Vox Populi Congress Proposal Workshop

[Undertaker02]

So would it be a good proposal for Congress or should I make an alternate thread for it in the hopes that somebody can code it? I don't wanna waste space here that could be use to talk about other proposals.

 

[azum4roll]

Proposal: changes to America's 3 wonders

Spoiler current America wonders :

Hoover Dam

1500​

Available at Electricity​

Mutually exclusive​

22​

22 to Every World Wonder on Empire​

1Great Engineer Point​

-25% Gold cost for Purchasing tiles​

FREE Hydro Plant in this city​

+5Gold and Production to Factories and Stadiums on Empire​

10% of all Gold generated on Empire is converted to Production​

+25% of the Culture from World Wonders, Natural Wonders, and Tiles in all cities' contributes to Tourism Output.​

All Trade Units complete their routes 25% faster​

Smithsonian Institute

1500​

Available at Biology​

Mutually exclusive​

22​

22 to Every World Wonder on Empire​

1Great Scientist points​

-25% Gold cost for Purchasing tiles​

FREE Museum in ALL Cities on Empire​

+5Science and Culture to Museums and Research Labs on Empire​

10% of all Gold generated on Empire is converted to Culture​

West Point

Available at Replaceable Parts​

Mutually exclusive​

22​

22 to Every World Wonder on Empire​

5 City Defense​

5Great General Points​

-25% Gold cost for Purchasing tiles​

5 Science and Production to Military Academies and Military Bases on Empire​

10% of all Gold generated on Empire is converted to Science​

3 FREE Iron​

3 FREE Artillery Units appear next to this City​

All Siege and Naval Ranged units on Empire receive Splash I​

Proposal:

• Replace Hoover Dam with Slater Mill
  • Current Slater Mill becomes Soho Foundry
  • No changes to Soho Foundry; not even the art needs to change. Just purely text
  • New Slater mill full writeup below
• Make all 3 American wonders World Wonders:
  • change from 1 max player instance to 1 world player instance
  • Gives a Historic Event when completed
  • Capturable by other civs
• move all 3 wonders earlier, into Industrial
  • Reduce all construction costs to 1000, in keeping with earlier unlock
  • Slater Mill unlocks at Industrialization
  • West Point unlocks at Military Science
  • Smithsonian unlocks at Archaeology

Spoiler New 3 Wonders. differences from current versions underlined :

Slater Mill

1000​

Available at Industrialization​

Mutually exclusive​

22​

22 to Every World Wonder on Empire​

1Great Engineer Point​

10% of all Gold generated on Empire is converted to Production​

-25% Gold cost for Purchasing tiles​

FREE Factory in this City​

+5Gold and Production to Factories and Stock Exchanges on Empire​

+1 Trade Route Slot, and All Trade Units complete their routes 25% faster​

- No more free Hydro Plant​

- Removed 25% Culture from tiles converted to Tourism​

Smithsonian Institute

1000​

Available at Archaeology​

Mutually exclusive​

22​

22 to Every World Wonder on Empire​

1Great Scientist points​

10% of all Gold generated on Empire is converted to Culture​

-25% Gold cost for Purchasing tiles​

FREE Museum in this City​

+5 to Landmarks and Artifacts on Empire​

+5Science and Culture to Museums and Research Labs on Empire​

- Free Museum is now only in 1 city and not on Empire​

​

West Point

Available at Military Science​

Mutually exclusive​

22​

22 to Every World Wonder on Empire​

5 City Defense​

5Great General Points​

10% of all Gold generated on Empire is converted to Science​

-25% Gold cost for Purchasing tiles​

FREE Military Academy in this City​

5 Science and Production to Military Academies and Arsenals on Empire​

All Siege and Naval Ranged units on Empire receive Splash I​

- No more free iron and Artillery Units​

Reasoning
Making them world wonders:

• Making them all full-blown world wonders is more interesting and cool
• Differentiates America's world wonders from Venice's national wonders
• justifies their higher production cost

Moving them forward

• The modern era unlocks were too late. You didn't get a lot of time to play with them. Moving them forward 1 tech level will feel a little better
• Historically, all of the 3 wonders are Industrial era.
  • The Smithsonian institute was founded in 1818, and the iconic castle was built in 1847
  • West Point was first occupied as a military base in 1778, and was inaugurated as a military academy in 1802
  • Slater Mill was constructed and began business in 1793

