Currently there's very little incentive to go heavy-production in the early game even while playing a builder culture such as the Egyptians. Now don't get me wrong, it's not bad as per say to go production but you're better off going for full farmer quarter most of the time and that's because of the existence of "Forced Labour".

At first glance this mechanic might not seem that strong but in reality one sacrificed pop is all it takes to get your first Wonder up and working, not only that but with how easy it is to get in over-population with the Agrarian ability, you have basicaly no reason not to invest into food and use your civilians as an alternative currency for industry. 

Fortunately the problem has a fairly simple fix, sacrificing pop should go hand in hand with a stability hit on the city. Everytime you use Forced Labor you would lose (instantly) x stability per killed civilians, as it's been proposed on the discord this stability hit could increase with eras, ultimately culminating into the Encyclopedia tech which forbid the use of Forced Labor. Civic could also join the party with a choice that'd reduce the stability hit by x% for example. 

Obviously all these parameters don't need to all make it to the game, but it's fair to say that this strategy should come with consequences.

Discussed on the discord with the gracious help of 8houseofelixir, Waper, Alchristi and Invention

I like this idea very much and would like to add my 2 cents: Make empires that forbid Forced labor either gain a grievance on empires who have forced labor or increase the stab hit of using forced labor for other empires. This way the more empires research Labor Charter the more pressured all others empires will be to do it so, or else they'll be the target of more and more grievances or their stab costs for using forced labor will be so high they'll be pressed to not use it too.

Agree very much with this sentiment. There's no logical reason why when I'm apparently killing off thousands of people per turn there shouldn't be some penalty associated with it. Forced labour in its current state just makes agrarian affinity ridiculously op, and all the other affinities are basically irrelevant if you want to build an insanely powerful civ.

Agree, it would help making it less of a replacement for industry.

Yeah, it always struck me as really odd that I am sending a huge chunk of a city's population to certain death just for me to never be punished for it or disincentivised to do so even as time progresses.

Remove the stability bonus every time agrarians get a population and then that stability penalty you get every time you sacrifice one will start to matter.

Roryn411 wrote:

Like Ravenous, I also felt it was really weird that we're able to commit countless attrocities with no disincentive. I proposed making it a civic choice in another thread - similarly to how 'procession' is unlocked. It would help solve the issue of balancing since the other civic choice would also come with a reward, and it would solve the issue of civilisations that lean far towards 'liberty' on the ideological axis being able to work an entire city's population to death. It'd also make playing an actually benevolent civilisation possible without handicapping yourself. Right now, you can try to build a good empire, but as soon as you hit that tempting pop buyout button, you've committed an atrocity. I'm going to copy+paste the solutions I posed in the other thread since people in this thread don't seem to have seen them.

1. The action can have the immoral flavour text (of working people to death) removed or reworked to something more morally neutral (maybe have it explain something like funneling other forms of production to a construction so heavily reduces our the infrastructure needed to support other industries, etc.).

2. The action can be locked for all civilisations except for the ones that have an extreme authoritarian leaning

3. The action can be nerfed so heavily that it's not as often the best option

4. We can change it to be an civic unlock, like the procession action among others.

In my eyes, any of these three issues would solve the issue with roleplaying and immersion, but the fourth one in particularly would be good for balancing it out, and it's my personal favourite choice. This would of course all be accompanied with a nerf, but at least you wouldn't necessarily be committing an atrocity if you're trying to build a 'benevolent' civilisation. In the other thread, people thought it wasn't an issue that egalitarian civilisations can work their people to death which I thought was a bit bizarre, so I'm hoping that this gets some different responses here.

Having it behind a civic wall could be a solution yes, however a stab-hit would still be necessary to balance the mechanic because even in a country that pass law accepting such an act I'm not sure the population would be totaly okay with it :P 

A stab hit seems perfect - one or two shouldn't send you over the edge, but turn 1 rushing a wonder with 16 pops should definitely trigger a rebellion or something. It would have to be balanced around the high stability given by holy sites and wonders (which are the biggest recipients of human sacrifice in my experience), but that shouldn't be too hard.

