FlamingKetchup wrote:

EffAMES wrote:
third rule: an emlematic district upgrading an existing one should only add things but not remove basic necessary functions.

EffAMES wrote:
- Huns/Mongols emlematic district: Ordu/Orda - third rule

This one, I don't agree with (the rest are quite accurate). Huns and Mongols are very strong solely by there Emblematic unit, and the Emblematic District is a well deserved penalty that helps represent their nomadic nature.

just because something is more realistic or historically accurate doesn't mean it's better for the overall game balance/feel.
why don't we just turn all the cities back into outposts because the cultures had no cities.
and all of a sudden all the people would scream what the shit is about.

For me it doesn't feel good to remove a basic necessary game mechanic just like that. also it makes it impossible to get expansion stars because only connected terretories are counted. so another mechanic that is removed with this.

Why have emblematic districts restricted to that era? You should still be able to build them (But with higher costs) so you keep more of the unique culture. With the pacing issues in this game, it would help. Currently, you are rushing to get out your embematic district before switching over, but if you could continue building, the desicion becomes simpler and is more about fame. It doesn't makes sense you suddenly forget how to make the districts.

RandomRandy wrote:

Harappans ability bugged "+1 food to district" gives +1 food to district and exploatation

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this appears to be true for any bonus that says "+X yield on district producing yield". It massively affects the Joseon because the Seowon gives +3 research on district producing research, which affects all coastal tiles being exploited. If a city has multiple territories you can stack this bonus for each Seowon.

Scientist focus seems to be pretty terrible right now.

Because for some reason you need to research 15 techs to get full stars, but only 12 are in each Era. Other people only need to research 10. (science stars should be reduce to 12 needed for full)
Another issue is that going full science means you stuck at everything else. (meaning no other stars are easy to get)
Until you hit the OP Joseon, any other culture will produce similar science to you.

And please limit all those bonis that stack infinitely.
Per pop needs a maximum, per territory too, per trade route too etc.

Name bonis that increase all tile yields as such, it's really difficult to understand otherwise.
And those also should stack infinitely or things like the Seowon should only affect the territory it's in.

I like what Amplitude has done with the affinities. Having both a passive and active ability is fun, and makes the choice of a culture feel much more substantial in affecting the way I play the game. 

I didn't play enough different cultures to make much commentary on balance. However, I do feel that Carthage's Legacy Trait (50% discount on all gold buyouts) is too strong. 25% percent seems much more reasonable. I feel the same way about the Franks' Legacy Trait. +50% food is pretty nuts.

Speaking of food, any emblematic districts with yields based on population were really quite explosive in my experience. Barays come to mind.

About the cultures:

Ancient era

• Assyrians emblematic quarter is inferior to than the normal garrison.
• Babylonians powerful EQ, lackuster trait, probably fine.
• Egyptian and Harappans traits are bugged and apply to all terrain, not just districts. Harappan EQ is weak and could also exploit industry to have synergy with watermill.
• Hittites is fine, but if a bit boring given that their EQ is not permament.
• Mycenaeans, a strong trait but the EQ is quite weak.
• Nubians fine.
• Olmecs the trait is lackluster now with population giving influence (the same can be said about liberty ideology), the EQ seems fine.
• Phoenicians the increased rush buy cost make their trait much less useful and their EQ need fishing (and so do other emblematic harbors) which is strange given that cultures with emblematic garrisons don't need city defence to build their EQ.
• Zhou is a big winner on the stability and pop influence changes, the EQ should probably be able to be placed anywhere to make its mountain adjacency easier to use.

• Achaemenid Persians is very powerful now with a powerful legacy trait, giving them maybe 6 city cap while everyone else would have 4. Immortals are quite good given the lack of an anti cavalry upgrade in classical era.

• Aksumites their trait seems very weak, the EQ is dependent on spreading religion but I think it is fine, the emblematic unit could be a bit better, just now it is only somewhat stronger than the swordsman.

• Carthaginians same issues as Phoenicians.

• Celts and Maya have similar issue with their traits as Egypt and harrapans, making them much stronger than they should be.

• Goths and Romans are both have a weak emblematic quarter. Goths have the issue their emblematic unit is on a leaf tech which do very little except unlocking horsemen. Roman unit come very late in classical era, roman trait (and all army cap increases) hardly do anything at all.

• Greeks have a very strong unit, the hoplite, the trait and EQ is nothing special and is ok in terms of powerlevel.

• Huns trait is very powerful especially given it apply to their unit. They can use their ability to move population to their ordus to create huge amount of hordes, probably too powerful for its era given that the classical era lack both a generic anti cavalry unit and ranged unit.