Swapping Slater Mill and Soho Foundry

• The Hoover Dam is more than 100 years older than the other 2 wonders, and was out of place.
• Slater Mill is a better fit, closer to the other 2 in time
• The current bonuses in-game, the timing, and even the art used for Slater Mill currently would fit Soho Foundry better
  • Slater Mill uses this icon, from the vanilla civ 5 atlas: View attachment 665375
  • That icon obviously is not Slater Mill. It's a generic refinery/factory with smoke stacks, but the Slater Mill is a water-powered cloth mill. It doesn't have smoke stacks
  • The Soho Foundry is the place where the first steam engines were built.
  • Soho Foundry was built by Watt & Crick. Watt was the original inventor of what we think of as the first modern steam engine, replacing the Newcomen engine.
  • re: world impact, Soho Foundry has much more to do with coal, steam power, and the industrialization of the world economy than Slater Mill, which is only relevant to American history
  • Slater Mill was the first English-style cloth mill in North America. It marked the beginning of America’s entry into the Industrial Age. But Slater Mill was a river-powered cloth mill that was 20 years younger than the Soho Foundry and the first coal-powered factories in England.

Balance changes

• The current smithsonian gives a free museum everywhere. Unless you are already inches away from a domination win it is almost always the best pick. The hammers and maintenance it saves on empire can't be outdone.
• With the industrial unlock we can put a building on each of the wonders from that tech which fit perfectly with the theme.
• Armory has been moved back to Modern, so that is an appropriate tech level for the 2nd boosted building on West point. With Hoover being replaced and moved sooner we can tie it more into instead of . The stock exchange is at an appropriate tech level and theme.
• Both Hoover and smithsonian gave CV-related bonuses and it wasn’t great to have the two piled up like that. It also made it pretty clear how inferior Hoover Dam was. I’m hoping players can make use of that extra trade route, and that the earlier and compounding global yields on the factories makes the new Slater mill more of a contender.

Late Industrial World Wonders should have 1250 cost, not 1000.

Also, there's no reason to keep the river requirement if Slater Mill is renamed.

 

[N.Core]

So would it be a good proposal for Congress or should I make an alternate thread for it in the hopes that somebody can code it? I don't wanna waste space here that could be use to talk about other proposals.

You can talk about it here. But since no one is interested in it, don't expect someone to sponsor it.

 

[azum4roll]

Feature requests don't go here.

 

[pineappledan]

Late Industrial World Wonders should have 1250 cost, not 1000.

should it be a little cheaper tho? Or should it be the same cost as an actual world wonder?
If it were turned into a world wonder, it will be affected by the wonder % penalty for other wonders, and affect other wonders in turn. I figured a discount would be nice.

What do you think?

Also, there's no reason to keep the river requirement if Slater Mill is renamed.

That's true. Soho Foundry can drop its river requirement. That's the only balance change
Hoover already has a river requirement, so that wouldn't have to change when replaced with Slater Mill

 

[AndreyK]

should it be a little cheaper tho? Or should it be the same cost as an actual world wonder?
If it were turned into a world wonder, it will be affected by the wonder % penalty for other wonders, and affect other wonders in turn. I figured a discount would be nice.

What do you think?

That's true. Soho Foundry can drop its river requirement. That's the only balance change
Hoover already has a river requirement, so that wouldn't have to change when replaced with Slater Mill

I like the idea, it'd be nice WW's. But for discount - no, in MWfVP wonder penalty is made much heavier.

 

[pineappledan]

Alternative proposal for Hacienda, because Spain is getting completely wasted in AI games and users repeatedly report she's trash.

Spoiler Current Hacienda: :

1 base yields
+2for each adjacent bonus resource
+2for each adjacent strategic resource
+2for each adjacent luxury resource
+2 if adjacent to a city

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Spoiler New Hacienda option 1 :

2base yields
+2for each adjacent bonus resource
+2for each adjacent strategic resource
+2for each adjacent luxury resource

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Spoiler New Hacienda 2 :

1base yield
+3for each adjacent bonus resource
+3for each adjacent strategic resource
+3for each adjacent luxury resource

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Both new proposals remove city adjacency and make the base yield a different type of yield from the adjacency yields, enhancing clarity
proposal 1 is a straightforward nerf
proposal 2 is a pretty major buff. It lowers the base yields even more, but increasing adjacency yields by 50%

Which do people prefer?

 

[Stalker0]

Alternative proposal for Hacienda, because Spain is getting completely wasted in AI games and users repeatedly report she's trash.