KurouRingo wrote:

Having it behind a civic wall could be a solution yes, however a stab-hit would still be necessary to balance the mechanic because even in a country that pass law accepting such an act I'm not sure the population would be totaly okay with it :P 

Oh yes, I'm all for the stab hit too. That civic part of the suggestion was just for roleplaying purposes and not allowing liberty-focused or benevolent civs to have free and automatic access to an action like this which is basically an atrocity.

docktorkain wrote:

I like this idea very much and would like to add my 2 cents: Make empires that forbid Forced labor either gain a grievance on empires who have forced labor or increase the stab hit of using forced labor for other empires. This way the more empires research Labor Charter the more pressured all others empires will be to do it so, or else they'll be the target of more and more grievances or their stab costs for using forced labor will be so high they'll be pressed to not use it too.

Fully support this, this would play into roleplay and decision making and would make the game better overall

MetallicGeranium wrote:

Agree very much with this sentiment. There's no logical reason why when I'm apparently killing off thousands of people per turn there shouldn't be some penalty associated with it. Forced labour in its current state just makes agrarian affinity ridiculously op, and all the other affinities are basically irrelevant if you want to build an insanely powerful civ.

I have to say Olmecs are the most ridiculous in my experience. Because you will have control over the whole continent without even fighting, and will have every resource, so incredible money, science, production, food, and a very early world religion. It is very very strong.
Agrarian is also very strong due to the use of population, but it doesn't allow for this crazy early expansion that will probably bottleneck your empire later on.
I mean, with the Olmecs as starter, i can have 35 territories by turn 110, all attached to a town, with control over all harbors / resources available.
While as agrarian, i will be more powerful earlier, but I will eventually struggle to expand that much.

martinovich89 wrote:

MetallicGeranium wrote:

Agree very much with this sentiment. There's no logical reason why when I'm apparently killing off thousands of people per turn there shouldn't be some penalty associated with it. Forced labour in its current state just makes agrarian affinity ridiculously op, and all the other affinities are basically irrelevant if you want to build an insanely powerful civ.

I have to say Olmecs are the most ridiculous in my experience. Because you will have control over the whole continent without even fighting, and will have every resource, so incredible money, science, production, food, and a very early world religion. It is very very strong.
Agrarian is also very strong due to the use of population, but it doesn't allow for this crazy early expansion that will probably bottleneck your empire later on.
I mean, with the Olmecs as starter, i can have 35 territories by turn 110, all attached to a town, with control over all harbors / resources available.
While as agrarian, i will be more powerful earlier, but I will eventually struggle to expand that much.

The difference is that, in reality, assuming human players, Harappans will be stronger than Olmecs, with Olmecs you'll paint the map and your outpost will become free money for your neigbors because you just realisticaly won't have enough ressource to have units guarding them while waitingo attach them or create cities. Meanwhile Harappans will produce a lot of population very fast and will then gain access to both a super strong religion and the ability to spam-build by pop sacrifice too quick to be stopped. 

KurouRingo wrote:

martinovich89 wrote:

MetallicGeranium wrote:

Agree very much with this sentiment. There's no logical reason why when I'm apparently killing off thousands of people per turn there shouldn't be some penalty associated with it. Forced labour in its current state just makes agrarian affinity ridiculously op, and all the other affinities are basically irrelevant if you want to build an insanely powerful civ.

I have to say Olmecs are the most ridiculous in my experience. Because you will have control over the whole continent without even fighting, and will have every resource, so incredible money, science, production, food, and a very early world religion. It is very very strong.
Agrarian is also very strong due to the use of population, but it doesn't allow for this crazy early expansion that will probably bottleneck your empire later on.
I mean, with the Olmecs as starter, i can have 35 territories by turn 110, all attached to a town, with control over all harbors / resources available.
While as agrarian, i will be more powerful earlier, but I will eventually struggle to expand that much.

The difference is that, in reality, assuming human players, Harappans will be stronger than Olmecs, with Olmecs you'll paint the map and your outpost will become free money for your neigbors because you just realisticaly won't have enough ressource to have units guarding them while waitingo attach them or create cities. Meanwhile Harappans will produce a lot of population very fast and will then gain access to both a super strong religion and the ability to spam-build by pop sacrifice too quick to be stopped. 

