Super Massive Enhanced Gameplay mod 1.0.2.1 Discussion

[Krill]

Question: If the Universal Suffrage effects (+1 hammer to towns and forest-towns, can rush buy with gold, plus another minor ability) were placed onto Emancipation, available at Banking, what would the replacement for Universal Suffrage be to compete with Police State and Representation?

[Krill]

Second question: If there were 4 forest tile improvements, available in the early classical era, that upgraded after a set number of turns into workshops, watermills, windmills and cottage series tile improvements, with the equivalent values and effects from techs and civics that hte "base" tile improvement receives, then:

1. What techs would you place the forest tile improvements on (they don't all need to be on the same one, for example they could be on MC, Math, Monarchy and Compass respectively)?
   
2. How many worker turns should they take (should it take into account worker turns for base tile improvement and chopping, or be cheaper, or more expensive?)
   
3. How many turns should it take to grow from the forest tile improvement into the second, final improvement?
   
4. What should the tile yields be for the forest tile improvements?
   
5. Should improved forest tile improvements benefits from river commerce? Should some and not others?

I think this is an interesting route to take for SMEG mod, simply because of the number of levers available to balance the tile improvements. And by placing them on different techs it provides a lot of complexityy with the questions regarding chopping.

[GermanJoey]

Second question: If there were 4 forest tile improvements, available in the early classical era, that upgraded after a set number of turns into workshops, watermills, windmills and cottage series tile improvements, with the equivalent values and effects from techs and civics that hte "base" tile improvement receives, then:

1. What techs would you place the forest tile improvements on (they don't all need to be on the same one, for example they could be on MC, Math, Monarchy and Compass respectively)?
   
2. How many worker turns should they take (should it take into account worker turns for base tile improvement and chopping, or be cheaper, or more expensive?)
   
3. How many turns should it take to grow from the forest tile improvement into the second, final improvement?
   
4. What should the tile yields be for the forest tile improvements?
   
5. Should improved forest tile improvements benefits from river commerce? Should some and not others?

I think this is an interesting route to take for SMEG mod, simply because of the number of levers available to balance the tile improvements. And by placing them on different techs it provides a lot of complexityy with the questions regarding chopping.

Answering this first:

1.) Just to keep things from getting confusing, I'd do either a.) the same techs as the non-forest improvements, or b.) the same techs + also some other single enabling tech. (maybe construction? or math, since it already has something to do with forests?) so a forest cottage is math + pottery, a forest workshop is math + MC, a forest windmill/watermill is math + machinery).

2.) I'd start it at the same number of turns as the base improvement; if that tests to be too good, then you could increase it. At any rate, you already burn a turn compared to flatland just walking onto the forest.

3.) Test it at 10, and if that's too good make it 20. This relates to the next question, IMHO.

4.) I think they're fine at just +1h over the base improvement due to the forest itself? I mean, that will always yield more in the end than the chop after a certain number of turns, it's just a question of whether its worth it to wait or not. (and there's also the subject of the National Park.) If you want to make them more special, you could do +1h,+1c (for windmill and cottage) and +2h (for workshop and watermill), but if so then you should make the improvement take longer to build and take longer to upgrade. for the latter option, you could break this into two levels; at level 2, they're the base improvement +1h, and at level 3, the workshops/watermills get an additional +1h and the cottage/windmill get an additional +1c.

5.) Yeah probably, at least the upgraded version should. At the very least, it gives an element of spatial-planning strategy as to which forests you want to chop, if there's a situation where you want to chop some and improve others.

[Krill]

1) If you keep them on the same tech as the base improvement though, won't almost all forests get chopped simply because of the need for improved tiles? And moving the tile improvements earlier into the tech tree but lengthing the time taken to grow the improvement doesn't make it a no brainer tile improvement.

2) That's what I was thinking, at least it provides a good reason to keep forests: try to get by with fewer workers, improving forests means need fewer turns to improve a tile therefore there is a decision to be made.

3) 10 seems reasonable for starting point, but it doesn't need to be the same for all forest improvement. The forest cottage for example really should be as close as possible to the base cottage in effect IMO.

4) I meant, what should the tile improvement for the tile improvement the workers make, that has to be worked for X turns until it "grows" into the full improvement. The "full" improvement needs to be identical to the base workshop/watermill/windmill/cottage, but the base improvement doesn't need to be. It could be an additional cost to the forest tile improvement. It could be a negative tile yield (eg lose a hammer from the forest, gain commerce during hte growth period).