Spoiler Current Hacienda: :

1 base yields
+2for each adjacent bonus resource
+2for each adjacent strategic resource
+2for each adjacent luxury resource
+2 if adjacent to a city

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Spoiler New Hacienda option 1 :

2base yields
+2for each adjacent bonus resource
+2for each adjacent strategic resource
+2for each adjacent luxury resource

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Spoiler New Hacienda 2 :

1base yield
+3for each adjacent bonus resource
+3for each adjacent strategic resource
+3for each adjacent luxury resource

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Both new proposals remove city adjacency and make the base yield a different type of yield from the adjacency yields, enhancing clarity
proposal 1 is a straightforward nerf
proposal 2 is a pretty major buff. It lowers the base yields even more, but increasing adjacency yields by 50%

Which do people prefer?

Considering how low Spain is, we might consider going even bigger

 

[pineappledan]

I’m already worried enough about the potential spike of up to 19 yields on 1 tile

Combined with re-scaling Faith cost on unit purchases, adding the trireme boat split (another unit for Spain to purchase), and maybe streamlining his conquistador, hopefully she will feel more competitive.

 

[der_weihnachtsmann]

Alternative proposal for Hacienda, because Spain is getting completely wasted in AI games and users repeatedly report she's trash.

Spoiler Current Hacienda: :

1 base yields
+2for each adjacent bonus resource
+2for each adjacent strategic resource
+2for each adjacent luxury resource
+2 if adjacent to a city

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Spoiler New Hacienda option 1 :

2base yields
+2for each adjacent bonus resource
+2for each adjacent strategic resource
+2for each adjacent luxury resource

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Spoiler New Hacienda 2 :

1base yield
+3for each adjacent bonus resource
+3for each adjacent strategic resource
+3for each adjacent luxury resource

+1 at Architecture
+1 at Fertilizer

Both new proposals remove city adjacency and make the base yield a different type of yield from the adjacency yields, enhancing clarity
proposal 1 is a straightforward nerf
proposal 2 is a pretty major buff. It lowers the base yields even more, but increasing adjacency yields by 50%

Which do people prefer?

Definitely proposal 2, but why even make proposal 1 if the intention was to buff Spain?

 

[azum4roll]

A hacienda spot with max yields is extremely rare, and you should be rewarded if you happen to find such a tile.

 

[ilikepickles]

Proposal idea: Give Venice a +25% caravan/cargo ship production modifier.

Rationale: Venice gets more trade route slots than any civ, but is also slower at producing them than most because they can only make them from their capital. They are also severely underperforming currently, and this relatively simple bonus still fits with the flavour of the civ.

 

[Anarcomu]

Proposal idea: Give Venice a +25% caravan/cargo ship production modifier

Honestly, I think you could go as far as giving +50% prod and -33% gold purchase to caravan/cargo, and that would still be OK.

 

[Enginseer]

I think Venice is fine.

In 3.7, their puppets are allowed to build National Wonders (like Guilds coded technically and Refineries) and World Wonders again through indirect investments (think you rush Trade, settle near a desett tile with that free MoV and yoink... the Petra!)

Their UB now has the yield that its base building had. A few more buffs that I tweaked into their 1 of 3 Mutually Exclusive building and they arguably should be okay!

 

[pineappledan]

For reference, from enginseer's tweaks page:

• Murano Glassworks now strengthens Historic Events from completing Trade Routes (A small bonus like 20% of Caravansary's and Harbor's). Its unique property is strengthening Historic Events generated by the Palace (A small bonus of 14% roughly).
• Arsenale di Venezia no longer grants +5 Military Supply or +25% Military Supply from Population. Now grants +10% Military Supply from Population in all Cities and a free Arsenal in the City. It also allows Internal Trade Routes from Venice to generate +4 Production.
• Rialto District now generates +1 Gold from each CS Friend and +2 Gold from each CS Ally.

I would add that Rialto district needs to have its WC votes from GPT looked at.
Current bonus is 1 WC per 100 GPT on empire, capped at 1/4 of the original number of city-states (ie. up to 4 WC votes on default map settings)
That is an easy prerequisite for any civ to get to, but with Venice it is so trivial that it's hard NOT to have >400 GPT. This cap needs to be raised so that this forms an actual incentive, and doesn't just automatically translate into 4 free WC votes.

Could be changed to +1 WC vote for every 200 GPT on empire, capped at 1/3 of the original number of city-states.
That would cap at 5 WC votes if you reach 1000 GPT on default map settings

 

[Stalker0]

making a list for myself of what proposals I want to see and how far along I think they are:

• France - Ready
• Huns - Ready
• Japan - I think we agree on general direction but the amount of nerfing is the question here. I think we will likely see several japan proposals with a variety of strengths.
• Austria - Ready
• Withdraw from Melee reduction - Still needs a bit of work on the details.
• Withdraw from Melee change in mechanic - a bit of work needed here.
• Tribute -> Quests - I want to review this again and see how it feels.
• Tribute change in bonuses - needs work.
• Espionage - I think we are circling several proposals, but I'm hoping to get a bit more consensus so we don't have a dozen proposals like last time.