• Mauryans their trait depend on Independent People which often make it pretty lackluster the unit and district are fine.

I really felt in this open dev that every era had lots of cultures I was excited to play and that every affinity (except militarist, because I try to play peaceful games) had something to offer. That being said, there are a few things I felt could be improved slightly. For the merchant affinity, I often found that all the luxury deposits in territories were already built and that I could not use the ability. It was really nice when I did get a chance to use it, but it only came up a few times. Maybe being able to use it in unclaimed territories? But that feels a little too strong. For asthete I still don't really understand cultural conversion and even when I did not focus on influence I never really had any of territories converted to other cultures so the ability didn't seem that useful. I found the science and industry abilities to be great as is, and they were really helpful in getting me caught up and building everything in my construction queue.

Now for agrarian, which is my favorite playstyle. I did not know it was on a fixed cooldown and thought it still opperated like in previous open devs where excess food helped you use the ability more. Knowing it is a fixed cooldown means that food becomes less important of a resource. Once you have enough food being produced in your city to sustain your population, which is not too hard if you choose a few agrarian cultures, there seems to be no real benefit in investing more in food. Why build a farmer's quarter or a food producing eq if excess food does nothing? All other resources do more if you produce extra, but food seems to be an outlier which makes it far less useful.

Aesthete:

Both abilities are useless, couse the influence mechanic only generates war support and grievances. That are useless without an army, worse, they are actually hindering if you don't have an army because it annoys your neighbours and make them go to war with you. Without that army, it's suicide. So if based on those traits alone Aesthete should NEVER be the choice. If I want to go to war I would take militarist instead, always. I also don't know why agrarian gets to INFLUENCE people to go over to your cities instead of that ability being here. Maybe make it, that they come only from cities you have influence over, but still that ability belongs here.

Agrarian:
Like I mentioned above, why does a farmer focused culture get to steal people? It makes no sense. Gaining pop is fine, that is what this culture is about. But stealing it from neighbours? How does that work for agrarian? "Look how much better our farms are than yours! Dump those science facilities and come work on our farms!" Also, never seen any grievance generated with that.
Passive seems too fleeting. 5 stability last one turn. All passive abilities are temporary, consistency here I really like, and wouldn't change. If it gave like +5 stability for 10 turns instead of one turn, that could make it useful, although I don't know how is that useful for food base strategies...

Builder:
This active ability is insane (the same with the science one). It just skyrockets you anywhere you want to be. Maybe don't include money here? Give half the values? Going back and forth from science culture to builder culture and vice versa and using those abilities seem like the only way to keep the tech era close to an actual era. And with so many problems around era pacing this seems broken, especially when by taking those cultures you prohibit others from using that to even keep up.
Passive seems better than agrarian if only for the fact that builders actively want to build stability draining districts. Still, one turn is too fleeting. Give it 10 turns or even just 5 and it will be fine.

Expansionist:
Could never use the active ability. Could see entire map, and every territory had one problem or another that prohibited me from using it. The problem is, the reasons were not clear at all. It stated on multiple occasions "can't be done because of relations". Great, what relations? Couse I had the same thing for my ally territory, same for territory of someone I was at peace with, and the same with someone I was at war with. So what relations? And at another time there were other reasons, also that gave me no clue what the real issue is.
Passive seems useless most of the time, because it generates grievances anyway, and with other cultures you can freely trespass most of the time anyway (you just click past their territory). Again if you have the army, its not a problem, couse your neightbours fear greviances and your retaliation so they don't trespass, if you don't have army, they don't care and if you try to demand they will go to war, and "trespass" anyway.

Merchant:
Active useless most of the time. Even on marginal cases that I want to use someone's resource they have no technology to extract it on their own, why would I build lets say an oil extractor for my neighbour to try to buy it, when he will go to war in few turns, maybe even with me? This could be very interesting as a bargaining chip in a deal with a neighbour, but the game don't have those, and as relations don't cost anything, they are highly unstable. With that, right now this ability is useless.
Passive seems like the strongest passive in the game that can give you affordable access to every luxury on the map, and those bonuses when stacked are really powerful. But also trade routes are unreliable so it balances out. I like it.

Militarist:
This active is utterly broken. It gives you a faster population growth rate that an agrarian culture can't even dream off. You make levies of all of your population in one turn. Because the city have no population in it, it probably produces one population each turn. You just empty it over, and over again. After few turns, you disband those levies back to the city and done, you have max city population. You didn't even have to stop your research or production for that (most of them come from districts anyway). And you can do that in every city at no cost or cooldown. This one needs to change.
Passive seems very good and fitting, I like it.

