AU Mod: Shakesphere's Theater

[nbarclay]

Re: AU Mod: Shakesphere's Theater

Looking at a couple more issues:

Originally posted by joncnunn

3. Resulting in by the time Shakesphere's can be built, Hospitals are right around the corner anyway.

Maybe, maybe not. AIs don't tend to make Medicine a high priority, and even once they discover Medicine, they won't necessarily research Sanitation quickly. So if a player doesn't care about researching Sanitation quickly (and I usually don't because my dense city build pattern doesn't need it and I'd rather the AIs not get it any sooner than they have to), the world can go without Sanitation for a pretty long time.

4. It's somewhat worsened by the existing AU mod that moved the double growth Great Wonder into the Early Industrial era. (Why build a wonder allowing 1 big city, when I can build a wonder that will quickly allow all my cities to rapidally grow)

The wonders are not mutually exclusive, so I view an either/or type characterization as misleading. If a civ has strong enough happiness, there may be some weakening effect because Longevity can help a city without Shakespeare's grow to the size it would be at if it had built Shakespeare's more quickly. But there are situations where Longevity would actually enhance the power of Shakespeare's by helping the city with Shakespeare's finish growing to its maximum size more quickly. All in all, I don't view the Longevity issue as having a particularly significant effect on the value of Shakespeare's.

[nbarclay]

Re: AU Mod: Shakesphere's Theater

Originally posted by joncnunn

3. Replace "size 3 citys" with doubles the unhappiness value of a Colossums in every city on the same landmass.

That would change Shakespeare's from being something unique into being something extremely similar in its effects to another wonder, and at the same time would make Sistine no longer unique in its era. I don't like the impact that that would have on the game's flavor. Nor do I especially like the idea of adding a third major happiness wonder to the medieval era.

[pvzh]

I too think that Shakespear Theater needs some fixing although I do not agree that anything drastic is needed.

Indeed there are 3 problems with it:
1. It requires 3 optional tech and one of them is goverment tech, so it is very expensive to trade for, and the goverment of questionable value even for religious civ.
2. It is overpriced: in Civ3 and PtW (I think) it was 400 and did not act as a hospital, so the consensus was that the wonder is pointless unless you go for 20k culture in one city.
3. To a human player 8 faces are "not needed" because at this point (finishing Shakespear) you usually have Navigation or Magnetism, 6-8 luxuries and marketplace, so your city is already in content state. Producing WLKTD is pointless because city has minimal waste anyways. Thus, for human the wonder is simply an early hospital with almost triple cost.

The best solution (keeping in mind conservative nature of the AU Mod) would be to reduce it price back to 400 shields because

1. It will bring its cost in-line with Copernicus and Newtons. Granted with that 400 shields, Copernicus + Shakespear is better than Copernicus + Newton, but considering that it is harder / less-benefitial to get to Free Artisty than to ToG it is fair to have it at such price.

2. If human player chooses not pursue this tech/wonder. AI will spent less resources to getting this very helpful for AI wonder, since it is bad with Markets / Luxury-Trading. At 400 shields it will be even more helpfull.

I do not think adding factory bonus is good thing because +8 population points is already more production and more commerce (everybody adds 8 wokers immedietely to the city, right?) besides it is "too drastic" in my veiw. BTW, adding "replace structure with this flag" will turn it not to factory, but power plant, so the bonus will not work until factory is in place.

Edit: [disregard on] :The following between the tags is wron:
We can use "pays upkeep of " option as the last resort. Probably a coloseums would be the only reasonable choice. However, this is akward in my view.
Edit: [disregard off]

Since we at editing this wonder, what about adding GA flags to it too. For some weird reason it has none. I propose we set it to commercial and possibly seafaring (at least commercial). This would seem logical because English built it in the Real World (tm).

[joncnunn]

Re: Re: AU Mod: Shakesphere's Theater

Until Factories come on line, there is a very limited number of sutitable cities for building wonders. (Assuming not in a GA and also no lucky SGLs)

All wonders currently adviable compete with each other to a lessor or greater degree.

Originally posted by nbarclay


The wonders are not mutually exclusive, so I view an either/or type characterization as misleading. If a civ has strong enough happiness, there may be some weakening effect because Longevity can help a city without Shakespeare's grow to the size it would be at if it had built Shakespeare's more quickly. But there are situations where Longevity would actually enhance the power of Shakespeare's by helping the city with Shakespeare's finish growing to its maximum size more quickly. All in all, I don't view the Longevity issue as having a particularly significant effect on the value of Shakespeare's.

[joncnunn]

Actually, Sistine would still be the best deal among Sistines, Bachs, and the proposed double collosum power.

Sistine : 600 shields : worth 3 less unhappy citizens = 200 SpH
Bachs : 600 shields : worth 2 less unhappy citizens = 300 SpH
S.T : 450 shields : worth 2 less unhappy citizens = 225 SpH

Originally posted by Modo44

Shakespeare's is a cheap wonder at the time it comes, so lowering it's cost is not a good idea. I agree that shields are not the problem here. If it was to increase happiness from Colosseums, I'd even propose increasing the cost, so that you wouldn't get a ridiculously cheap alternative for Sistine's.

