Trying to fix ancient ruins

[dostillevi]

Radical idea: Make ancient ruins into permanent features.

1. No more immediate effect from entering a tile containing an ancient ruin. Ruins are not "popped" on entry, they act like any other resource.
2. Ancient ruins can be worked, providing +1 science, +1 gold, +1 culture, +10xp, and a small boost to the trade based tourism bonus to the city in addition to normal terrain bonuses. As a rare tile, these fall between normal resources and natural wonders in terms of desirability. They should be enough to alter city placement strategy.
3. The gold bonus is thematically from selling off ancient artifacts. There could be an event trigger where the player chooses between selling artifacts for an additional +1 gold and no culture, or displaying them for and additional +1 culture, no gold, and additional trade based tourism gain.
4. Thematically, ancient ruins should lose scientific value and gain tourism value over time. This could be accomplished by era and/or by specific research.
5. They could also be removed for a one-time production bonus with Masonry.
6. Once the World Congress is in session, there could be options related to ruins, such as a ban on selling artifacts (no +1 gold anymore, and everyone gets the cultural gain), or a free market mandate forcing countries to allow private sale of artifacts (everyone gets the gold bonus, no one gets the culture or tourism bonuses). Civs might also have diplomatic opinions based on the sale or display of artifacts (the +2 gold or +2 culture), and some civs, or possibly by congress option, may take offense if any ancient ruin is plundered or removed.
7. There could be events related to the buying and selling of artifacts that ostensibly belong to the history of another civ. I'm a little iffy on this one, since it feels more like something you'd see with great works, but I don't want to see a new type of tradable resource like great works (nor do I think this would be possible). Yet, we see plenty of diplomatic disputes and resolutions related to the exchange and pilfering of another culture's ancient history. Maybe during war if an ancient ruin is plundered, that prompts the diplomatic exchange later on?
8. If a city is razed, an ancient ruin should appear there at the start of the next era. Possibly chance based or with an adjacency check to prevent min-maxing or gimmickery.

Also considered having ancient ruins be expiring, so they only last an era or two (perhaps only if they're within a city borders?).

 

[Elite Spud]

When I first started playing Vox Populi, I enabled ruins because I liked the extra incentive for exploring the continent or unlocking embarkation early. They were an exciting treasure to find as I scanned the map and a signal that no other players had found this land yet.
As I played more, though, I grew to dislike them because of how inherently random they were. I found that turning them off made me enjoy the first 100 turns far more due to the newfound consistency. If I found too few or even too many ruins, the game just felt unbalanced (even if it wasn't) for the first few eras regardless of how my strategy actually played out. They were my #1 reason to reset a game.

Radical idea: Make ancient ruins into permanent features.

I'm a big fan of this concept, particularly as it could relate to Archaeologists.
I'm unsure of how adding a more yields to the Ancient Era would affect the early game pacing, but if you had the option to transform an ancient ruin into an Artifact or Landmark later on, such tiles would behave similarly to forest/jungle tiles in how late their improvement unlocks.
Empires which preserve their ancient ruins could become powerful cultural forces (and possibly incentivize wide tourism play), while those which aren't interested could sell them off early to fund a war effort.
I also appreciate anything that might further encourage aggressive settling of cities. Like natural wonders, the existence of a ruin could spark a race to not only scout but also secure an area, which I personally see as the most exciting part of the game.

 

[Zanteogo]

I voted to leave them as is, because I don't really see them as much of an issue. They give reason to explore and to fight/avoid early game barbs. Maybe a small tweak or two, but they don't need much.

I wouldn't mind changing the insta tech to a small amount of instant research, as it's the biggest "unbalance" of ARs.

I do find keeping them a permanent feature interesting.. though I would still keep their instant effect for the first civ to land on them.

 

[JamesNinelives]

There does seem to be enough people who want at least some kind of change for this to be a priority area. @Hinin even if we disagree on the specifics, this thread has been a great way to learn about other people's experiences. Thank you for creating it.

I'm honestly kind of surprised about what people consider to be the unbalanced aspects. I've very curious what the general feeling on which ruins reward feel too strong, so I've created a poll here. Let me know what you think!
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ancient-ruins-balance-which-reward-is-the-strongest.664146/

 

[General_Drax]

I'd prefer not give them a permanent effect.

They are a good incentive to explore and maybe a gamble due to exposing your scout to early barbarians.

First of all need more coding then we already suffer of yield inflation that leads to more balancing work. It's better leave these kind of changes to modmod domain.

Finished a game as Celts (boosted Pantheons) + More Wonders + 3/4 UC: my Oppidums near capital were a Christmas tree in late game with double digit yields and an empire culture output of 6400/turn total.

 

[Hinin]

There does seem to be enough people who want at least some kind of change for this to be a priority area. @Hinin even if we disagree on the specifics, this thread has been a great way to learn about other people's experiences. Thank you for creating it.

Well, that's why we are all here, aren't we ? To discuss details in a civil manner because we care.

Even if a majority is opposed to system changes, at least it brings this gameplay element into light. Maybe it can even provide ideas for a modmod.

 

[dostillevi]

I'd prefer not give them a permanent effect.

They are a good incentive to explore and maybe a gamble due to exposing your scout to early barbarians.

First of all need more coding then we already suffer of yield inflation that leads to more balancing work. It's better leave these kind of changes to modmod domain.

Finished a game as Celts (boosted Pantheons) + More Wonders + 3/4 UC: my Oppidums near capital were a Christmas tree in late game with double digit yields and an empire culture output of 6400/turn total.

Yup, reasonable that the more drastic change be a modmod, however I'd point out that this isn't just inflation. You can't build anything else on the ruins tile - and I think they're few and far enough in-between that they shouldn't have a major impact on yields outside of the very beginning of the game. It does favor wide play slightly more, but wide peaceful play is already suffering at the moment from what I understand. Further, ruins in remote areas might encourage settling in areas that are otherwise less than ideal.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I think Hinin's staggered approach of more discoveries equaling bigger incentives is probably the best concept in terms of simplicity, consistency, and fun/rewarding. All that really needs to be done is tweaking the values for faith/science/gold/hammers, and creating the 'counting' code. Though, I prefer the rewards still be randomized for normal civs, allowing Poco to retain the unique ability to choose (he'd still have to choose from the respective tiers, so no + science/culture/faith immediately).

This allows us to add a tiny buff to the Shoshone UA: "Reveal all Ancient Ruins within X (25?) tiles of your capital; may select rewards." The kit would remain similar, but have some new synergy where you'd be able to see the ruins immediately -- within a reasonable vicinity -- thus securing them while denying opponents.

I'd probably keep everything to 3 tiers though (I haven't used AR in quite a while, so I'm all ears when it comes to the numbers used, though I do think the free tech should be nerfed to a set amount of science, all of these values scaling of course):

Spoiler :

Tier 1:

• XP bonus to unit +
• territory extension
• vision of distant city

Tier 2:

• free pop
  
• gold +
• production +

Tier 3:

• faith +
• culture +
  
• science +

 

[NigelC]

Looks like I'm in the minority here, but I actually like Ancient Ruins - I often play on large maps with fewer AI civs than default so I can find more ARs. I tried creating a mod to increase the frequency of them but it never seemed to work with VP (never tried it with Vanilla).