A friend and I were having a discussion previously about Affinities, specifically with regard to their Actions and Bonuses, and we talked about how some of them feel like they need a little work. Well, here are some of my ideas on changes/tweaks that could be made to Affinity Abilities and Affinity Bonuses to help balance things a bit more than I think they currently are. However, before that, the elephant in the room is the Aesthete Action, which is demonstrably more powerful in the early and mid game than any other Action. I don't think it's imbalanced, particularly because it's largely useless in the late game, but I do think that it is so powerful that it's basically worth taking an Aesthete culture in one or more of the first three eras for the Action alone, and it feels like such a disadvantage to take anyone else. But I have a big proposal that I think keeps Aesthetes strong, while also allowing the others to not feel like they are falling so far behind.

All Affinities can use Cultural Blitz (maybe call it something different if you must, but it works effectively the same exact way), but it has a 25 turn timer, as opposed to the 10 turn timer for what it is now. I would also then let the Aesthete cultures retain Cultural Blitz as it is now, and they can do both. The issue at play, for me, is not that Aesthete cultures have easier/more access to the big Influence spike than other cultures, it's that the other cultures don't have it at all, and in the early game with so many other things to do, getting a one time spike of Influence every 25 turns presents a lot of opportunities. Then, by giving Aesthetes the ability to do this twice (and more often), they still maintain their power and advantage because more is better, but you don't lock yourself out completely of doing some big influence things (claiming a wonder, establishing cities 3-5, etc.) once in awhile at the expense of other vital parts of the early game. I think that a mechanic like this would bring all cultures more up to speed with the Aesthetes in the early game, while maintaining a distinct advantage for those Aesthetes in the same eras.

Now, onto each Affinity individually.

Aesthete Action: Cultural Blitz (spend Money to generate Influence); no change, this action is perfect. Other than adding it to all cultures every 25 turns and giving Aesthetes two of them, I'd change nothing about this. The only real downside to it is that it is largely useless in the late game, but that's because of Influence's relative uselessness at that stage of the game, which is something that needs a larger rework, not a change to this ability.

Aesthete Bonus: Grace (Cultural Proximity is always maxed out); again, no change. It'll be a common theme with the Bonuses, which I think are largely balanced well. But Aesthete in particular is just pretty perfect as an Affinity.

Agrarian Action: Greener Pastures (spend Influence to attract Population from adjacent Cities or Outposts); a great point made by my friend was that this ability is great in theory, but most of the time you're just stealing Pop from your own cities. I would make it take pop exclusively from Free Peoples or other Empires. Perhaps a change to read as "attract Population from the nearest city of all known Empires, and any adjacent Independent Peoples" would add a bit more value to the ability.

Agrarian Bonus: Community (gain 5 Stability when gaining Population); no change. Extra Stability is always a good thing.

Builder Action: Land Raiser (all Money and Science output for 1 city is converted into Industry for 10 turns (or until turned off)); this one is okay, but it feels very situational, at best. I also greatly like the idea of all the Actions being a one time spike of something that you can use every 10 turns. So to stay in line with that, I would change Land Raiser to spend Influence to instantly put a turn’s worth of industry into whatever project each city is actively working on. So, similar to how an Osmosis event or a Science Curiosity instantly fills the science meter, the same happens to all your current builds in the amount of however much industry the city has at that time.
Builder Bonus: Pride (gain 10 Stability when completing a District); no change, same as Agrarian. More Stability is always good.

Diplomatic Action: Demilitarization (force a ceasefire in one Territory for 10 turns); this one is also okay, but also situational at best, and I want to keep with my trend of all Actions providing a spike every 10 turns. This one is simple, spend Influence to generate 5 Leverage against all known Empires. This does admittedly weaken the Eduba slightly by giving arguably its strongest trait as an ability every 10 turns, but perhaps adjusting the Eduba to 10 Leverage against all known Empires can restore a bit of its appeal.
Diplomatic Bonus: Big Brother (collect Leverage Intel with all units, and increase Agent cap by 1); no change. This might be the best Affinity bonus in the game.

