Am I missing something when it comes to the Baray, because it seems insanely overpowered.

I was building 2-3 of these per city and these improvements alone would contribute 30-40 food, 20-30 industry, 10-20 gold, and 10-20 science. I don't know why I would build anything else. Nothing in the infrastructure or the other quarters comes close to their output. I get that they don't allow population to grow, but who cares when you're growing pops every 2-4 turns.

The Baray seems like far and away the absolute best thing to be building in Medieval as long as you have the stability. Am I missing something?

As it stands, I feel like the river adjacency bonus should be dropped to +2, maybe +3. +5 seems way too strong.

Yeah, some emblematic quarters are way too good, and spamming them becomes a "go-to" strategy. While others are quite crappy or situational, so you don't really end up building them. I had an idea of making the EQ a bit more unique, by only being able to place one per territory and making them all quite powerful. It's not a suggestion that doesn't come without drawbacks (wider empires can make better use of them), but would make them way more balanced and "unique".

Elhoim wrote:

Yeah, some emblematic quarters are way too good, and spamming them becomes a "go-to" strategy. While others are quite crappy or situational, so you don't really end up building them. I had an idea of making the EQ a bit more unique, by only being able to place one per territory and making them all quite powerful. It's not a suggestion that doesn't come without drawbacks (wider empires can make better use of them), but would make them way more balanced and "unique".

Would giving some of the stronger districts an adjacency penalty for being placed next to another of the same district be viable? (or perhaps other district types).

It's a possibility but might be a bit messy to show UI-wise.

Limiting it to one per city could be another option - besides a district adjacency penalty.

But I honestly think it's just too strong. The penalty would have to be pretty massive for me to even care. When tiles are being highlighted with +15 or more food, +8 or more industry, +5 or more gold, and +5 or more science, it would take a pretty massive penalty for me to not be willing to build that.

Where other districts make you choose a resource to collect from a tile, the Baray says "naw, collect them all, and in big numbers than any of your other districts produce!"

I guess down the line if other districts can get really large bonuses from infrastructure and workers, you might wish you had room to build more of them instead of a Baray. But when a Baray can effectively double a small cities yields with just 1 district in the early game, it doesn't seem likely you're going to give that up just for a different bonus down the line.

I think a +2 bonus per adjacent river tile might balance it. Honestly, even that might still be too good.

Actually, after reading this paper on Khmer architecture, I might lean toward a total rework:

https://re.public.polimi.it/retrieve/handle/11311/1060996/304191/document.pdf

Specifically, they note throughout the paper the tie between Barays and ceremonial/ritualistic function:

The reasons for the construction of the barays (whether they were functional, or ritualistic, or both) is a complex issue of Khmer archaeology as a whole and certainly cannot be addressed by the present author. I would only note here that the existence of the above-mentioned alignments, which are certainly intentional, reinforces the presence of a ritual function, since it was the Khmer kings themselves who drew attention to these alignments by the construction of the island temples.

Perhaps it would make more sense if Barays had a requirement to be built adjacent to (or on?) rivers, and that they provide a small food and small faith bonus (flat bonus, not river adjacency dependent)? Perhaps something like +4 food and +5 faith (not sure if that is appropriate difficult for me to gage the strength of faith bonuses). This should include the tile's natural food yields. The bonuses should be counteracting the fact that you don't get any citizens for the district and - as far as I know - the district won't improve from future technology advancements.