FlamingKetchup wrote:

Bernardx10 wrote:

Dunno if fits in this topic but i think would be more smooth the transition in the eras if the players could construct the previous quarters in the next era as rebound even if they dont had started previously, i say this more because military quarters are complete forgotten or became obsolete in the first era by the one who have it. Another thing naval units should embark a little more earlier even if they would have a slower pace. 

I definitely agree that the ability to build Emblematic District should be kept, especially with the one ED per territory rule we have now.

+1

Kronix wrote:

I don't have any specific feedback for any of the individual cultures that has not already been discussed; however, I would like to point out that the current mechanic for picking ANY new culture/affinity at the start of each era feels like it takes away from the story each game is trying to create. For example, starting agrarian and switching to militaristic in the next era feels WRONG.

 

Upon entering a new era, if the player picks a culture within the same affinity (or progresses with the same culture) the player should be rewarded with options like: 

• Some kind of feast or celebration event, that grows the current population or boosts production temporarily in existing cities (scales with era).
• A stability bonus unlocked for the new era (i.e., +5% stability in all existing cities); and the bonus would not apply to any new cities founded and would expire at the end of the era.

 

Upon entering a new era, if the player picks a culture with a different affinity, they should have to incur some kind of resource cost to switch affinities and make a decision like:

• Pay “x” amount of gold or influence (scales with era)
• Lose “x” amount of population in current city (scales with era)
• Suffer a stability penalty (i.e., -5% stability in all existing cities) that does not apply to new cities and expires and the end of the era.

 

Also, I realize this might prove extremely tedious, but I think each culture would benefit from being assigned a “preferred” ideologies/government style, and the player would unlock special era bonuses for the chosen culture if their current government closely matches the chosen culture’s preferred play style.  I think this would also add depth to our decision making with events and picking up certain civics.  

I agree with this. The current culture system definitely needs work. It's going to be extremely difficult for the devs to balance this current culture system which you can already start to see people figuring out the min/max approach to this culture game mechanic. At least for the early game.

In my opinion, when you get to Era 1 (Ancient) from the nomad/exploring phase, the very first culture choice should be the most important choice you'll have to make the entire game. Right now there's zero Fs given with this choice as you can quickly get to era 2 and pick something entirely different. And then rinse and repeat until you can out-spam the AI. This technically makes no sense historically and logically.

I'll start my feedback by focussing on a few broader points and how they impact on the affinities and cultures.

1. Pop is King

Pops do a lot in this game. In particular, they either produce FIMS or form your armies. This means that having a lot of pops gives you access to pretty much everything important, giving agrarian cultures (or those who have picked one at some stage) a big edge. In the Closed Beta, that combined to make the AI that consistently went Agrarian outshine the others. When I started picking those cultures, I began to see why. You have the most productive cities in terms of all four resources and so much pop that it almost forces you to churn out a big army just to make use of them.

2. Stability is the limiting factor on construction

The main thing that stops you constructing districts is the stability impact. I like that and I think it makes placing districts something really impactful that you really have to take your time over. UNTIL you unlock the Commons Quarter, that is. Then, assuming you have the production, you just pump those bad boys out into huge monotonous regions of Commons Quarters and your stability issues disappear in the rear-view mirror. Heaven forbid you choose the Italians in the Industrial era. Rather than being a cultural powerhouse they become masters of construction, because the primary limiting factor is removed. On the other hand, early game Builders like the Egyptians struggle to flex their muscles because once you've attached a territory to your city you can only afford to build a handful of districts before hitting the 30% stability wall.

I think the Commons Quarter needs a rework. I think it should be available from the start of the game, reflecting temples, stadia, etc. However, it should be capped so that its placement is much more significant. Perhaps the cap could increase as you unlock more eras, allowing your cities to scale up in size in a smoother way, rather than the big spike at CQ unlock that exists at the moment.

