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

[Charriu]

The cheap granary at agriculture for Babylon from RtR has been pretty popular. I'd concur that eliminating the EXP bonus is pretty ugly, so I'd recommend to keep it,  cost 60h, at agriculture,  and with the irrigation bonus.
The thing with the latter is that it can be useful, but I think nobody will ever pick for it,  because when picking I'm not thinking "oh yeah I'll find a dry corn and settle my 3rd city bordering it", so it only really makes sense if said dry corn is bordering the starting plains hill.
That would make it stronger than the RtR Garden,  but the Quechua is worse than the bowman,  so I guess it's ok? Though I'm surprised by people saying the Quechua is plain useless,  I thought they were quite popular as cheap MP that you can still build after Hunting?

While I'm here,  I'd like to ask if you'd consider one of the following changes still,  which had been discussed before:
- Serfdom earlier (maybe just at Monarchy? Alphabet I think would be fun to make it a choice vs maths,  but terrible thematically)
- Slavery, or chopping, at Masonry. I still feel BW is just overloaded and too much of a one right choice.  I can see though that a change is a significant move away from home.

I'm not arguing that the Quechua is useless, it's just not that useful as other UU and not the main thing going for Inca. They main problem even with "at Agriculture and irrigation" is like you said, that there must be a reason to take it for a player. Now here is what I think about the bonus, but keep in mind that all of those are of course map dependent:

- You can of course irrigate those dry corn, wheat and rice resources.
- In addition it's also worthwhile to farm and irrigate and banana and sugar tiles pre-Calendar
- Get more food running in your cities lacking good food resources and/or don't have any other source of water
- Even after Civil Service there is the occasional use, where you want to spread irrigation accross hills, deserts or other tiles. By settling the city on those tiles you bridged those non-irrigatable tiles.

But of course as you all have mentioned, these are all map dependent.

Now the availability at Agriculture is nice, but the thing is that it's only a bonus at the really early stages of the game. I think what I will do is try to make it a granary with irragtion bonus and reduced cost in the next version and see how it is perceived.

Regarding those other changes:

Serfdom at Monarchy was mentioned previously. Maybe I will give it a try for once and see how people react. If it throws the pace of the game too much around I will revert it. Serfdom is already on a good course I think.
Slavery at Masonry was discussed and deemed not close at home, like you already hinted at. I do want to say that I really loved that change, but for this mod it is the right decision not to do it. Kill your babies.

[civac2]

In my first CTH SP game all the ais except one switched to Serfdom lategame. So did I. It is a bid odd to be in Universal Suffrage/Free Speech/Free Market/Free Religion/Serfdom as I was briefly, tbh.

[Charriu]

Don't trust the AI. I tried to teach the AI everything new in CtH, but I did not put that much work and thought into it as this mod is mainly meant for MP games. That does not mean I will go back and teach the AI at the appropriate point in time.

[civac2]

I do think the choice is very reasonable. Ai terraforming is often very farm-heavy. For me the reason is that I have a lot of dry land so I got tons of windmills and a decent amount of farms. What are the alternatives? Caste System for workhop-heavy State Property empires, Slavery if you got the Kremlin or possibly even if you don't in special circumstances. Emancipation doesn't seem good anymore unless you are recovering from a war or need to improve newly conquered land.

SPI could be quite a bit stronger since you got more options.

[Charriu]

I didn't mean to say that it might be wrong in the current situation, just that you should not trust the AI blindly. Do mean to say Emancipation is worse then BtS? I would argue against that.

[civac2]

Emancipation's main use was as a cudgel against other players. It's other perks are decidedly subpar. It is better now in a vacuum but in BTS you could force other players to adopt it or severely hamper them if they could not/would not.

[NobleHelium]

Doesn't the AI just adopt new civics when they are unlocked? I don't think what the AI does means anything.

Bowmen suck as far as I'm concerned. I like Quechuas more.

[civac2]

Doesn't the AI just adopt new civics when they are unlocked?  I don't think what the AI does means anything.

I don't know. But the ai late game labor choices are radically different from a base BTS game in my first CTH game. I really doubt this is just a coincidence. On another note, (apparently) legendary player serdoia disagrees strongly with my evaluation of Emancipation.

Bowmen suck as far as I'm concerned.  I like Quechuas more.

Why?

[NobleHelium]

A cheap long-lasting MP unit is more useful than a small bonus on a unit that you don't want to build a lot of anyway.  If you want a more detailed answer than that, then you'd have to read a lot of the games we played back in the day to get a bigger picture.

[civac2]

I guess. Can't everyone build warriors by pillaging their Copper/Iron for a few turns? Of course, you need to coordinate that but it should not take more than a few turns.