Hi all,
Other than the gpt and Corruption bugs, the major buzz right now about Conquests is the Agricultural trait. Some say it's too strong. Some like it that way. Here, I'm first going to first defend the Agricultural trait, claiming that it's not as strong as people think. Then I'm going to make the case that it's nonetheless too strong, and propose a way to balance it.
1. Agricultural is balanced by its map-dependency.
Ever play an game as an Agricultural civ with starting location that has no access to fresh water? I have. And let me tell you, until reach Monarchy or Republic, games like that make you wish you had picked another trait instead. Just like Seafaring on a Pangea map, or Expansionist on an Archipelago map, the Agricultural trait is a lot worse on Dry maps or even standard map with no Rivers or lakes close to the starting location.
How common is it for to get a "bad" Agricultural start? Well, I ran a little test (no, Catt, I unfortunately did not get drunk): I started 50 games as the Incans on all-default settings maps, and used the first few turns to scout around to get a good idea of the quality of the starting location. I came up with the following rating system for starts, relative to the Agricultural trait:
"Good": Immediate access to fresh water plus multiple lakes and/or rivers at least 5 tiles long. Basically what you want to get every time you play Agricultural.
"Average": Either immediate access to fresh water in the form of a single lake or a short river, or delayed access (not within the capital's radius) to fresh water in the form of maximum two medium-sized rivers. You still get good mileage out of Agricultural here.
"Bad": No access to fresh water within 6+ tiles of the starting location, and very little promise beyond that. Agricultural will do nothing for you here until you switch to Monarchy or Republic.
Note that this classification has nothing to do with the overall quality of the starting locations; it only deals with fresh water access. A 5-Cattle, no fresh water start is classified as "bad" for Agricultural purposes.
I've included screenshots below of exemplar starts in each class.
Here's what I found (out of 50 starting locations):
Good: 11
Average: 20
Bad: 19
What does this mean? Well, there are many ways of looking at it.
1. Only 78% of Agricultural starts are "balanced" in the sense that they do not utterly overshadow the rest of the traits.
2. In other words, in only 1 out of 5 games will the Agricultural trait be "overpowered" (i.e. the equivalent or worse of playing Expansionist on a Huge Pangea map).
3. In 38% (almost 2 out of 5 games) the Agricultural trait does sweet nothing until you get out of Despotism. This goes a long way toward balancing the trait on average.
2. By reloading, players do not allow Agricultural to be balanced.
Let's, for the moment, assume that my sample size is large enough to be representative of what the map generator comes up with across all map settings. Here comes the big question:
As a player, do you reload to avoid "Bad" Agricultural starts? Check out the third screenshot below: it's a pretty decent starting location, no? Yet an Agricultural civ can do no more with it than a Scientific civ can (until Monarchy or Republic). If you do reload such starts (and worse ones), you're un-balancing the Agricultural trait. If you also reload "Average" starts as I've classified them, there's no question that the Agricultural trait will be the best one hands down for you.
Note that this is not an argument against reloading bad starts. If you like to reload until you get a decent starting location, that's up to you. This behaviour will serve you well across all traits, except for Agricultural[/I] where it will serve you exceptionally well. In other words, reloading to get a good start as an Agricultural civ has a far more profound effect on the game as reloading to get a good start as any other civ. This is why I'm claiming that the Agricultural trait is unbalanced by reloads.
3. Agricultural is nonetheless one of the best traits.
Let's go back to my 50 test runs. Lumping the "Good" and "Average" starts together, we can see that, assuming no reloads, in 62% of games as an Agricultural civ you get a nice boost in REXing power. That's what the Agricultural trait is designed to do. As we all know, REX is a very important part of Civ3, so I can safely state that in 62% of games the Agricultural player will have a stronger early-game than his or her non-Agricultural opponents. Since in Civ3 early power typically translates into late-game power, what all this comes down to is that Agricultural games are hands-down stronger than other games 62% of the time.
Thankfully, 38% of the time Agricultural games do not provide any significant boost in REXing, and therefore are just average with respect to games with other traits. But is that true?
Although 38% of the time Agricultural is average at REXing, 100% of the time it's powerful in the mid-game once a switch to Monarchy or Republic is complete. Make no mistake, a +3 Food surplus in every city is quite strong when entering the Medieval era. Along with the ability to get 3 Food out of Grasslands (no more despotic tile penalty), almost any city in an Agricultural empire can transform into a semi-efficient Worker/Settler pump. And let's not forget the half-price Aqueducts, which mean that all those fast-growing cities will not slow down for long on the way to size 12.
