your tech lead and crap those wonders you need etc.

I have not yet played with Brazil but so far I would say Kuna is the best UI.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I don't know about boring. The early tech lead which you will get with kunas opens up so many possibilities and if and when you have other ways to get culture and money (religion. which you are going to get among first thanks to kunas) you can keep your tech lead and crap those wonders you need etc.

I have not yet played with Brazil but so far I would say Kuna is the best UI.

I agree Kuna is awesome and definitely doesn't need a buff.

It almost ensures you get a religion while also supporting your Science (which you need to rush Maths). What's not to like?

It's not the best one though, but that's a good thing considering how great the rest of the civ is.

 

[NarrativeKnight]

I must have missed part of the conversation long before this thread started. Why aren't tipis a regular improvement now that they are not a special one? They are an alternative to villages and a reasonable one. I ask because Whoward made a unique tipi improvement that only goes on a couple of resources and that just seems useless unless you have super abundant resources set on your map.

Yep. I just saw in the first post that Encampments are the replacement for tipis. I have to say that going back to calling them tipis is better. You cannot get more generic than Encampments and it is supposed to be a unique improvement. Disregard my question of course. If it is actually used as a unique improvement I will just have to live with that. Still it would be nice to have something to place in between your villages. I would suggest something called Playing Fields. Every culture has sports of some kind or another and that should be represented in the game. They could start out providing faith, add culture, and then finally add tourism. Bonuses applied for output would come with building arenas. Who wouldn't want that?

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Brazilwood Camp
This improvement starts out really boring but grows bigger over time, it does a fairly good job of staying relevant throughout the game. Whenever I try Brazil out however I have a really hard time actually finding jungles to work.

This is really damn true on Communitas. Other scripts like to generate blankets of terrain on occasion, which I suppose is a bit more balanced.

Chateau
One of my personal favorites, starting off strong providing plenty of yields. The one thing I don't like about it is how the bonus yields from tech are allocated. Printing press is fairly close to the unlocking of the Chateau, but then the next powerup is way back at flight which is like 2 eras away. Also worth noticing that the flight bonus feels way to big at +3 yields, would be better to distribute them more evenly.

I'll confess that France has no appeal to me, so I have no opinion.

Eki
This improvement starts of somewhat okay, and then gets incredibly weak for a few eras before you get a consolation-price in late renaissance and a foodbump in late industrial which pops the improvement up to 'somewhat okay' again. I'm honestly thinking that if it weren't for the probably overpowered +3science to all unique improvements tenet in autocracy, this Improvement would just never go beyond 'okay'. I feel like some of the bonuses could really have been moved earlier, especially away from the Information era (I personally feel like increasing yields in the information era is just wasted anyways)

The Eki's "overrides features" bit confuses me, and I'm reluctant to commit to a game as the Huns because I'm worried that putting Eki down will destroy resources I'd find later. But is a resource a feature? I don't know and I've never seen it spelled out. The yields also don't seem particularly exploitable, so I've not given the Huns more than a cursory play -- long enough to realize, disappointedly, that their UA doesn't stack with the territory-gaining pantheon or the territory-gaining Authority civic. I'm off topic. The point is, I guess, that the Huns don't strike me as being in a good place overall.

Encampment
The improvement that blows the Eki away on most realistic maps. You're really rarely going to get to use the Eki adjacency bonus, but you will most of the time get to build an Encampment on every non-adjacent tile. The Encampment also gets a way more interesting boost in the industrial era compared to the Eki. Over all this is a clear improvement over the Eki, but I still feel like the information-era stuff could be moved earlier (honestly anything later than flight is just not going to have an impact unless it improves the yields by like 5).
I also really don't like the name Encampment, I feel like there has to be a better word for it, even going back for the somewhat misleading name from that scenario, Tipi, would be better at this point.

I didn't realize the name had changed. I like encampments. The Shoshone are interesting.

Feitoria
I'm just going to assume that the CS-Feitoria doesn't exist (imho it's more like a part of the UU).
This is one of my clear favorites. It does unlock ungodly late(in fact, maybe something could be done about that?) but it provides some pretty cool bonuses once it is unlocked. The best part however is that all the bonus-yields are unlocked almost immediately, it makes the improvement keep feeling impressive. Even though it caps out at industrialization the improvement still feels good and like a priority to get built until the end of the game.