5) You know, it doesn't have to be commerce that a tile improvement gets from being adjacent to a river. It could be extra food or hammers or any of the three.

[Krill]

Let me given an example (Not suggested values):

New tile improvement:

Forest Work Camp: Yield: -1 Hammer, +2 Commerce, +1 Commerce from river. Requires Metal Casting, Flatland, Forest, 6 worker turns. After 10 turns becomes:

Forest Workshop: -1 Food, +2 Hammers, +1 Commerce from river. +1 Hammer from Caste System, Guilds, +1 Food from State Property.

Forest Hill Camp: Yield: +2 Food, +2 Hammers from river. Requires Alphabet, Hill, Forest, 5 Worker turns. After 5 turns becomes:

Forest Windmill: +1 Food, +1 Commerce, +1 Commerce from river. +1 Hammer from Serfdom, Chemistry, +1 Commerce from Electricity

For ease of communication, "Camp" is basic tile improvement, with the Forest "Improvement name" is the final tile improvement with same values as the base windmill/watermill/workshop.

[GermanJoey]

Question: If the Universal Suffrage effects (+1 hammer to towns and forest-towns, can rush buy with gold, plus another minor ability) were placed onto Emancipation, available at Banking, what would the replacement for Universal Suffrage be to compete with Police State and Representation?

IMHO this is a complicated question... I'm not sure how to answer so I'll just... brainstorm out loud or something?

First, I think I like the idea of moving US to the labor column, giving it the cottage growth bonuses, and naming it Emancipation. I think placing it at Banking is the right place for it too, as that's a nice period for a "catch up" cottage growth civic and the cash-rushing pairs nicely with Banks being enabled as a building. Folding in the +1h to towns gives a nice reward to early cottage adopters before FS and PP arrive, as well as gives a reason to stay in the civic long term and allows it to be balanced as an "end-game" civic compared to caste and serfdom. I also like that just running it for awhile to grow cottages in your capital (or Forbidden Palace city, for the new Bureau) for Bureau is a reasonable option. I think that with this, the new Bureau, and FS, cottages are finally back on the menu.

The one downside here is that the incredible irony of a civic named "Emancipation" being at fucking Banking, of all things, still kinda grates on me, heh...

Next, a new civic in the government column has to address two things: how good does it have to be early-game and mid-game if you have the Pyramids, and how does it relate to Representation and Police State normally? It doesn't have to care about HR, as that's more of a "starter home" civic whose tradeoff is more related to when you go for the tech that enables the civic rather than which civic you use in the column.

For the first question, I'd say: it shouldn't be too good. Right now, whether BTS, ToW, RtR, the Pyramids feel like they're in a pretty good spot, where they're considered a very good yet not game-breaking wonder despite their high cost. You mostly build them for Rep, which lets you grow early when otherwise constrained and dig out a crashed economy, and then later it gives you a nice economic boost over other players when Caste and Mercantalism first become the norm. HR and Police State both have their niche uses too... if anything, I'd like to see the war-weariness effect of PS be more pronounced, either by making it more difficult to get WW immunity without it, or by increasing what the civic gives you to a straight-up 100%. Right now, US is very rarely (if ever) used with the mids, so any civic good enough to be used as an alterative to any of the other 3 options only works to make the Mids better. If that civic is "as good overall yet different" in the same early eras as compared to Rep, then means the Pyramids would be pushed into "overpowered" territory, and since the wonder is already very expensive then the only means left to balance it would be to force it to obsolete, which would neither be very satisfying for the player nor very easy to control as a balance mechanic (i.e. what happens if you're in Rep or PS when it obsoletes?)

Next, how the new civic should relate to the other civics in its column? I think the answer to that is pretty complicated, because Rep relates to a bunch of different civics. Here, I originally had written a bunch of brainstorming paragraphs because I was genuinely baffled as to what might work... until I suddenly realized the answer!

IMHO, the problem is essentially that Rep is a really strong and generic economic civic that synergizes well with just about every other civic in every other column. So, it's hard to justify another economic civic here because to make it good enough to compete with Rep you run the risk of creating something broken and overpowered, or, even worse, too brittle to be bothered with. Caste system enables Rep to be effortless free beakers in potentially huge quantities and Caste's flexibility means that this comes with little to no downsides. The alternatives to an economic civic are an early growth civic or a war civic, but there you've got HR and and PS. What else is there? Beyond some really wacky ideas, the theme I came up with is someting along the lines of "flexibility and/or specialization."