Essentially my point here is that the advantage an Agricultural civ gets upon a government switch (namely, 3 Food in the city center tile in every) is quite strong, and almost trait-worthy all by itself. Attach that to super-fast REX capabilities 62% of the time, and you've got a trait that's on average a step above all the other traits.
4. Agricultural should only be powerful in the early-game.
Here's my proposal for balancing the Agricultural trait (beyond disallowing reloads!):
Only cities adjacent to fresh water get the +1 Food bonus to the city center tile. As usual, this bonus would not be subject to the despotic tile penalty.
As you can see, this means that Agricultural civs would get no particular bonus for switching out of Despotism, because cities not adjacent to fresh water would not get any Food bonus at all. Such cities would still, of course, benefit from half-price Aqueducts.
The idea here is to make the Agricultural trait good at REXing, and little else. The lead an Agricultural civ gets (62% of the time!) from this early boost should not be cemented by anything come the Medieval age.
Undoubtedly, even with this change Agricultural would still be a top trait. But at least it would not be so strong as to make all the others pale in comparison. Currently, I believe the Agricultural trait is stronger than Industrious was in Play the World, and that's bad.
5. It's good to balance things.
Many people will read this article and say: "But I like the Agricultural trait, leave it as it is!". Many people said this of the Industrious trait, and it's an indication of how much people liked it that it took so long to change when it was clearly head and shoulders above the rest. A lot of the appeal of Civ3 involves a sense of empowerment (many players play for "Ultimate Power"), and more powerful things empower better than less powerful things (duh).
But then there's a fine line between giving players things that make them feel powerful, and creating a replayable game. Replayability involves variety. And when all you do is play Industrious/Agricultural because it's the best trait (or, when you dislike not playing those because you feel less powerful!), variety goes down, and with it replayability. If you like to reload, Agricultural will still be the best for you, but hey, that's your own business. (There's also the issue of balancing the traits for an interesting MP and PBEM environment, but I'm not going to go into that here.)
So, my plea is to balance where necessary, to make this above all a game about choices. And Agricultural is in serious need of balancing.
Thanks for reading.
Dominae
Other than the gpt and Corruption bugs, the major buzz right now about Conquests is the Agricultural trait. Some say it's too strong. Some like it that way. Here, I'm first going to first defend the Agricultural trait, claiming that it's not as strong as people think. Then I'm going to make the case that it's nonetheless too strong, and propose a way to balance it.
1. Agricultural is balanced by its map-dependency.
Ever play an game as an Agricultural civ with starting location that has no access to fresh water? I have. And let me tell you, until reach Monarchy or Republic, games like that make you wish you had picked another trait instead. Just like Seafaring on a Pangea map, or Expansionist on an Archipelago map, the Agricultural trait is a lot worse on Dry maps or even standard map with no Rivers or lakes close to the starting location.
How common is it for to get a "bad" Agricultural start? Well, I ran a little test (no, Catt, I unfortunately did not get drunk): I started 50 games as the Incans on all-default settings maps, and used the first few turns to scout around to get a good idea of the quality of the starting location. I came up with the following rating system for starts, relative to the Agricultural trait:
"Good": Immediate access to fresh water plus multiple lakes and/or rivers at least 5 tiles long. Basically what you want to get every time you play Agricultural.
"Average": Either immediate access to fresh water in the form of a single lake or a short river, or delayed access (not within the capital's radius) to fresh water in the form of maximum two medium-sized rivers. You still get good mileage out of Agricultural here.
"Bad": No access to fresh water within 6+ tiles of the starting location, and very little promise beyond that. Agricultural will do nothing for you here until you switch to Monarchy or Republic.
Note that this classification has nothing to do with the overall quality of the starting locations; it only deals with fresh water access. A 5-Cattle, no fresh water start is classified as "bad" for Agricultural purposes.
I've included screenshots below of exemplar starts in each class.
Here's what I found (out of 50 starting locations):
Good: 11
Average: 20
Bad: 19
What does this mean? Well, there are many ways of looking at it.
1. Only 78% of Agricultural starts are "balanced" in the sense that they do not utterly overshadow the rest of the traits.
2. In other words, in only 1 out of 5 games will the Agricultural trait be "overpowered" (i.e. the equivalent or worse of playing Expansionist on a Huge Pangea map).