Hmm, maybe in pvp idk.
But i don't have to wait anything to attach any territory. I can have 2 town and 3 attached territories very early, and just that is a really strong bonus. Population comes really quickly if you choose wisely the spots to plant your outposts on (preferring food to grow pop in a few turns). In 10 turns, you got 2 pop in every outpost, and attach them quickly. You don't need to paint all the map. All you need is to take coastal regions and wonders, then develop enough to rush island regions, and make harbors everywhere before anyone can. Not to mention that as every territory you claim can be almost instantly attached, opponents must declare war to pass through.
I think agrarians have a great early development advantage, while olmecs lead to 1st wonder, 1st attached outposts, 1st second city. And this is huge (if you survive the early game of course, which idk).

martinovich89 wrote:

KurouRingo wrote:

martinovich89 wrote:

MetallicGeranium wrote:

Agree very much with this sentiment. There's no logical reason why when I'm apparently killing off thousands of people per turn there shouldn't be some penalty associated with it. Forced labour in its current state just makes agrarian affinity ridiculously op, and all the other affinities are basically irrelevant if you want to build an insanely powerful civ.

I have to say Olmecs are the most ridiculous in my experience. Because you will have control over the whole continent without even fighting, and will have every resource, so incredible money, science, production, food, and a very early world religion. It is very very strong.
Agrarian is also very strong due to the use of population, but it doesn't allow for this crazy early expansion that will probably bottleneck your empire later on.
I mean, with the Olmecs as starter, i can have 35 territories by turn 110, all attached to a town, with control over all harbors / resources available.
While as agrarian, i will be more powerful earlier, but I will eventually struggle to expand that much.

The difference is that, in reality, assuming human players, Harappans will be stronger than Olmecs, with Olmecs you'll paint the map and your outpost will become free money for your neigbors because you just realisticaly won't have enough ressource to have units guarding them while waitingo attach them or create cities. Meanwhile Harappans will produce a lot of population very fast and will then gain access to both a super strong religion and the ability to spam-build by pop sacrifice too quick to be stopped. 

Hmm, maybe in pvp idk.
But i don't have to wait anything to attach any territory. I can have 2 town and 3 attached territories very early, and just that is a really strong bonus. Population comes really quickly if you choose wisely the spots to plant your outposts on (preferring food to grow pop in a few turns). In 10 turns, you got 2 pop in every outpost, and attach them quickly. You don't need to paint all the map. All you need is to take coastal regions and wonders, then develop enough to rush island regions, and make harbors everywhere before anyone can. Not to mention that as every territory you claim can be almost instantly attached, opponents must declare war to pass through.
I think agrarians have a great early development advantage, while olmecs lead to 1st wonder, 1st attached outposts, 1st second city. And this is huge (if you survive the early game of course, which idk).

Obviously Olmecs and Harappans are for me at the same tier, I don't mean to say Olmecs aren't good because they help you grabt he most important thing in all 4x, land ! But yeah I do think they're not as broken as I've seen some people say, most def strong tho. 

Laliloluhla wrote:

Also I heavily disagree with early agriculture being weak quite the contrary even, Olmecs are strong but that doesn't make the Harappans any worse. They're both massively powerful cultures for the ancient era, olmecs can create more outposts and cities, Harappan outposts create more people and they can construct more buildings with forced labour. Harappans can also rush Olmecs down with runners before they research carpentry. A final point is the harrappan's legacy bonus scales better than the olmec's, though it is true that the influence generation is more useful at the start of the ancient era. Both could use a nerf, the Olmec's javalin thrower is too strong, I'd lower the ambush bonus to +2, maybe lower their base CS to 19, maybe. The Harappans just need forced labour to be tweaked and they should be fine.

The problem with agrarians is that their affinity ability of adding pop if the bar fills up is not really useful in the ancient era. I have senns too many games where the bar never filled up at all and if it fills up it gives you maybe one or two pop. That's not much of a difference. Also the additional food from their district does not actually help them expand. In the ancient era having more building or districts won't help you win the game as much as having more territory. If there would be a building that gives you influence earlier, then this would balance them because it means they have this building earlier than Olmecs or some other civs. But just having infrastructure doesn't mean much and science, production, and merchants also have infrastructure.
Their legacy bonus is actually not that useful as well because at some point (which does happen earlier than in other 4X games) more food becomes useless because of diminishing return and the limit that you can only grow one pop per turn. So agriculture civs might be second tier in the early game with Olmecs being first tier and most other being third tie, but in the long term their abilities are just not that good compared to the others. So I think they need a long-term buff since they won't be able to compete in 300 turn games. In 150 turns maybe but not in 300 turn games as the game is designed at the moment. After turn 100 food becomes very much useless, which is something we discussed here: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/169-game-design/threads/40182-any-idea-to-solve-food-production-being-irrelevant-past-a-certain-amount?page=1#post-316766. Making food more useful in the late game would balance agrarian civs better I think.

ritchiaro wrote:

KurouRingo wrote:

martinovich89 wrote:

MetallicGeranium wrote:

Agree very much with this sentiment. There's no logical reason why when I'm apparently killing off thousands of people per turn there shouldn't be some penalty associated with it. Forced labour in its current state just makes agrarian affinity ridiculously op, and all the other affinities are basically irrelevant if you want to build an insanely powerful civ.