Scientist:
About the active I have the same opinion as about builder.
Passive I really like the idea off (for future, right now eras go too fast), but it does nothing in the last era. Right now it doesn't matter couse the active is so good. But if you tweak the active (and I think it needs a bit of an adjustement) it may become not enough (for the last era only).

About individual cultures - I like them a lot. They are very varied and interesting most of the time. The special districts seem powerfull, overly so. I have concerns about affinities and their distribution in every era. Every era has only one agrarian culture, besides contemporary era - where there are two. Why more agrarian in contemporary era of all the places? Ancient and classical could use those way more. There is only one builder culture in every era other than industrial. 2 merchant cultures every era before industrial and industrial has 0. Two militarist cultures almost every era but NONE for contemporary. Those distributions are strange and somehow feel very restrictive. On the other hand they are still not enough to incentivise you to transition to new culture, when some special districts are so powerful that you hinder yourself more by not building them everywhere and trying to transition. Transcending doesn't feel like a great option either. You trade a perk that lasts for the rest of the game, and provably a great new district for an ambiguous and only potential fame, that you can get anyway just by staying in current era. Actually, transcending feels horrible like a desperation move than reasonable choice. Just waiting feels like the most obvious and best option. An in almost all cases it probably is.

Also industrial era seems to have a unit technology identity crisis. You have French outdated melee cavalry, German u-subs, and Zulu bushwakers, all at the same time and similar strength. Historically time-wise, sure fine, it actually existed. But comparable strength? Hell no, it makes this era units look like a joke, and doesn't fit the game.

Also that's probably a tech to era pacing problem, but many special units are way too far in technology tree. Some to a point, that you won't see them in the right era even with era pacing fixed. Example: Praetorians, even with fixed era pacing you will almost never use them as Rome. They are literaly the last technology of that era. With that you will still use them, they are good units, but never as Rome, always as a next culture. That feels bad. If they need to be so far in tech tree, maybe cultures can recieve a science discount towards technologies enabeling their units/districts? That would at least give an incentive to research them earlier than usualy and prioritize them?

All in all they are fine.  I must have overlooked the passive effects of affinities, as I only noticed some of them by the end of my game.  I never found myself using any of the active abilities of affinities.  That is probably not optimal, they just never felt useful.  The Militarist active especially felt painful, as population is hard to come by.  The AI spammed the Agrarian active ability (which I didn't know at the time) to steal my pops, and that was properly annoying.  

My cultures/affinities were:  Phoenician (Merchant) -> Roman (Expansionist) -> Aztec (Militarist) -> Joseon (Scientist) -> British (Merchant).  As before, I loved being able to refocus my empire as the eras progressed and our interests changed.  The cultures themselves seem really good overall, and none felt specifically problematic to me.  The British special building seemed like it could be OP, since you can build 1/territory of a vassal, but since they also help the vassal (if I understood it well) that balances out.  The Phoenician special building seemed to disappear as a building option after a time, and I never figured out if that was intentional or not.  I think I missed something on how long special buildings are available for.

Affinities feel weak.  But to be honest, I didn't pay close enough attention to them this go around.  Merchant "active" never got used, in part because I didn't understand it well and because it felt like it benefits others more than me.  I missed out on using the expansionist "active", but it sounds good.  Militarist active did not feel worth it due to lack of pops, but I'd imagine they serve a useful defense.  Scientist passive might be a little too good, BUT I couldn't benefit from it since tech\science was so hard this opendev.

Since merchant and militarist actives seemed weak, I largely ignored affinities and chose based on culture bonuses.

Builder

• Active: Can convert Money and Science to Industry
  A fun ability in the mid-game. If you laid the groundwork in your cities (in terms of decent money/science production) you can get the snowball rolling with this, especially if you use it to build more research quarters or have a strong emblematic quarter like the Khmer. In the ancient era, however, this feels not worth it since your cities barely produce any money or science. Perhaps the ability could provide a minimum industry value like +30 or +50? I don't think this would be overpowered. Not getting any science is enough of a trade-off to justify a larger industry gain.
• Passive: Gain +10 Stability instantly when finishing a new District
  Not sure if this is working? Or perhaps the stability tooltip just doesn't show it. As the Egyptians in the ancient era, I never got +10 stability apparently.