3. In 38% (almost 2 out of 5 games) the Agricultural trait does sweet nothing until you get out of Despotism. This goes a long way toward balancing the trait on average.
2. By reloading, players do not allow Agricultural to be balanced.
Let's, for the moment, assume that my sample size is large enough to be representative of what the map generator comes up with across all map settings. Here comes the big question:
As a player, do you reload to avoid "Bad" Agricultural starts? Check out the third screenshot below: it's a pretty decent starting location, no? Yet an Agricultural civ can do no more with it than a Scientific civ can (until Monarchy or Republic). If you do reload such starts (and worse ones), you're un-balancing the Agricultural trait. If you also reload "Average" starts as I've classified them, there's no question that the Agricultural trait will be the best one hands down for you.
Note that this is not an argument against reloading bad starts. If you like to reload until you get a decent starting location, that's up to you. This behaviour will serve you well across all traits, except for Agricultural[/I] where it will serve you exceptionally well. In other words, reloading to get a good start as an Agricultural civ has a far more profound effect on the game as reloading to get a good start as any other civ. This is why I'm claiming that the Agricultural trait is unbalanced by reloads.
3. Agricultural is nonetheless one of the best traits.
Let's go back to my 50 test runs. Lumping the "Good" and "Average" starts together, we can see that, assuming no reloads, in 62% of games as an Agricultural civ you get a nice boost in REXing power. That's what the Agricultural trait is designed to do. As we all know, REX is a very important part of Civ3, so I can safely state that in 62% of games the Agricultural player will have a stronger early-game than his or her non-Agricultural opponents. Since in Civ3 early power typically translates into late-game power, what all this comes down to is that Agricultural games are hands-down stronger than other games 62% of the time.
Thankfully, 38% of the time Agricultural games do not provide any significant boost in REXing, and therefore are just average with respect to games with other traits. But is that true?
Although 38% of the time Agricultural is average at REXing, 100% of the time it's powerful in the mid-game once a switch to Monarchy or Republic is complete. Make no mistake, a +3 Food surplus in every city is quite strong when entering the Medieval era. Along with the ability to get 3 Food out of Grasslands (no more despotic tile penalty), almost any city in an Agricultural empire can transform into a semi-efficient Worker/Settler pump. And let's not forget the half-price Aqueducts, which mean that all those fast-growing cities will not slow down for long on the way to size 12.
Essentially my point here is that the advantage an Agricultural civ gets upon a government switch (namely, 3 Food in the city center tile in every) is quite strong, and almost trait-worthy all by itself. Attach that to super-fast REX capabilities 62% of the time, and you've got a trait that's on average a step above all the other traits.
4. Agricultural should only be powerful in the early-game.
Here's my proposal for balancing the Agricultural trait (beyond disallowing reloads!):
Only cities adjacent to fresh water get the +1 Food bonus to the city center tile. As usual, this bonus would not be subject to the despotic tile penalty.
As you can see, this means that Agricultural civs would get no particular bonus for switching out of Despotism, because cities not adjacent to fresh water would not get any Food bonus at all. Such cities would still, of course, benefit from half-price Aqueducts.
The idea here is to make the Agricultural trait good at REXing, and little else. The lead an Agricultural civ gets (62% of the time!) from this early boost should not be cemented by anything come the Medieval age.
Undoubtedly, even with this change Agricultural would still be a top trait. But at least it would not be so strong as to make all the others pale in comparison. Currently, I believe the Agricultural trait is stronger than Industrious was in Play the World, and that's bad.
5. It's good to balance things.
Many people will read this article and say: "But I like the Agricultural trait, leave it as it is!". Many people said this of the Industrious trait, and it's an indication of how much people liked it that it took so long to change when it was clearly head and shoulders above the rest. A lot of the appeal of Civ3 involves a sense of empowerment (many players play for "Ultimate Power"), and more powerful things empower better than less powerful things (duh).
But then there's a fine line between giving players things that make them feel powerful, and creating a replayable game. Replayability involves variety. And when all you do is play Industrious/Agricultural because it's the best trait (or, when you dislike not playing those because you feel less powerful!), variety goes down, and with it replayability. If you like to reload, Agricultural will still be the best for you, but hey, that's your own business. (There's also the issue of balancing the traits for an interesting MP and PBEM environment, but I'm not going to go into that here.)
So, my plea is to balance where necessary, to make this above all a game about choices. And Agricultural is in serious need of balancing.
Thanks for reading.
Dominae
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