I have to say Olmecs are the most ridiculous in my experience. Because you will have control over the whole continent without even fighting, and will have every resource, so incredible money, science, production, food, and a very early world religion. It is very very strong.
Agrarian is also very strong due to the use of population, but it doesn't allow for this crazy early expansion that will probably bottleneck your empire later on.
I mean, with the Olmecs as starter, i can have 35 territories by turn 110, all attached to a town, with control over all harbors / resources available.
While as agrarian, i will be more powerful earlier, but I will eventually struggle to expand that much.

The difference is that, in reality, assuming human players, Harappans will be stronger than Olmecs, with Olmecs you'll paint the map and your outpost will become free money for your neigbors because you just realisticaly won't have enough ressource to have units guarding them while waitingo attach them or create cities. Meanwhile Harappans will produce a lot of population very fast and will then gain access to both a super strong religion and the ability to spam-build by pop sacrifice too quick to be stopped. 

That's actually not true. Olmecs will always have more cities / bigger than Harappans in the early game since influence is what you needs to build cities and to attach them. They will just always have more workable land than others. Building outposts without attaching them is just one strategy, not the only one that Olmecs are good at. You can also just have one more city or one more attached territory than other civs in the early game.

The growth from Harappans is not strong enough to result in such a higher population (especially since they won't use their affinity meter many times in the ancient era and if they do they only do it on one city) to actually result in a stronger army and since Olmecs can spam influence on their opponent and can keep their territories free from other influence they are way more robust against aggressive action against them since they will always have the better turn-based war support and more cities / territories means more production / food / luxuries / strategics. Also their archer replacement is pretty strong so they can defend themselves if they want to. If you are at war with the Olmecs already the over-culturing feature will make you loose war support. If you are not at war with them, they will either just attach the territories and make you leave them or they will generate grievance against you using their over-culturing ability and then declare a just war against you which you will loose due to war support going down a lot for you and due to the Olmecs having the stronger archer for early game fighting.

Early agriculture is generally weak (compared to other strategies, against the current AI everything is strong :D) since the agricultural bonuses are only strong on wide empires, which you don't have with agriculture civs since they have no way of getting wide empires early.

This assumption might be true in Civilization but it's simply wrong when applied to Humankind. In HK cities spanning only one region are comparatively weak to ones spanning two, it's why it does nothing for the Olmecs to be able to build a second city that early compared to simply paint the map and transition into a good classical where you can turn your outpost in cities with attached territories. Not only that but it's simply false to say Agrarian favors wide empire, they by all mean favor "tall" Empire. 

Their affinity quite litteraly give them +1pop per territory which mean that it's better for them to have less cities but with 2/3 territories each than more cities with almost non territories attached, the only Agrarian that are actually different on this point are the Iroquois. Not only that but you devaluate early specialist to an impressive level, for both gold and science specialist is your only early way to get loads of these ressources, meaning that if you want the most fame possible in Ancient you actually have WAY better chances with Agrarian than any other culture in the game. 

The way you describe your Olmec strategy certainly make them sound strong, because they are, but the same can be done with Harappans. By the time you muster enough grievances and enough army to attack an Harappans player, he will already have masonry for a while and will be able to muster an even better army thru having better tech and more gold than you, and that's not even expanding on the fact a good Harappan player can actually have his level 2 religion as soon as late ancient.

Overall saying Olmecs are better than Harappans is just wrong, Egyptians, Harappans and Olmecs have very clear strength that make them just better than the other culture, but saying that any of these three have significant advantage over the other is simply downright wrong. Their difference in strength doesn't stem from their LTs, EQs or EUs (all great) but from their culture affinity and if we're going that way early Agrarians are by far better early and mid game. 

Laliloluhla wrote:

@ritchiaro
If you were only getting one or two uses of the agrian ability and only one or two population you were playing them very wrong. I managed to start getting the bar to fill up every single turn later in the game, and once every 5 turns near the end of the ancient era. You also say having more buildings doesn't make it easier to win when districts are probably the best buildings you can make at the start of the game and continue to snowball success. I also don't get why you say infrastructure doesn't provide much science or production, or why you're comparing it to merchants. Their legacy bonus is also very useful for future agrarian culture for their food meter. I do agree though that food in general could be better. since non-agrarian civs don't get much benefit from having an excess.

