Should an 'Agricultural' CSA be added in an expansion pack?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by zeh
Will be a good start for a civ be agricultural.
But I think in the later game it won't have a lot of advantages (like militaristic have), since others can build improvements that gives to them almost the same bonus of the agricultural ones.

You´re right, the advantages of an 'agricultural' civ will be small when everyone can build hospitals. But the advantages of being 'expansionist' will probably be gone altogether in the middle game.

[splangy]

Ok, here are my ideas

Agricultural-
for every 2 irrigated tiles you get+1 food
Aquaducts needed at 8, hospitals at 14

Maritime-
+1 ship movement
+1 ship los OR 1 trade for every 3 water tiles in a radius

Diplomatic-
Other countries are more likely to accept proposals
Any country that declares war on you gets a BIG rep hit

Patriotic-
Lowered war exhaustion
you cause only five turns of unhapiness if you draft someone

[splangy]

Note- At the time I postd this its

Pro=33
against=11...

[Ribannah]

Re: Should an 'Agricultural' CSA be added in an expansion pack?

Originally posted by lockstep
'Agricultural': Free tech - pottery; Effect 1 - irrigated plains yield more food; Effect 2 - enlarged city size without aqueducts/hospitals

Expansionist already has Pottery as a free tech. For some reason, Firaxis insist on Pottery being on the path to Map Making.

There are 7 potential first techs, so there is room for 7 attributes - only, Miltaristic has a choice of two.

They could have given The Wheel to Expansionist, leaving Pottery for Agricultural, but since they used up all 7 first techs by giving militaristic two, I doubt that we'll get another one.

[lockstep]

Re: Re: Should an 'Agricultural' CSA be added in an expansion pack?

Originally posted by Ribannah
Expansionist already has Pottery as a free tech. For some reason, Firaxis insist on Pottery being on the path to Map Making.

There are 7 potential first techs, so there is room for 7 attributes - only, Miltaristic has a choice of two.

If one really wants additional CSA´s (like me), there are at least two solutions to the free tech issue:

- Attach a free tech to the new CSA that isn´t a 'first tech' in the tech tree.

- Tolerate that two CSA´s have the same free tech.

At the moment, I vote for no. 2, but are amenable to suggestions . BTW, I don´t think that the free tech of a specific CSA is as important as its two gameplay effects.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by splangy
Ok, here are my ideas

Agricultural-
for every 2 irrigated tiles you get+1 food

Interesting suggestion. I like the fact that it would provide a more uniform food bonus than my idea of 'irrigated plains yield more food'. OTOH, it wouldn´t be easy to display this effect in the city screen.

Aquaducts needed at 8, hospitals at 14

Exactly my suggestion . Note that the possibility to reach size 14 (and therefore metropolis status) before the industrial age would provide a very powerful temporary benefit for 'agricultural' civs because of the metropolis´ high defensive bonus and (under some government types) unit support.

Maritime-
+1 ship movement
+1 ship los OR 1 trade for every 3 water tiles in a radius

I decided to slightly modify your suggestion and post a poll about it.

Diplomatic-
Other countries are more likely to accept proposals
Any country that declares war on you gets a BIG rep hit

This idea has also been discussed before. IMO, it would provide interesting gameplay effects, but I can´t really think of a civ that I would wholeheartedly term as 'diplomatic'.

Patriotic-
Lowered war exhaustion
you cause only five turns of unhapiness if you draft someone

This sounds like a fundamentalist government masked as an CSA.

[lockstep]

It´s so easy to ignore the most elegant and simple solutions ...

Effect 1 of an 'agricultural' CSA could be: 'The center city squares of all cities and metros produce extra food' - comparable to the effects of 'commercial' and 'industrious' now revealed by a Civilopedia screenshot.

No food bonus up to size 6. That should definitely hinder using an 'agricultural' civ for ICS.

[Mars]

sure it sounds like a good idea

[Sandman]

How about irrigation spreading like the forests in SMAC?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Sandman
How about irrigation spreading like the forests in SMAC?

I don´t think that´s a good idea. In contrast to forest, irrigiation is man-made and should only spread via a lot of workers.

[lockstep]

Reading the first comments about Civ3´s actual gameplay (as a European, I don´t have the game yet), I think we can drop the most serious concern regarding an 'Agricultural' CSA: If it encourages ICS or at least fast expansion, the AI opponents will know how to use this feature, too.

[Martinus]

I have the following suggestions for Agricultural Civs:

- Japanese should be Militaristic and Agricultural IMHO (rather than Militaristic and Religious - a "duo" of CSAs they share with Aztecs) - they did wonders with their islands as far as agriculture is concerned.

- Chinese should be Agricultural and Industrious (rather than Militaristic perhaps). In particular if Mongols make it to the expansion pack, they should take the "Chinese" special unit (which is, for all the purposes, the Mongol rider) and Chinese should have some sort of crossbowmen.

- Poles (if they make it to the EXP ) should be Agricultural and (perhaps) Religious - throughout the whole middle ages and most of the industrial era Poland has served as the "granary/breadbasket of Europe". Even today big part of the Polish populace consists of farmers.

[lockstep]

Many thanks for your input, Martinus! Great ideas!

Regarding the Japanese, I also thought that the Militaristic/Religious combo of CSA´s shouldn´t be attached to two civs anymore after an expansion pack has been released. I wasn´t sure which civ should be changed, but your reasoning for the Japanese being Agricultural/Militaristic seems to be funded.

I can´t really comment on the Chinese/Mongol rider, but I definitely think that the Chinese should be Agricultural/Industrious. In fact, this was one of the very reasons that I started this poll.

About the Poles ... yes, if they make it, they could also be an agricultural civ.

After the attendant poll about a 'Seafaring' (or 'Maritime') CSA has been closed (so far, the supporters have a solid majority) and Locutus has updated his 'Expansion pack' thread, I intend to start a thread about the assignment of civs to CSA combinations. I suggest that every combination should be used exactly once; with 8 CSA´s, this would result in 28 civs in total or 12 civs in the expansion pack. However, I don´t think it would be a good idea to choose exactly the top 12 of Locutus´ list (and BTW, this would not include the Poles ), but rather to take only civs with at least 5% of the votes for granted and to choose the rest according to CSA necessities and world map balance out of Locutus´ top 24.