Agree on all counts. If the Feitoria could come a BIT earlier, that would be lovely, but overall it's in a fantastic place, and I am extremely prejudiced against UA's that come later in the game.

Kasbah
This improvement used to be really cool, but I just don't feel that about it anymore. Maybe it is just trying to do way too many things, but I don't feel like it is actually succeeding at anything. Some more focus, perhaps?

I am extremely prejudiced against UA's that come later in the game.

Kuna
To be perfectly fair I'm not sure I've actually given this improvement that much of a chance, but after maybe 15 starts I've done in the last few days to try it out I never got a location where I could fit more than 3 Kuna, most of the time I could barely fit 1. The yields on the improvement isn't that impressive, sure getting some faith early on is super, but other than the +2 base faith the only thing you'll get on the improvement pre-flight is science. And for all that people keep saying about science, it just doesn't feel good to work science-tiles. Especially tiles with pretty much only science on them.

I do understand that that the Maya UA is crazy good, but this thing pretty much keeps me from ever wanting to play Maya, it just isn't fun.

I think the Maya are a bit like the Japanese in that they are looking for specific, sorta-rare terrains. And given that jungle tiles get buffed by the workshop, university, and herbalist, I think Kuna are ok. I wouldn't say boring, but definitely just OK. The Maya are stupidly powerful, though, so I'm drawing a blank of meaningful changes.

Moai
This unique improvement is crazy good, there is no doubt about that. With the right terrain you're looking at crazy culture income with some decent production to back it up. The problem I have with the improvement however is that it encourages you to just ignore resources on the map, the Moai doesn't connect them and the Moai wants to be built on top of them anyways.
Some improvements needs to be able to be built on resources for map-reasons, like the Kasbah or the great tile improvements, they do also connect resources for that exact reason. I feel like the Moai can be built on top of resources only because without it the improvement would be terrible and allowing it was an easier solution than fixing the core issues with the improvement.

Polynesia isn't exactly OP. I'm perfectly fine with the Moai being able to improve resources.

Polder
Polder is awesome, like the Feitoria, it unlocks late, gets improvements quickly and generally is just a really nice tile that you feel like building wherever you can. Like the Feitoria it would probably be more fun if it unlocked slightly earlier, but it is nice as it is as well.

Echo.

Terrace Farm
I don't feel like it would be fair of me to express myself about the Terrace Farm, when I play Inca I never get any good spots to build them. Either I get almost no mountains or I get sheep blocking the tiles where I could build decent Terrace Farms.
The improvement is still fairly good to build anywhere to pump up adjacent farms but it is pretty sad to build improvements and never actually working them

PLEASE LET TERRACE FARMS IMPROVE, IGNORE OR DELETE SHEEP. TARNATION.

Also, can they get a point of culture or something per 2 / 3 mountains? Food is not the Uber-Resource it was in BNW.

 

[Galbias]

Eki:
If I'm understanding how these work correctly, "remove features" means that they simply remove the effects of bonus or other resources from the tile and not the base yields of the tile itself. So on a flat plains tile, one gives you 2f 2p 1c, with 3p if you make a triangle of Ekis. The description isn't clear as to whether or not you can gain more production by placing it next to 4 or 6 other Eki, though I assume so. In that case they seem pretty decent but not amazing, 2f 2p 1c is good in Ancient and Classic era for sure, then they get +1 food in Medieval to keep them relevant, then +1 gold from Economics and +1 food from Fertilizer. It initially has almost the same yields as the Encampment, except instead of not being able to build them adjacent you have to build them adjacent.

It seems like one of the weaker UIs but still relatively good, I'd have to play with it to get a better idea. Maybe it getting a passive Food bonus if it's next to 2 Farms would help? Especially with how you can't build them on Fresh Water.

Kuna:
I'd definitely like to see these moved to an Ancient-era technology, mainly because I've had Pacal as an AI in several of my recent games and the fact that AI on higher difficulties starts with Workers means he's able to start pumping these out right from the start and always ends up pretty much unstoppable when it comes to Religion, and it's not something a human player can really do equally.