[joncnunn]

Edits to fix an error: (I had 29% of the land area, not just 20%) and updates.

I'm wondering where your getting those 6 to 8 unique luxaries from in Conquests?

I only have 3 luxaries at the moment inside my territory and have 29% of the worlds land area. (Trading for a 4th, and I'm now running cost analyis on reaquiring a 5th via trade now that my negative WW went away when that AI who attacked me was wiped out. [Ran the cost analysis, cheaper to hire a specalist in the five problem cities while building/rushing Catherdrials than pay 79 GPT. 10% slider was even worse: 119 GPT. Too few cities have populations low enough combined with the happinesses structures for a 5th luxary by itself to trigure a WLTPD. I got Bach's but not Sistines. Sistines is too far away for a war to aquire. Southern neighbor has a unique luxary on one of their border cities, but it's not the border with me, it's the one with their southern neighbor.])

Your definately right about WLTPD not being particularly useful for where Shakesephere's is going to end up being built.

A lot of people won't be adding a full 8 right, their city spacement pattern may be somewhat too tight for any core city to work 20 tiles. 16 - 18 tiles may be more of the norm.

Commercial and Seafaring wonders are a dime a dozen in the optional Middle Age techs.

I've not seen a pays upkeep of an individual specific building flag.

Adam Smiths simply pays the upkeep of all buildings that are flaged as Commerical.

Originally posted by pvzh
I too think that Shakespear Theater needs some fixing although I do not agree that anything drastic is needed.

Indeed there are 3 problems with it:
1. It requires 3 optional tech and one of them is goverment tech, so it is very expensive to trade for, and the goverment of questionable value even for religious civ.
2. It is overpriced: in Civ3 and PtW (I think) it was 400 and did not act as a hospital, so the consensus was that the wonder is pointless unless you go for 20k culture in one city.
3. To a human player 8 faces are "not needed" because at this point (finishing Shakespear) you usually have Navigation or Magnetism, 6-8 luxuries and marketplace, so your city is already in content state. Producing WLKTD is pointless because city has minimal waste anyways. Thus, for human the wonder is simply an early hospital with almost triple cost.

The best solution (keeping in mind conservative nature of the AU Mod) would be to reduce it price back to 400 shields because

1. It will bring its cost in-line with Copernicus and Newtons. Granted with that 400 shields, Copernicus + Shakespear is better than Copernicus + Newton, but considering that it is harder / less-benefitial to get to Free Artisty than to ToG it is fair to have it at such price.

2. If human player chooses not pursue this tech/wonder. AI will spent less resources to getting this very helpful for AI wonder, since it is bad with Markets / Luxury-Trading. At 400 shields it will be even more helpfull.

I do not think adding factory bonus is good thing because +8 population points is already more production and more commerce (everybody adds 8 wokers immedietely to the city, right?) besides it is "too drastic" in my veiw. BTW, adding "replace structure with this flag" will turn it not to factory, but power plant, so the bonus will not work until factory is in place.

We can use "pays upkeep of " option as the last resort. Probably a coloseums would be the only reasonable choice. However, this is akward in my view.

Since we at editing this wonder, what about adding GA flags to it too. For some weird reason it has none. I propose we set it to commercial and possibly seafaring (at least commercial). This would seem logical because English built it in the Real World (tm).

[Krill]

Until Factories come on line, there is a very limited number of sutitable cities for building wonders. (Assuming not in a GA and also no lucky SGLs)

That is what prebuilds are for...

Actually, Sistine would still be the best deal among Sistines, Bachs, and the proposed double collosum power.

Sistine : 600 shields : worth 3 less unhappy citizens = 200 SpH
Bachs : 600 shields : worth 2 less unhappy citizens = 300 SpH
S.T : 450 shields : worth 2 less unhappy citizens = 225 SpH

This is flawed. Sistine (and ST if the proposal is accepted) becomes more useful the more caths (and cols) that are built. (Therefore sistine is more powerful if built by a REL civ, as caths are cheaper for them).

[pvzh]

To joncnunn:

I'm wondering where your getting those 6 to 8 unique luxaries from in Conquests?

Usually it is possible to make wars, so Luxuries becomes available for trade, granted my estimate was more for Emperor level when by second-half of the Middle Ages I have a commanding tech lead, so I trade tech and if AI has nothing useful (gpt), I will bring it to the war, buy luxury I do not really need (it will make WLKD, but WLKDs are not that important in the most cases). However, I stopped playing Emperor since I was nominated for the AU panel: do not sounds right for just Emperor player on the panel. At Demigod it is more like you describe in regards to luxuries.

Commercial and Seafaring wonders are a dime a dozen in the optional Middle Age techs.