Expansionist

• Active: Can spend money to let an army steal ownership of a territory over a few turns, generating a grievance
• Passive: Can freely trespass
  I think both abilities are fun and way better than in previous versions. The active can save you a lot of influence early on when influence is still scarce. If you're quick, you can even annex independent people's outposts before they're converted into cities (not sure if this is an intended feature). However, if you don't have any neighbours (for example in the early game) the active ability is not useful at all. Suggestion: The active ability could also allow you to annex neutral territories. Basically, let an Expansionist culture choose whether they want to expand by spending influence or by spending money.

Merchant

• Active: Can spend influence to instantly construct resource extractors in territory owned by other empires
  This ability is veeery situational. In the early game I want to spend my influence on other things. When I finally have influence to spend, all extractors have already been built. Perhaps consider removing the influence cost in exchange for a cooldown or replacing the ability altogether.
• Passive: discount on buying resources, more income from outgoing trade routes, and can resell resources they bought
  The discount is nice to have, but buying resources is not that expensive in the first place (after the first couple of eras, that is). I'm not sure if the reselling resources is working. When I try to buy such a resource from a Merchant AI, it shows up in the list with a special symbol next to it, but the buy button is grayed out.

With only a few games, and this as my first beta I played, don't have much to add besides the fact I was unware that passives even existed for much of the game, and never figured out what the passives were in game besides the Scientist, Aesthete, and Expansionist Affinities. Some Cultures also seemed way more powerful than others, even compared to later cultures (Imo the Franks stick out for this if I understand them correctly.) 

I did lose a war at one point due to the ai upgrading their culture to militarist and instantly raising a homeguard as the huns, which felt awful at the time but is probably fair.

There are many cases in which a multi territorial city can reach crazy yield by stacking emblematic quarters. Mughals quarter for example give +3 industry per worker (in comparison a factory infrastructure in the next era only give +2). A city with 10 territories can build 10 of those and thus add +30 industry to each worker which can lead to hundreds or thousands of industry. Maybe emblematic quarter effects need to be limited in how many times they can apply to a single city to avoid these crazy yields.

Goodluck wrote:

There are many cases in which a multi territorial city can reach crazy yield by stacking emblematic quarters. Mughals quarter for example give +3 industry per worker (in comparison a factory infrastructure in the next era only give +2). A city with 10 territories can build 10 of those and thus add +30 industry to each worker which can lead to hundreds or thousands of industry. Maybe emblematic quarter effects need to be limited in how many times they can apply to a single city to avoid these crazy yields.

I think the only solution to balance these is to make sure that all the things that give yields per pop/worker/district/territory can only be build/applied once per city. => Such boni should only come from infrastructure.

Regarding the affinity abilities: The agrarian one is far the most powerful. Why? Because its a button that you want to click as often as possible (well, not in era 1/2 when influence is scarce, but after that). The other builder/scientists are much more situational and have a much higher opportunity cost (converting science to production and vice versa). They can be incredibly powerful though (especially the production to science one). The merchant one is also nice to have, but again more situational, same goes for expansionist and militarist. The militarist one can be exploited to hell though...

And you definitely need to make them more prominent, I think >50% of the players don't know about them.

Militarist ability need a cost and cooldown like the other affinity abilities. Right now it become very overpowered once you get access to conscripts and even before that with hordes who can use it to drop pops in their outpost for hordes.

Shataraterevar wrote:

Agrarian:
Like I mentioned above, why does a farmer focused culture get to steal people? It makes no sense.

Expansionist:
Could never use the active ability. Could see entire map, and every territory had one problem or another that prohibited me from using it. The problem is, the reasons were not clear at all...Passive seems useless most of the time, because it generates grievances anyway, and with other cultures you can freely trespass most of the time anyway (you just click past their territory).

The Agrarian passive ability does make sense. There have been several time in history that people from one area have moved to another because of better food availability.

The ability to trespass freely just by clicking on the other side of their territory should be eliminated, except in a case where you have a unit that gets trapped inside a border where movement had been allowed but now isn't. Otherwise clicking on the other side of a closed territory should route your army around it, not through it.

MarLard wrote:

- Harappans: Was learning the game so didn't pay much attention to their balance, but I did have an issue with them: their music (I'm assuming it's their specific theme) grates on the nerves VERY FAST. I'm sorry, I'm sure someone worked very hard to make it historically accurate but that irregular, strident flute is too present, distracting and irritating for a slow-paced game where you're going to hear it on loop while thinking. A friend who came to watch me play also immediately remarked on the music being irritating. I turned it off 10 mins in, which I usually never do with games.

I actually liked that one! It seems better than it was in Victor. Or maybe that's in my head? Anyway, I was enjoying it.

The Zhou music, on the other hand, needs a serious pass through a normalizer. The volume swing on that harp-like instrument is insane.