A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[Charriu]

Seconded on the india nerf. I don't think that giving what amounts to free creative to inca is great. +1 culture and 70 hammers makes it just about right, since in our picking methods, inca will be paired with exp. Otherwise, just make it something like 60 hammers no trait boost?

Don't want to do the no trait bonus as this would the only building doing that, which is throwing people of.

[Charriu]

Mentioned in the tech problems thread regarding spawning executives for everybody on techs:

As for the corporations I still don't like the way it's implemented now. If you spread the corporation you help one of your competitors while receiving a hit to your economy. Creative constructions and Sushi may be useful for a culture victory (you also only need them in 3 cities then). Mining Inc for production is not really viable without the HQ imo. The main advantage of Mining is that you could get decent production while keeping your towns. So you could keep up research and produce military at the same time. Downside were the much higher costs.

First of all yes spreading corporations will help one competitor, but that's nothing new. The problem previously was that only one player had the option to spread a corporation and that was the founder of the corporation. With this change everybody can at least participate in this game mechanic. But this is not all not only can you help a competitor, you can also hurt a competitor. Let's say the owner of Mining Inc spread that corp to your empire. Now thanks to the change you can start spreading a competing corporation from a weaker player and decrease the income from Mining Inc.
Lastly if you tech Railroad for example you can immediately start spreading Mining Inc. and can found the HQ some turns later if need be.

Now if its worthwhile to spread a corporation is totally to the players choice. Yes, it may not be the best thing to spread a corp to every city, but I can certainly see some value in spreading for example Mining Inc to some selected few cities. The important thing about giving everybody an executive is not to change any balancing around the corporations, but rather to open up possibilities and choice for everybody. The balancing of the corps needs to be done via the output and maintenance numbers of those corporations.

[civac2]

Now if its worthwhile to spread a corporation is totally to the players choice. Yes, it may not be the best thing to spread a corp to every city, but I can certainly see some value in spreading for example Mining Inc to some selected few cities. The important thing about giving everybody an executive is not to change any balancing around the corporations, but rather to open up possibilities and choice for everybody. The balancing of the corps needs to be done via the output and maintenance numbers of those corporations.

The possibility of selective spreading is a good point. However, you are locked out of State Property then. The reason I was a bit disappointed was that I understood (incorrectly) the changes to corporations to make them into a viable alternative to State Property where every one gets their own national corporations if they want them. (I believe the effect of the current changes is that the game leader will use Mining/Sushi provided they are strong enough and everyone else will run State Property. But we'll see.)

[Charriu]

I don't concern myself that much with the corporations right now. We here at RB rarely get a MP game running into that era, so there is very little actual human vs human play data to make any good judgement.

[NobleHelium]

Now if its worthwhile to spread a corporation is totally to the players choice. Yes, it may not be the best thing to spread a corp to every city, but I can certainly see some value in spreading for example Mining Inc to some selected few cities. The important thing about giving everybody an executive is not to change any balancing around the corporations, but rather to open up possibilities and choice for everybody. The balancing of the corps needs to be done via the output and maintenance numbers of those corporations.

The possibility of selective spreading is a good point. However, you are locked out of State Property then. The reason I was a bit disappointed was that I understood (incorrectly) the changes to corporations to make them into a viable alternative to State Property where every one gets their own national corporations if they want them. (I believe the effect of the current changes is that the game leader will use Mining/Sushi provided they are strong enough and everyone else will run State Property. But we'll see.)

Nothing locks you out of State Property - you are welcome to adopt SP later and nullify the corporations if you want to.

I see nothing wrong with the corporation changes.  If you think you can't use the executive without getting the HQ, then don't use the executive.  Doesn't mean it's a bad thing to get one.  You could say it's a potential trap, but I assume players would learn after making the mistake once.  At most you can say it's an unnecessary change, which is a reasonable argument I guess.

[Charriu]

I've been thinking about forest preserves lately.

The main problem with this is that there are no forests to build them on later. So I was thinking about some of these options:

1. Make them be build-able anywhere a forest can be, but they only give happiness, if they are build on top of a forest. If you work a forest preserve they will grow a forest after X turns.
2. Same as 1., but forest preserves only grow forests if you are under Enviromentalism
3. Same as 1., but forest preserves only grow a forest if they are neighboring a forest.

Obviously there has to be something implemented that prevents you from just growing forests and chopping them, so in addition I could implement that you can not chop a forest, if there is a forest preserve in place. The only way to make this growing/chopping economy working would then be:

1. Build a forest preserve and work it X turns
   
2. Replace the forest preserve with a lumbermill, which takes time to be build too
   
3. Chop the forest
   

Now I know I'm treating not-Close to Home territory again with this, but I'm really at a loss how make this improvement and to an extend the civic Enviromentalism interesting or more useful.

[chumchu]

I think that the best approach to make forest preserve somewhat useful is to make lumber mill available early enough and provide a big enough boost to make chopping or not an actual decision. In the early cities the snowball effect will be too high but cities settled later on in the game you can tweak it so that lumber mills are ok. That would enable saving for a national park in late game some times at least.

[pindicator]

I was going to save this for after 52, but I was thinking about how lumbermills aren't getting a lot of attention either. My idea was to open them up with metal casting - or even Bronze working! - but they only get the commerce portion at first. They get the +1h unlocked at machinery so you don't have super early 2f2h tiles. Maybe that encourages some to be used as they are a decent improvement right now, but it's hard to pass on the chop hammers for so long as you wait for them to unlock

[NobleHelium]

I think forest preserves growing forest that get chopped and then regrown is a funny idea and not necessarily a problem. You still have to work the bare forest preserve for a long time before it can grow the forest. Lategame tiles produce like ~5h - a 30h forest is not really a big deal.

Not sure if it's in scope for the mod though. I don't really think these kinds of changes should be put in until we're at least happy with the trait balance and adjacent changes.

[civac2]

You can grow forests as a production reserve for wonders/projects/space ship parts. It is also not necessary to build a lumber mill. You can just pillage the forest preserve.