Otherwise I think they're good, they're definitely strongest in the early game but that's fine. Maybe a little Culture at some point to keep them interesting after the early game.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

The Kuna is much stronger than you give credit for.
For once, it is the earliest faith source. Maya always found, period. That alone would justify it.

And the science from it is real. Why would you not want to work a science tile? It's the best thing. It's like a scientist that feeds himself and doesn't provide extra unhappiness.

Encampments on the other hand I don't like at all. They may have decent yields all right, but they mess up farm clusters horribly.

 

[Greggy08]

I think that Now, with the buff, if you get nice terrain Moais are the strongest UI. Like if you are simply on coast it's +3p/+3c in every coastal tile, then it becomes 5c by Renaissance, then if you get nice landscape you can get +6/7 culture and prod per tile. That's just amazing. Imho encampments are the worst one, they don't give big yields, and they break farm adjacency. Also Ekis don't feel appealing, but I haven't tried them

 

[tu_79]

I'm playing right now with shoshone, while I may agree that encampment yields are bad and that I have to forget about farm adjacency, they can be built almost everywhere (flat without features or resources). And its core use is for warfare. Shoshone are good at defending, the encampment just makes it better. So I am trying to go to war often and fight in my territory.

 

[Funak]

The Kuna is much stronger than you give credit for.
For once, it is the earliest faith source. Maya always found, period. That alone would justify it.

And the science from it is real. Why would you not want to work a science tile? It's the best thing. It's like a scientist that feeds himself and doesn't provide extra unhappiness.

Encampments on the other hand I don't like at all. They may have decent yields all right, but they mess up farm clusters horribly.

I think a problem here is that the Kuna, as mentioned earlier, is A LOT stronger for the AI than it is for a player, as a player you're not going to go for a turn 1 worker and even if you do that's 15 turns to get the worker done and another 10(?) to get the first Kuna done, and at that point you've crippled your early culture and missed out on your choice of pantheon.

I'm not going to say that the Maya doesn't usually found a religion either way, but plenty of other civs have no problems founding a religion either.

Maybe the science does matter, in my opinion it's easier to just fall behind and then catch up with trade-routes to your friendly neighborhood sciencegeek, but that's kinda besides the point.
Maybe the yields on the improvement is fine, but I really just find them dreadfully boring. Anyways this is clearly not about my opinion alone, so if the rest of you find it fine then by all means keep it the way it is.

 

[matlajs]

i agree with that point all bonus yields coming in latest eras are, well, kind of unimportant.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

I think that the problem of the Kuna is not the Kuna itself, it is really fine as it is.
But it gets instinctively compared to the Brazilwood camp, which is, I'll give you that, a stronger improvement. Even too strong in my eyes. It only takes three jungled cities (and Brazil gets those all the time in my games, might be related to huge map setting) and they become the runaway.

 

[Funak]

I think that the problem of the Kuna is not the Kuna itself, it is really fine as it is.
But it gets instinctively compared to the Brazilwood camp, which is, I'll give you that, a stronger improvement. Even too strong in my eyes. It only takes three jungled cities (and Brazil gets those all the time in my games, might be related to huge map setting) and they become the runaway.

Actually think the problem with both of them could be the forest/jungle tile they are built on. Forest/jungle tiles are pretty darn powerful after all the midgame buffs they have gained and that doesn't really leave much room to work with when it comes to an improvement on top of it. The problem here comes from the fact that the forest/jungle and assorted bonuses are available to everyone leaving the comparison between the kuna and the lumbermill, a comparison that I don't really favor the Kuna in especially considering how easy it is to pick up the lumbermill buff in industry(industry being something of a standard pickup for traditioncivs).

Yeah I know that I usually just ignore lumbermills and build farming adjacencies, but that same logic is also applied to Kuna, they are blocking the farms just as much as lumbermills/tradingposts/encampment, and I just don't think the yields hold up for that.

 

[matlajs]

i rly feel Ekki needs something more than just +1P for adjacency. Also i think would be nice terrace famr conecting sheeps aswell, bcoz they are everywhere on hills and i dont remember one game, where i prioritized sheep pasture before anything gives me more food or flat production from mines(even without resource) sheep pasture is worst resource to work.