3. Affinities tend to produce a glut of a particular resource

This kind of goes without saying, but Merchants have an overabundance of money, Builders an overabundance of industry, Scientists an overabundance of science, and Agrarians an overabundance of food (effectively meaning pops). There's a bit of weirdness in the fact that influence is a somewhat ambiguous resource: it handles literal cultural influence, but also expansion. I'll come back to that point. Militarist cultures sort of have an overabundance of war, but not a particular resource.

The Scientist affinity's passive ability is a great example of one that allows you to make better use of the resource you have in abundance. Having more techs available to research means you have somewhere to put all of that science. The pacing was off in the latest build and that diminished the effect, but the principle is solid. Sacrificing scarce industry and money to get even more science, on the other hand... meh.

The point I'm making is that the affinity abilities work best when they allow you to convert a superabundant resource into something useful. The Merchant ability should allow you to invest money for an influence and relations payout, for example. The Agrarian ability should allow you to move pops from your old centres to new cities that are starting up, or sacrifice pops to produce a different resource, for example. The Expansionist ability is great, but why does it work through money? Let it be a way to make use of excess influence. Following from my earlier suggestion about a CQ rework, why not have Builders able to build an additional CQ? This would soak up industry and grant access to extra stability, which Builders are the most thirsty for.

4. Harbours/the coast

One final point which doesn't relate that much to the others is that I think harbours need a rework and that this impacts on the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. At the moment coastal exploitation is a bit weird. I don't want to build my cities right next to the sea because my districts can't expoit coastal tiles, making them less lucrative when placed on the coast. This means my harbour is usually detached from the rest of the city. That issue is compunded by the way that the harbour exploits tiles, which means that it's often best to stick it way out on the end of a peninsula wherever there happens to be a broad area of coastal tiles. When I played Phoenicians -> Carthaginians, this meant that I had my havens, cothons, and harbours miles apart and miles away from my actual city each producing huge yields but not synergising with MQs to create a trading port. This issue is compounded by MQs not feeling as stability-cost-efficient when competition between districts is intense.

Personally I think it's a bit weird that we can only build one coastal improvement in each territory, when I might have a city that spans the entire coast. Coastal cities today may have cargo/commercial ports, marinas, and fishing harbours which extend over huge areas. Those three functions are rarely rolled into one. Also, on many real coastlines fishing is done on  a small scale without any formal infrastructure. Boats are pulled up on the beaches of fishing villages. In game terms, I would say that fishing villages are a land-side feature that exploits the coast for food. Fishing harbours are hubs for the exploitation of sea resources over wider distances.

I think there are a few different ways this could be reworked. The first thing is that harbours shouldn't exploit tiles the way they do  - players should be encouraged to build their harbours in natural harbours and bays, not way out on the end of peninsulas, as has been the case throughout history. Therefore, whatever resources they provide should be based more on the adjacency of land/other quarters than of coastal tiles. Why not let FQs be Farming/Fishing and exploit adjacent coastal tiles for food. You already have a little visual feature for exploited coastal tiles, which would look much better just adjacent to the land. A territory's fishing harbour could then be a district that provides a flat food bonus, perhaps with a bonus per adjacent FQ. Trading harbours as separate entities could then focus more explicitly on money and trade, perhaps with a flat money production and bonuses for trade and adjacent MQs. These would eventually become your cargo ports. Marinas (producing influence, reflecting tourism) could be unlocked in later eras. Perhaps dockyards could be a feature, boosting industry and the production of military vessels (again, not based on adjacent coastal tiles but on adjacent makers quarters).

To finish up, let's talk about the Haven and Cothon again. For me the Haven is like an upgraded trading harbour and could work like that. Replaces the trading harbour and is more powerful. The Cothon, on the other hand, is like an early/improved dockyard that provides a fortified location to store a military fleet. If harbours are reworked, I think that that these two EQs are easily accomodated. Overall, I recognise that the rework to coasts I'm proposing is substantial and perhaps unlikely to happen before launch. However I think it has the potential to make coasts the rich and highly developed areas they are (and have been) in the real world. Right now, the weirdness in how your cities interact them makes Phoenicia & Carthage not feel quite right.

The contemporary Japanese trait tooltip seems bugged.

