Tweet
The Problem:
The Agricultural trait provides one extra food in the center tile of each city, which is not subject to the Despotism penalty for cities adjacent to rivers. The trait also provides cheaper Aqueducts, Solar Plants, and Recycling Centers, and gives an extra food from irrigated desert.
With early growth being so important in Civ3, the above advantages result in Agricultural being the most powerful trait in the game, and often results in a game one difficulty level lower (or even more).
Since the AU mod is intended primarily for single player mode, unbalanced traits are not an urgent issue. However, balanced traits do encourage variety in play style and civ selection.
Possible Solution:
The real power of the Agricultural trait comes not directly from population growth, but more specifically from the ability to set up more powerful Settler and Worker pumps.
The extra food from the center tile means that you need a food surplus of just 4 per turn from the rest of the tiles to set up a 4-turn Settler pump, which frees your Agricultural citizens to work some high production/low food tiles to get the necessary production for 30 shields in time. If we increase the shield cost of the Settler for Agricultural civs, then it might sometimes become necessary to sacrifice even more food to get more shields in order to get the required production for a Settler pump. You might have to mine a plains tile instead of irrigating it, or use a forest tile instead of a grassland tile, for example. That would push the food surplus back to the levels of non-Agricultural civs.
Therefore, the proposed solution is:
Increase Settler cost to 35 shields for Agricultural civilizations.
I think this change would be enough to reduce the early-game advantage of Agricultural civilizations just enough for the trait to come back in line with the other traits in Civ3 (except Seafaring, of course, but that’s for another thread
)
By the way, the AI would benefit from a Settler shield cost increase, as it often waits on towns to grow to sufficient size with a Settler already completed.
So do you agree that the Agricultural trait is the most powerful trait in the game? Do we need to balance it in this mod? Do you have any ideas to balance it? Do you think the above solution is too drastic, or not drastic enough? Please comment!
Background reading: On the Agricultural trait, by Dominae.
The Agricultural trait provides one extra food in the center tile of each city, which is not subject to the Despotism penalty for cities adjacent to rivers. The trait also provides cheaper Aqueducts, Solar Plants, and Recycling Centers, and gives an extra food from irrigated desert.
With early growth being so important in Civ3, the above advantages result in Agricultural being the most powerful trait in the game, and often results in a game one difficulty level lower (or even more).
Since the AU mod is intended primarily for single player mode, unbalanced traits are not an urgent issue. However, balanced traits do encourage variety in play style and civ selection.
Possible Solution:
The real power of the Agricultural trait comes not directly from population growth, but more specifically from the ability to set up more powerful Settler and Worker pumps.
The extra food from the center tile means that you need a food surplus of just 4 per turn from the rest of the tiles to set up a 4-turn Settler pump, which frees your Agricultural citizens to work some high production/low food tiles to get the necessary production for 30 shields in time. If we increase the shield cost of the Settler for Agricultural civs, then it might sometimes become necessary to sacrifice even more food to get more shields in order to get the required production for a Settler pump. You might have to mine a plains tile instead of irrigating it, or use a forest tile instead of a grassland tile, for example. That would push the food surplus back to the levels of non-Agricultural civs.
Therefore, the proposed solution is:
Increase Settler cost to 35 shields for Agricultural civilizations.
I think this change would be enough to reduce the early-game advantage of Agricultural civilizations just enough for the trait to come back in line with the other traits in Civ3 (except Seafaring, of course, but that’s for another thread
)By the way, the AI would benefit from a Settler shield cost increase, as it often waits on towns to grow to sufficient size with a Settler already completed.
So do you agree that the Agricultural trait is the most powerful trait in the game? Do we need to balance it in this mod? Do you have any ideas to balance it? Do you think the above solution is too drastic, or not drastic enough? Please comment!
Background reading: On the Agricultural trait, by Dominae.
Comment