First, we have to stop Caste from being perfect in every way, so we take away the unlimited Scientist/Artist/Merchants slots and instead limit them to just one of each. You've still got some flexibility here, and the main function of RtR caste (the workshop bonus) is still there. Next, your new Government column civic is: Unlimited slots of all specialists. Low Upkeep. Place it at early-ren era or late medieval tech... maybe Paper or Education? Maybe Nationalism? And bam, that's your civic. It solves a bunch of things:

1.) Solves Rep+Caste, Rep+Caste+SP, and Rep+Merc all having too much synergy despite being "too easy" compared to the cottage approach. This civic would still be good with Merc or SP, but it's hard to see it being better then Rep.

2.) Caste still gets easy border pops, and can still do something with the free specialist from Merc. (although *only* that one specialist)

3.) Solves specialist slots on buildings not being worth much because you get infinite slots from Caste, which has sorta become the default civic in RtR. With slots being gone from Caste, you either have to give up Rep and PS to get them back, or else actually build the fucking buildings that give you the spec slots you want.

4.) The new civic still allows you to do "burst" GPs during a Golden Age by starving cities to work a million specialists, you just don't get to have your cake and eat it too by combining them with Rep. Now, you gotta give up good tiles for bad yield to get those GPs.

5.) Because it allows lots of engineers, the civic will still be a sometimes-viable choice in the late-game. It won't give you as much raw output as Rep, but it'll be more flexible. The one issue with the free engineer slots is that you don't want it to be too easy to nab the Taj with it. If it's possible to code that the Eng specs aren't enabled until like, I don't know RP or something, that would solve that problem.

6.) Because the civic allows you to make a guarenteed Great Prophet, you could do something more interesting with shrines, which felt pretty lackluster in SMEGmod compared to the other religious buildings. If you don't want to shrines to be too easy for some reason, you could do a similar thing as what I suggested above with engineers, where the free prophet slots aren't enabled until Theology or Divine Right or something.

If the balance of this civic isn't quite right, I think it'd be pretty easy to adjust it towards good or bad by adjusting the civic maintenace. For example, a no-upkeep civic effectively generates a huge amount of gold in the late game, while adjusting towards higher upkeep would nerf it if allowing unlimited scientists or engineers becomes an issue.

[Krill]

Giving Mids player a method of burst producing GE sounds insane. More thoughts later.

[Krill]

OK, thoughts:

I have no problem with nerfing Caste, but 1 spec limit and workshop bonus? Ouch. I'd have said limiting it to two seems better, so the ability to actually get an early GA or two isn't completely fucked. That seems a reasonable level.

If Emancipation gives +1 Hammer to Towns, +100% cottage growth and gold rushbuy, how does that compare to newly nerfed Caste and Serfdom? Well, I actually think it's actually a bit on the strong side, but that's good! It suggests that Caste can have handle that nerf, maybe not be nerfed as hard or have a small bonus. Serfdom also picking up a small bonus is perfectly reasonable. I'd be thinking that Serfdom picking up 2 priest slots and possibly an Eng slot would probably round that out pretty well.

As for US replacement: I agree with the reasoning about Mids. You can sell me on moving unlimited free spcs of a certain type á la Caste, but I don't think you could sell me on Engineers, Spies or Priests. I don't think the specs alone are enough though? If PS is changed to +25% unit production, -100% WW, Rep stays unchanged, then I'm not 100% sure flexibility alone is enough. And Mids does make it possible that it's broken? I'm not sure this is the only option, but I do think it can work.

[Krill]

One thing I have toyed with is making Mids not give Government civics but the Legal Civics instead (Vassalage, Bureaucracy, Nationhood, Environmentalism). The only two that would be made available much earlier are Nationhood and Environmentalism, but neither to me seems broken if available earlier. Also, I'd probably remove Stone as the production modifier if that was problematic but a better thing to do would probably be to make Mids require Masonry and Maths.

Nationhood: Can Draft. Barracks: +2 happy. +25% Espionage. No Cost. Requires Nationalism

Environmentalism: +3 health, +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves. Legal Column civic. Low cost, requires Economics

[Cheater Hater]

I'm confused--why do we need "forest workshop" and the like, and not just a workshop on a forest? The "Forest Improvement->actual improvement" should work just fine--you don't need it to get rid of the forest (Worldbuilder says anything can go on anything I assume).