[Spoilers] Wang Kon of the Incans, or why I hate building monuments, by Krill

[NobleHelium]

The main reason why you're running away with the game is because you're basically playing Pacal of Inca. Cheap granaries is the main bonus of EXP, and you gave it to PRO. It should be at most 50% cheaper (maybe even less like 35%), that way it stays a 2-pop whip, which makes a huge difference. Oh and of course you're the best player in the game.

[Profane]

I've felt that Cheap Granaries were way too cheap as well at +100%, regardless of whatever trait it belongs to.

How's the military situation now? Still feel like needing Chuck Norris (if you ever create a Warlord... )?

By the way i've been wondering for awhile now... removing Drill I instead of CG I from PRO resulted in the inability of PRO to use units with a single promotion to get Shock/Cover/Pinch/Charge/Medic I just like AGG - was that an intentional nerf for PRO?

[Krill]

Never whip granaries - you get them at size 1 before you half fill the food box. A 13 hammer chop gives 26 hammers, add in the 1 hammer from the city tile and you only need 12 hammers to get the granary, which is 4 turns working a pf or 3 working a phf. That means one worker chops while a second hooks food.

If you do that it means you only need 14+9+9+10 = 42 food to grow to size 5 (then do a weakened double slave), whereas without the granary is takes 14+16+17+18 = 65 food to grow to size 5 then double slave out only 33 hammers for a 40 hammer granary. But it's the weakened slave that makes granaries weaker - if you are only going to grow to size 4 and not whip you save 23 food from the granary. As a none PRO leader, that isn't a great buy, I'd probably ignore it. As PRO, I suppose you could view the saved food as paying back the granary after a single slave, but then you need to regrow to size 4 etc. However, on this map we all had 2 happy at the capital and I researched meditation as the first tech of the game, so whipping at size 6>4 was feasible. That meant that I'd save yet more food with the granary.

I'm not convinced that it's the granary that put me ahead in this game, specifically because I've not gotten ahead until t70 when I stopped slaving, swapped to Vassalage and used quicker workers to improve my cities. That the granary was a terrace? I chopped Henge in city 3, and I don't think I actually needed the the terrace in city 2 to hook up the irrigated wheat, so the terrace hasn't actually done anything for me in this game. It's got to be FIN, that's giving me about 90 extra commerce a turn, and earlier on was giving me enough commerce to keep on teching as opposed to just stagnating (costs are constant, so the extra commerce from coast tiles is basically turned straight into tech).

The removal of D1 was partly to combat feature bloat on PRO, but it's not exactly missed, is it? Yeah, it's an "unintentional" nerf, but mostly all that the D1>shock promotion lets you do is use archers to break warriors chokes more easily, but as PRO is meant to be focused more on city development rather than land development, that's a reasonable nerf, I think. CG3 is easily obtainable, and is fine for defending when you only have a few units, but if people start building huge stacks of cats and knights it isn't going to mean squat. CG1 though one archers early on does help stop a chariot rush (though in a capital with 40% culture it's not that big a difference. Mainly more important in a second city with no culture defence).

[Profane]

I'm not convinced that it's the granary that put me ahead in this game

You need to stop being Krill to not get ahead.

I'm wondering how gameplay would be affected if Granaries were made to pay off a little later into the game rather than in the Ancient Age (perhaps by raising its hammer cost and lowering cheap granary production bonus) - kind of making it an investment that takes longer to pay off.

About the Drill promotion, I just realised I almost never make use of the Drill line, preferring the CG line for defense anyway. I suppose it also has some use when drafting single-promo units.

[Krill]

Well, without lots of analysis I'd say that the options would be to either 1) move it to later in the tech tree, 2) make is cost more and 3) make it save less food.

FFH does the last two and you basically see that people don't invest in them, but that's because they can grow on uber farms. If farms are still limited to fresh water tiles then basically if you have no water you'd be totally screwed. Civ5 does all three and keeps low tile yields and everyone knows how boring that makes the game (I actually have a sneaking suspicion that it is the granary change that made Civ5 go down the path it did to becoming a sucky game).

Actually, thinking about it mathematically, the granary gives you a larger bonus the more pop sizes that you grow from food. The nerfs that you can give that would be to make it a worse investment would actually decrease the amount of pop sizes you can regrow from it, so the three above options, but also decrease the max size of the cities and remove slavery.

Oh, yeah, definitely the Civ 5 approach. I suppose a better idea would be to make the granary give +1 food to certain tile improvements (+1 food per farm? +1 food per land tile even? Or just +X food, +1 food per grain resource connected to the city. All of these have their own problems). I think if you are going down that path you would have to recreate the entire economic system. And if you can create the entire economic system you've actually just created Civ 6.

[NobleHelium]

Well, regardless of whether you're whipping or chopping the granary, you're still saving a forest and more importantly a worker for the new city to get the granary up.

I don't think you should try to redesign the granary. That would be far into a pure mod territory, it's the most important building in the game.

[Krill]

Oh, I'd never change the granary in such a manner. I simply mean that theoretical redesigns are tied to the economic model so closely that you have to create a new economical model for any redesign to actually work properly.

[Krill]

Probably going to do an update next turn as I should have some time. It's been a drag having to pick up PBEM17 and PBEMVII, I've been sticking to just playing 2 games because I didn't want to get overfaced.

However, things I have been thinking about: I'm due a GS in 2 more turns, and I'm copnsidering what to use it on, or if I should just hold off on it and push out a second GP for the Jewish shrine nmopw that yuris has spread Judaism to his cities. With 300-ish hammers worth of missionaries, I should be getting 40gpt at least, more like 50 from a shrine with Bank and Grocer (and I wouldn't consider the cost of hte 2 city improvements in that because I'm going to build them anyway). I've got 1350 gold saved, enough to research Education at 100% in 4 turns, Guilds in 1 turn. I can theoretically get Lib researched in 13 turns now, but I could drop that with either golden ages, GS bulb into Edu, civic revolts, building wealth/research. I'd just take Nationalism with it for a straight forward Taj build, obvious synergy there with the MoM there. Taj itself shouldn't take more than 8 turns or so.

I'm pumping out cats now at 5XP to improve my power rating, depending on the rate of increase for yuris and mh I'd tech guilds and build knights as well. Yuris though seems to have leveled off in power atm, so I think he is probably heading for Lib. As I see it, I ought to make my mind up asap about Lib.

[Krill]

OK, so I lied, but I do have good reasons...

Mini update from the last turn, and t115:

T114, I used the GS for a GA. yuris had researched Education on his turn (the previous turn; he plays right after me) and I had 2k gold in the bank. And his GNP was no where near mine. Note in the above picture that is my GNP without a tech selected. I revolted to Bureaucracy and Pacifism, I'm due a GP in 2 turns: I will go with the extra shrine plan simply because I think I'm going to need every little bit of gold I can grab in this game. I'm then going to revolt back to OR towards the end of the GA (it is nice not to be constrained because of the MoM) and whatever other civics seem appropriate - Caste and Environmentalism seem good because I'm running out of tiles to work and I am starting to accumulate a few specs. I could tech Constitution in the GA as well if I wanted, hell if I really wanted to risk it I could try to Lib it (though I won't I think yuris, being second with 700 GNP would just about stretch to Lib before I could do that, and he'd attempt it just to deny me).

Right now I think I'm presenting as the stereotypical runaway, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the others do with the tech trading system to keep up with me.

[novice]

Nice F1 screen.

Very much a stereotypical runaway, will be interesting to see what happens next.