Expansionist Action: Under One Banner (forcibly annex another Empire’s Outpost/Administrative Center); this one is fine, but it’s basically just a better ransack with no grievances, and I think we can do better. It’s a pretty easy one, and I feel it still fits with the one turn spike theme, once every 10 turns you can claim any adjacent unattached territory at no cost, and immediately attach it to the city. This one may actually need to be on a 15 or even 20 turn timer, as 10 may make it to powerful, but it feels like a nice spike that is naturally in line with the idea of expansion. I think the only thing I’d add is that if you steal a territory you still generate a grievance; it’s instant and unstoppable, unlike the existing ability, but you still have to answer for it in the end.
Expansionist Bonus: Ambition (can always trespass); no change, this is another one that is perfect in theory and execution.

Merchant Action: Power Investor (spend Influence to build a Resource Extractor); buckle up, this is probably the Affinity that will see the biggest proposed change, as I’m suggesting a major change to both Action and Bonus. First, the action; it’s decent, and especially helpful late game for certain strategic resources you may not have access to and other Empires are behind on researching. But with my proposed change to the Bonus, that becomes largely unnecessary. So we’re going to go back to the spike, and make it really simple. Cultural Blitz, but with Money, basically. Spend Influence to generate a large sum of Money, and the values would essentially mirror one another. Every 10 turns, a nice big chunk of Money in the bank.
Merchant Bonus: Mediation (bought resources can be sold to other Empires); I’ve just honestly never been a fan of this one, and not just because it’s obnoxious to still see those resources available for every Merchant even if you’re already buying it from the source. Instead, I would make this one two fold, and it falls right in line with the Expansionist Bonus granting the ability to basically ignore a treaty. Can always trade resources with other Empires and Independent Peoples, regardless of treaty status. Additionally, can trade for discovered resources from other Empires and Independent Peoples, even if that Empire/Independent People has not yet discovered/extracted it (purchasing a resource in this way comes with a higher upfront cost for the initial purchase to establish an extractor for the resource). So basically, if you’re a Merchant Affinity, you can always trade for resources, and you can trade for all resources they own, whether it has an extractor or not, because your purchase buys in the extractor for it.

Militarist Action: Iron Reserves (Raise Militia Armies in your cities); this one is decent, but it feels so much more of a defensive ability than an offensive one, and that feels backward for Militarist Affinities for the most part. So instead, spend Influence to instantly heal all units not currently in battle. Every 10 turns you can heal up all your units for a big spike in relative military strength. As with most games of the type, defenders tend to have a specific advantage in war, in that they can continue spawning units as necessary to fend off an invading force, while attackers have only the units they brought with them and must march more to the front lines if the initial waves are defeated or thinned out, and on top of that in Humankind they can’t even heal outside of friendly territory at all. This is generally fine for standard Affinities, but Militarists should be able to press advantages and be offensive in nature. A heal in neutral/enemy territory every 10 turns does this, somewhat neutralizing the defender’s advantage, and giving Militarists a distinct advantage in combat without altering relative combat strengths.
Militarist Bonus: Vigilance (+30 War Support Equilibrium); this one is fine, I guess, but War Support and War Score generally just feels like such a weird mechanic overall, I’d rather just scrap any kind of modifiers to it and just make it something easier to understand. +2 Combat Strength on all units built, bought, or upgraded as a Militarist culture. Militarists gain an advantage, but not an overwhelming one.

Scientist Action: Collective Minds (all Industry and Money output for 1 city is converted into Science for 10 turns (or until turned off)); like Land Raiser, this one is okay, but situational in all the same ways. So let’s keep going with spikes and effectively turn this into the equivalent of a Science Osmosis. Spend Influence to instantly generate a turn’s worth of Science for your Empire. Just as Collective Minds is a replica of Land Raiser, this new ability likewise replicates the new Builder action. Instantly gain Science, easy.
Scientist Bonus: Foresight (+1 Era available to research); nope, I stand corrected, this is the best Affinity bonus in the game. No change.

Well, if you've made it this far, I'd like to thank you for indulging more than a thousand words rambling on about Affinities. Would love to hear what anyone thinks about these ideas. Cheers!

Kid_Icarus1988 wrote:
Merchant Action: Power Investor (spend Influence to build a Resource Extractor); buckle up, this is probably the Affinity that will see the biggest proposed change, as I’m suggesting a major change to both Action and Bonus. First, the action; it’s decent, and especially helpful late game for certain strategic resources you may not have access to and other Empires are behind on researching. But with my proposed change to the Bonus, that becomes largely unnecessary. So we’re going to go back to the spike, and make it really simple. Cultural Blitz, but with Money, basically. Spend Influence to generate a large sum of Money, and the values would essentially mirror one another. Every 10 turns, a nice big chunk of Money in the bank.