Here's a game where I only played agricultural cultures on Humankind difficulty, I didn't even end it at 150 turns, I ended it early at 118 turns or so.

@Laliloluhla In the late game for sure. But we were taking about the ancient era. How often were you able to use it in the ancient era and how much pop did you get out of it in the ancient era?

I am comparing agriculture civs to merchant civs because merchant civs can use money to buy infrastructure just like agriculture civs can use pop to buy infrastructure.

I think the food meter is also not super useful in the late game because even without an agriculture civ you till get 1 pop per turn per city. And you don't even have the the capacity to make use of more than one pop per turn. So sacrificing them is what you do, which is just like another kind of currency than "money" except for you can only use it on the city that has it instead of the cities that actually need infrastructure support because they are newer.

Your turn 118 win on Humankind does not really say much. You can get it done earlier and with more fame with Olmec -> Mauryans -> Khmer -> Joseon. But this all always depends on randomness and other strategies besides food-focus or non-food focus as well.

I also double checked, turns out I won the game somewhere around turn 105 not 118 like I said.

Haudenosaunee Turn 105.ctr

Laliloluhla wrote:

I just said I could use it every five turns at the end of the ancient era. Used it over four times and got more than 25 population total from it( as well as having 1 population per turn from my cities as well), and I'd consider it better early game than the merchant cultures early game. Also the ability to use pop as a buyout currency is still effective late game, merchant cultures are the most powerful in the game so of course it might look weak compared to them but you only need to attach a couple territories and then this ability makes agrarians very capable of buying a city out, and like I said I thinks it's better early game too.

And like I mentioend, of course this looks weak when you compare it to the most broken cultures in the game (don't know why you put mauryans in there) but that doesn't discount it from being strong(I also played the english during the medieval era which are probably one of the weakest cultures in that era aside from their longbow and agrarian affinity ability). You yourself said you only managed to use their ability once or twice in the game which makes me wonder how effective you were at playing them.

More than 25 population when used more than four times? How many cities did you have? If you had 5 cities in the ancient era you were sticking around for very long, given that you needed more than 500 influence for those outposts to become cities and given that non-influence-focussed civs generally take a little longer to collect that amount of influence. But I guess that's a valid strategy too. With Olmecs I see myself moving on quicker to the next era so that I actually can increase the city cap with philosophy to administer those cities too.

Putting Mauryans there since influence is broken in the early game and their district is generating it most reliably in the classical era :) But I think in the classical it does not matter that much what you pick if you started with Olmecs and you are transitioning to Khmer. Maya and Greeks are also working well as a replacement in this general type of strategy, they are a little bit worse in the classical era but they are a stronger investment into the late game. If you stay longer in the ancient era and already have your 5 cities, then influence is not as crucial in the classical, so then continuing to have access to influence-generating districts is less important for sure.

But having a variety of play styles is good. That makes a game interesting. Your strategy and mine seem to result in about the same outcome. So for a game of this length they seem to be somewhat balanced. The question is what happens in a 300 turn game. We don't know everything about the late game but currently it looks like population and food in general is becoming less valuable in the late game. So that might or might not mean that food-focus would get weaker. I don't remember the concrete modifier of population of stability but I think population might mean you need to construct less stability-generating districts and buildings. We will see how it plays out (pun intended). I just think that based on the current trajectory food needs some buff for the late game.

The ability is not city based, it's territory based, meaning cities and their sectors, you get one pop for each.Harappans Turn 39.ctr

Also turn 40 is when I exited the Ancient era. It's true that we don't know what will happen in 300 turn games. We can only hope it's good and that things will be balanced for that time.

ritchiaro wrote:

@Laliloluhla Does that work on outposts too? I think it said "Creates 1 population per territory in all of your cities.". So do outposts have to be attached to citites to get this get the pop? Because if yes it is still influence-reliant since attaching is also getting expensive. If they don't have to be attached this is way stronger in the early game than I thought it would be.

No you have to attach the outposts, but don't let that discourage you since with proper city management, and maybe even a war or two you can ramp up very quickly. You may think the fact it doesn't work on outposts makes it just okay, I think it's still too strong even without that.