I know I'm really late but I just wanted to throw my hat in and note a few cultures that I think need a buff:

1. Assyrians: The main problem with the assyrians is the dissonance between their affinity and their abilities - they're expansionist, butt their abilities (bonus movement speed and an EU focused on ransacking) encourage you to ransack outposts you could be claiming for yourself, and they don't have any influence generation to establish new outposts. The way I'd suggest to fix this would be adding some sort of influence generation per ransack to the dunnu, so that you can still run around ransacking, but now you can replace those outposts with your own, allowing you to expand
2. Goths: the goths are one of, if not the weakest culture in the game, for a few reasons. Firstly, as far as I can tell, their bonuses to combat strength on ransacking seem to only speed up the ransack, rather than giving you an actual bonus to combat strength while fighting. Furthermore, their bonus to fighting on enemy districts with the gothic cavalry is negated by the fact that cavalry can't get into enemy districts without siege weapons, making them incredibly situational at best. And finally, the EQ provides a tiny influence to faith and influence that doesn't scale at all. And as there are multiple problems, there need to be multiple changes. My suggestions would be to have the ransacking bonus apply in combat as well, to have gothic cavalry be able to have some sort of special wall jump ability to get the district fighting bonus OR to have the bonus apply when adjacent to enemy districts as well, and finally to have the tumulus, as a grave, give more influence and faith the more units you've lost and/or killed. 
3. Romans: Each individual part of the Romans has a problem with it, and most of them have less to do with the culture themselves, and more to do with a game feature that works against them. Firstly, the LT. At first glance, it seems pretty cool - bigger armies means more troops right? Well the problem is that you'll always be able to just reinforce as many as you like, making this obsolete. There are two ways I can think of to fix this. Either have upkeep be based on number of armies rather than individual units, allowing the romans to be more upkeep efficient, or put a limit on the number of reinforcements/turn to make the army size valuable. Next is the triumphal arch, where the problem is simply that despite the +3 stability, it still has the -10 that all districts have, and 3 influence for 7 stability is not a worthwhile tradeoff - this quarter only provides positive stability on victorious cities. As such, the way to fix this district is simple: remove the -10 stability. Finally, there's the EU, the praetorian guard. I actually think this unit is really good… if you can get it. With the current problem with tech, it is essentially impossible to get to the EU while it's still useful. As such, this unit will become useful when the eras are brought back in line with tech speed, as right now the eras pass so fast that you'll never use this unit.
4. English: The English have one main problem: their EQ, which is a garrison. Their LT and EU are fine, but the problem with the stronghold is that it's far too situational - you can only place it once per territory, meaning that in most situations the enemy will just find a place to battle other than where it is. My suggestion for this, and for a lot of the garrison EQ's actually, would be to have the bonuses apply to every garrison in the territory with the EQ. This way the bonus can be applied much more widely, and becomes much more useful
5. Aztecs: Although the EQ could provide a bit more stability, the main problem with the Aztecs is their EU: because of the CS difference, even when a great swordsmen unit is heavily damaged, the two units will still only be equal. There is a simple way to fix this: make the jaguar warriors have the same combat strength as the great swordsmen so that fervour actually confers an advantage.
6. Venetians: The Venetians are a merchant culture who only generate influence. I think it's cool that they generate influence, but it would be preferable if at least one of their features helped provide money, both from a gameplay perspective (they need their primary era stars) and a historical one (the Venetians made a lot of money). The way I'd fix this is by having the botteghe di artisti provide some sort of money per influence or money per influence generated by the botteghe, in order to reflect the sale of works of art.
7. Russians: The main problem with the Russians is their EU, the Cossacks. The problem with them is that after the huns/mongols feedback, they lost the free riders ability, gaining instead with the move and fire ability, leaving them as a strictly inferior version of the dragoons which they replace and which have the same ability. My suggestion to fix this would be to bring back the Free Riders trait for the cossacks only, and if necessary debuff their strength a bit more - this would fulfil the sort of glass cannon role that they seem to be meant to fulfil, which I'm all for