You do know that if you use power investor on an already built extractor it will give you a bunch of money, right? and if you use it on another empire's extractors it will give them money and give you even more

Kid_Icarus1988 wrote:
Merchant Bonus: Mediation (bought resources can be sold to other Empires); I’ve just honestly never been a fan of this one, and not just because it’s obnoxious to still see those resources available for every Merchant even if you’re already buying it from the source. Instead, I would make this one two fold, and it falls right in line with the Expansionist Bonus granting the ability to basically ignore a treaty. Can always trade resources with other Empires and Independent Peoples, regardless of treaty status. Additionally, can trade for discovered resources from other Empires and Independent Peoples, even if that Empire/Independent People has not yet discovered/extracted it (purchasing a resource in this way comes with a higher upfront cost for the initial purchase to establish an extractor for the resource). So basically, if you’re a Merchant Affinity, you can always trade for resources, and you can trade for all resources they own, whether it has an extractor or not, because your purchase buys in the extractor for it.

This ability was reworked with the last patch (Bonny): now instead of mediation, Merchant cultures can buy from anyone regardless of trade treaty.

docktorkain wrote:

You do know that if you use power investor on an already built extractor it will give you a bunch of money, right? and if you use it on another empire's extractors it will give them money and give you even more

I did, but I just think the Power Investor in general is a bit clunky compared to some of the other Actions, like Cultural Blitz or Greener Pastures. Admittedly my proposed change to the bonus is also kind of clunky with the access to something they don't have an extractor on, and it works effectively the same way, but for an Affinity Action I think simplifying it down to just an easy replica of Cultural Blitz just makes things a bit smoother and easier to manage.

This ability was reworked with the last patch (Bonny): now instead of mediation, Merchant cultures can buy from anyone regardless of trade treaty.

I actually just noticed this playing a game last night! I had not played as a Merchant Culture yet, but noticed I was able to purchase from someone I didn't have a treaty with yet. Great change!

I don’t understand militarist active affinity. Maybe I am wrong, but long time ago, their passive ability was also adding extra militia during siege (not only when you was sieged but also when you was sieging). That was more powerful than turning pop into militia. I don’t know how even to use it effectively, maybe only if you have money for upgrade, or if you are playing nomad culture: put this pop into your outposts to grow new units

EsoulBoy wrote:

I don’t understand militarist active affinity. Maybe I am wrong, but long time ago, their passive ability was also adding extra militia during siege (not only when you was sieged but also when you was sieging). That was more powerful than turning pop into militia. I don’t know how even to use it effectively, maybe only if you have money for upgrade, or if you are playing nomad culture: put this pop into your outposts to grow new units

Population movement feels like a bit more advanced use of the ability, but to me Iron Reserves feels like a defensive ability by design. If you're under attack and have no standing military, you can instantly raise a decent military resistance to go along with your home guard. It obviously can be parlayed into an offensive action, by taking the Militia to the frontlines, and/or as you say having an upgrade ready to immeditaely get some stronger units, but there's still the factor of marching them all the way into the fight. If you don't have a city close to the frontlines, you could be burning a lot of valuable turns getting your units there. Ultimately it just feels so defensive in nature, and for me that just doesn't feel right for a Militarist Affinity. As I mentioned, Defenders are almost always going to have a natural advantage anyway; if I'm going Militarist, I want to feel like I can be aggressive and go on the offensive better than all the other Affinities, not defend better when that's already just a natural strength.

One day he'll do a conscript rush

With a close neighbor that is certainly a viable strategy, and a strong one at that, but it's still very situational. Consider a necessary seizure of land on the other side of the world for strategic resources; you can send Conscripts for a free army, but the required travel time all but guarantees your opponent can create more units to counterattack if your troops start to get depleted. Yes, you can send units through Airports, but that requires first having a city close, in which case why not just Conscript from that city? I don't know, I just think it's such a situational strategy that it removes some viability for Militarists to go on the offensive throughout the game, at least with any kind of Affinity based advantage.