 

[azum4roll]

My views on the above proposals:
Huns - I'll propose an AI-friendly version
Austria - I'll stick to 200 constant resting influence, also for AI friendliness
Espionage - Can we have a poll on which direction we're heading first?

 

[Enginseer]

i want to make denmark wholesome

UA also grants Longboat Promotion to Ranged Ships.
UA (Longboat): Gain 100 Gold from pillaging, scaling with Era. Also grants 10 Great Admiral Point that does not scale with era.
UA (Viking): Gain 30 Gold from pillaging, scaling with Era. Also grants 5 Great General Point that does not scale with era.

Runestone: Only has 30 Culture from pillaging, scaling with Era. Also grants +25% Production to Ranged Navy Units.

Code-wise this is very feasible and require no extra changes.

Also it happened

 

[ma_kuh]

Thoughts on an update to Spain's UA. I don't think it'll make sense to submit for this session, but I was thinking about some of the issues Spain suffers from (can't remember where I saw the discussion, either on the forum or Discord), namely that the flavor and main victory stance of Spain is domination, but there's actually very little direct support for waging a war built into the kit.

How about:

1. Remove the Inquisitor/free conversion piece from Reconquista (the UA).
2. Replace this with combat bonuses:
   • +15% for units within 6 tiles of a city with Spain's dominant religion (doesn't need to be founded by Spain) [maybe limit to owned cities, or smaller radius, for performance]
   • +15% when fighting units from civs with a different dominant religion
   • (Kind of like a free Defender of the Faith/Crusader Spirit that counts for naval, and which rewards converting border towns to your faith, then pushing on/from them)
3. Give the Free Inquisitor of your religion on conquest to the Inquisition belief
   • Natural synergy with Spain's kit: you capture a city, get the inquisitor, convert it to your religion, then have a new 6-tile hub for the "my religion" bonus on the UA.
   • This belief never really feels enticing, at least here it would give domination strategies an alternative to Defender/Crusader.

Thematically this approach tries to simulate the Reconquista not by reclaiming lost cities --a UA that only kicks in if you lose is pretty unviable-- but by "liberating" the peoples of your faith trapped in civs that don't share their beliefs.

 

[Barna1]

First of all, I love this mod, I really appreciate all the work that went into it. I've played quite a few games recently, and I found a few places where I think things could be improved. I missed this month's congress proposals, but I still wonder how other players feel about these things.

1. Perhaps my biggest issue is that I find getting out-of-combat xp gains a bit too easy to obtain. The worst offender in my opinion is the city capture quest, it can give so much free xp that I start snowballing very hard after that (I play on immortal/deity). Moreover, you can often complete another city capture quest relatively soon. This can very quickly lead to units with 4 or even 5 promotions relatively early in the game (+1 range siege, infantry with overrun/march, etc). I think the quest reward should be changed to something which is still impactful (it's a hard quest after all), but less snowbally. For example, free happiness or some other bonus that warmongers can use.

2. Smaller issue, but I feel that other sources of free xp are also a bit too powerful: teocalli (I think it will be strong even after removing the current faith scaling) and Brandenburg gate (it gives a lot of bonuses: free xp, +10 unit support, free general, plus some smaller things). It's not particularly hard to get newly trained units start with 90 or even 105 xp, which is very powerful. Having lots of high tier units should be more difficult, except for certain civs (Assyria, Zulu, etc.)

3. Not really a balance issue, but related to the above: I feel that the AI takes some weird promotions way too often, practically wasting its free xp. It loves things like amphibious and woodsman, or mixing shock and drill promotions. I think it would almost always be better off simply taking shock 1-2-3 (or maybe drill 1-2-3 in some specific cases), and then a tier 4 promotion.

4. Some comments about policies: do other players also find Imperialism unattractive? I feel that it's mainly useful if you're winning anyway, I almost always take industry or rationalism instead. On the other hand, the top-left statecraft policy does like 3 or 4 different things, it might be a bit overloaded. The authority finisher feels very strong, but the statecraft finisher feels a bit underwhelming.

5. Currently some buildings feel like a waste of hammers in most of the cases. For example, stone works feels very weak (maybe I'm just not using internal trade routes enough?), and I'm not convinced by the usefulness of customs house either.