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

[naufragar]

Are you all really going to change the Minuteman before I get to play Toku of America?

More seriously, a Guerilla/Woody musket is a lot more interesting than a discounted settler. In general, unique units and buildings that replicate a trait in miniature are less interesting imho than something truly unique. Like 2-mover, 50% withdrawal muskets...

[civac2]

Huh, I didn't consider Guerilla 3 when thinking about the minutemen.

I agree with the minutemen are more interesting but noone picked them yet I think.

[superdeath]

Whats America's UB now? ...


Exactly. If you had to look it up then that is more reason why our late game civs need something Unique. A discounted settler fits America's theme alot more than getting great people points randomly. I wouldnt mind the musket UU for America just having +50% or something vs Rifles to show how incredible it was to have fought back even a small portion of the British army. /bias but still.

[chumchu]

I like the minutemen in theory but their uses are suite niche. A better settler is imo closer to the theme. I tested 3 moves but then it gets into trouble with the staeting scouting unit chooser function. I also think that is a bit too strong. Ignore terrain is good but not broken. If you do this mall can stay and changes are minimised.

[Ginger()]

What happens to Mausoleum’s bonus if you tech Nationalism while in GA?

[Tarkeel]

Mausoleum bonus is applied when the GA is triggered, so an ongoing GA won't be shortened if that's what you're asking about.

[Charriu]

First of all I have noticed the discussion about America. I made some notes for myself and want to return to that discussion at a later point.

For now I'm thinking about civics again. Especially with our still running game of PB59 entering the era we rarely enter. I already proposed a change to Environmentalism to make it a bit more popular. In addition to that I plan to reduce its cost to Low Cost. But that's not the main issue I have right now. That would be Emancipation.

Right now it has +10% production and the +100% growth for improvements. The production bonus fits the theme of the labor civics, but I think it is to weak. For example you will only start to get +2 hammers from it with 20 base hammers already in play. With Serfdom and Caste it is a lot easier to get those +2 hammers with just two tiles/improvements. Now there is some potential to lift that to crazy heights with corporations, but that needs a lot of successful trades for resources with Mining Inc or Creative Construction. Therefore I plan to move those +10% production back to State Property. This will have multiple effects:

- It helps State Property to compete against play with Corporations
- It nerfs the two hammer corporations a bit
- It shrinks the amount of bullet points in the changelog.

Now this of course leaves the question of what to do with Emancipation. Now without the restrictions of CtHs goals I would give it everything Universal Suffrage has and find new stuff for that civic, but that quickly turns into to many changes for the changelog. Because of that I was thinking up some different and new effects for the Emancipation civic and I would like to hear your opinion about them. Keep in mind numbers can be adjusted:

1. Specialist +1 hammer: Straightforward, but I feel it treats too much on Castes turf
   
2. +1 hammer for every excess happiness, (e.g. if your city has 19 happiness and 16 unhappiness you would get +3 hammers): This would help to get smaller cities up quicker and +1 hammer is always weaker then whatever every new citizen can do. This can be abused as Cornflakes has shown, so it's off the table.
   
3. Unlimited Engineers: Similar to #1
   
4. +1 hammer for every standard building that provides happiness (so no wonders)
   
5. +25% production bonus for buildings already in capitol: Some synergy with bureaucracy, could be interesting as the capitol is one of those cities with more buildings in play.
   
6. +1 hammer per culture level of city (e.g. a city that popped borders twice gets +2 extra hammers): A legendary city would get +5 hammers with this. On average most cities at this point in time are either Developing or Refined, so this would be a +2/+3 hammer bonus for those.
   
7. No random Great Person. Type of Great Person is determined by most GPP, so city with 40% engineer, 30% artist, 30% prophet, would 100% pop an engineer: I feel this may buff corporations too much again. Then again maybe this would be a great effect for the American UB. 
   

Keep in mind I would still remove the BtS happiness effect from Emancipation and keep the +100% growth on improvements in addition to aboves effect.

[chumchu]

Of the alternatives proposed I prefer number 2 as I think it is most elegant and fits best with the theme. It also makes it distinctly different from the other labor civics.

Some potential issues I can see with number 2:
- It is a per city bonus that is larger when the cities are smaller. Someone might potentially use this for an ICS style strategy. I would think that the civic often comes too late for the hammers to be very meaningful for big cities though.
- Gamewise, the effects of the civic go in different directions. 100% cottage growth want you to grow onto all cottages until you reach happy cap.
- Is this CTH?

I would suggest two more options:
8) Make it no cost and put it earlier in the tech tree. Philosophy? Paper? That would give players more time to use it to improve cottages. With no cost it also has potential use in the late game by being significantly cheaper. This is the most CTH solution I can find.

9) Give emancipation the ability to wealth purchase from US and (or?) 10% wealth. This gives it more use late game and a defined role with a wealth purchase strategy. I use this in my mod and I am content with the results.

[Cornflakes]

2) +1 hammer for every excess happiness, (e.g. if your city has 19 happiness and 16 unhappiness you would get +3 hammers): This would help to get smaller cities up quicker and +1 hammer is always weaker then whatever every new citizen can do.

This could be broken with Hereditary Rule stuff your standing army of 200 (or 500) units into a city and achieve enormous localized production for wonders/spaceship/culture/etc.

Unit maintenance can be canceled by building wealth in the city where your army is staged (combine this with the AGG 50% unit maintenance discount, and this could probably be abused for infinite returns, 1-turning units in a positive-feedback loop where overflow gets maxed out and converts to wealth). Also this could become a micromanagement overload running mounted units back and forth between cities to put that extra +1 hammer in the most optimal location.

[Charriu]

Good point. Thanks Cornflakes. So that idea is off the table.