It was not an attempt of improving the wonder, but rather giving it some "flavour"

I've not seen a pays upkeep of an individual specific building flag.

Ops... my bad... Sorry you are right. There are three drop-down selectors: "double happiness", "gain in every city", "gain in every city on continent". For some reason I thought that one of them "pays maintains for"

In general, I think of Shakespear as an addition to SSC, like Copernicus or Newtons does not worth much without Colossus, so is Shakespear. For Colossus + Shakespear you better find all 20 tiles even if it means hurting nearby cities, even more if Coppernicus already present. I do not place cities within 20 workable tiles unless I am 100% sure I will disband them the rest can always be "redistributed".

To make wonder "worth" without SCC it needs to be even cheaper, like 300 shields ~2 times of hospital price.

[Dominae]

The problem with Shakespeare is that it's attached to a tech (Free Artistry) that is buried at the bottom of a neglected (by the human player) branch of the tech tree. Printing Press provides nothing useful beyond trade bait, but all techs do that (or am I missing something?). Democracy is barely worth the Anarchy period. Free Artistry provides a marginally useful Wonder. So it's not entirely wrong to view the cost of Shakespeare's cost as not only as a sum of Shields, but as three tech's worth of Beakers and a bunch of turns spent off the road to the Industrial era. This cost is prohibitive. Compare to Bach's, which has less stringent requirements in terms of techs and an arguably stronger effect: it's nothing close to a must-have. Given it's prohibitive requirements, you would think Shakespeare's would have one of the most powerful effects in the game!

(A side note about OCC games: if you find yourself securing both Copernicus' and Newton's and still have time to tarry in the Medieval era to pick up Shakespeare's too, IMO you are not playing a difficulty level that makes OCC a "challenge" for you. Much as I've tried to make Shakespeare's integral to my OCC strategy, for the reasons outlined above it's that plan has never really borne impressive results.)

Of the three (partial) solutions I mentioned above, the one that addresses this problem best is making Free Artistry come right after Printing Press. Thus the overall cost of Shakespeare's is reduced drastically (no need to go through Banking), and a strategic beeline for it makes a lot more sense. I would also be inclined to reduce the cost Free Artistry in order to further encourage this strategy.

[nbarclay]

One quirk of making Printing Press rather than Democracy the prerequisite for Free Artistry is that for better or for worse, it would make Shakespeare's tend to come into play a bit earlier in the game. (Note that Democracy itself has Education and Banking as prerequisites in addition to Printing Press.) Shakespeare's would be more likely to figure prominently in medieval wonder cascades, and the possibility of its being delayed long enough to be involved in an industrial cascade would probably all but disappear.

[Theseus]

I agree with the identified problem... I think the proposed solutions might stray too far afield (albeit being interesting in their ramifications). Let's just try something simple first: make Free Artistry a required tech. That's actually a pretty damn big change in and of itself, and should be playtested before anything else.

[Dominae]

If you make Free Artistry a required tech, both Printing Press and Democracy also become required for era advancement...

[Theseus]

Sorry, see my post in the 'Printing Press' thread... let's try making that required first.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Dominae
If you make Free Artistry a required tech, both Printing Press and Democracy also become required for era advancement...

I was just about to suggest this, when I saw Dom's and Theseus' comment

Sounds like an excellent idea!

[joncnunn]

I made a slight typo when I entered how much land area I have:

It's 29%, not just 20%, and have edited the original to reflect it.

I was in one war. Got no luxaries I didn't already have out of it.

Still, the war was useful because it gave me Saltpeter not found in my REX and when Oil was discovered the closest source was in one of those cities captured from that empire.

Getting a 4th luxary within my boundary when get me up to a minimum of 33% of the land area, more likely around 36-37% since I'd want to even up my borders and that would actually be exiling that AI to a city they captured far, far away from the rest of their empire. (All numbers post-cultural expansions.) So doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless I were to win via domination. (Certatinely an option given how far back the AIs are.)

79 GPT for a 5th luxary doesn't make a whole lot of sense, most cities have too large populations for a WLTPD with 5 luxarys, they would need 7 in the area I care about. (Sure ex-America would be in WLTPD at 6 because none of those cities even have hospitals.) There were only 5 cities that needed Catherdrials to fire their specalists. (That 4th luxary is much, more cheaper: it's a competely backwards AI, and so it costs me a tech everyone else already has [plus some GPT]) That 5th luxary only became adviable at all when the 2nd civ in this game was wiped out.

Originally posted by pvzh
To joncnunn:

Usually it is possible to make wars, so Luxuries becomes available for trade, granted my estimate was more for Emperor level when by second-half of the Middle Ages I have a commanding tech lead, so I trade tech and if AI has nothing useful (gpt), I will bring it to the war, buy luxury I do not really need (it will make WLKD, but WLKDs are not that important in the most cases). However, I stopped playing Emperor since I was nominated for the AU panel: do not sounds right for just Emperor player on the panel. At Demigod it is more like you describe in regards to luxuries.