EP9: XP Alternatives to Trading Posts

[Mitoe]

well if the church cost is being increased, tacking an xp trickle it to the monastery shouldn't be an issue ay? since it already costs 225w

The monastery is the main reason I'm hesitant to try this change. It already doubles as a saloon. Maybe this could end up being a problem?

[Riotcoke]

Maybe just give villages like +0.2xp/s or something if you want to do what rouga said?

The problem with this is that we would like for the alternative to be undesirable on maps where you can build a Trading Post. This type of change would affect them every single game, rather than only in that specific situation.

That's true, maybe you could make the monestary for china give xp and make it cheaper. Maybe 200w for the monestary and 0.9/s?

[Mitoe]

Maybe just give villages like +0.2xp/s or something if you want to do what rouga said?

The problem with this is that we would like for the alternative to be undesirable on maps where you can build a Trading Post. This type of change would affect them every single game, rather than only in that specific situation.

That's true, maybe you could make the monestary for china give xp and make it cheaper. Maybe 200w for the monestary and 0.9/s?

So it's a free saloon?

0.9xp/s is going to be equivalent to a TP almost if we nerf TPs. Doubling as a saloon is probably too good, you would just build a monastery every game in place of a TP and lame mercs if you get good mercs.

[Riotcoke]

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Maybe just give villages like +0.2xp/s or something if you want to do what rouga said?

The problem with this is that we would like for the alternative to be undesirable on maps where you can build a Trading Post. This type of change would affect them every single game, rather than only in that specific situation.

That's true, maybe you could make the monestary for china give xp and make it cheaper. Maybe 200w for the monestary and 0.9/s?

So it's a free saloon?

0.9xp/s is going to be equivalent to a TP almost if we nerf TPs. Doubling as a saloon is probably too good, you would just build a monastery every game in place of a TP and lame mercs if you get good mercs.

That's the problem with china there's no specialist building they can make other than the monestary or a village. Unless you change the tech in the village to add an xp trickle in the village? I.e change the first upgrade to give an xp trickle like 0.5/s?

[dutchdude117]

A possible alternative for the China has no church problem is to give an upgrade to villages that cost 200w that gives the same exp trickle as a church

[dutchdude117]

On that same note, we could also keep churches cost at 100w, but give an them an upgrade that adds an exp trickle that cost 100w

[deleted_user]

Churches can't be the answer because not every civ has them, and that makes for a bad alternative

[[Armag] diarouga]

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imo, it is preferable that you first nerf TPs in general, and then answer this question once nerfed TPs have been fleshed out.

move too many variables at once and you won't understand the direction of the changes, imo

We know how aoe3 was before the native TP change, so we can just remove it and make the TP nerf.

the question is not whether to nerf TPs

the question is "xp alternatives to trade posts"

which is a question that I feel should be addressed only after the game is fleshed out with nerfed TPs.

I agree with this in general. Changing too many things at once is not a good idea. However, we probably only have one patch before DE, and 0.7 exp/sec on a 200w church will not have negative impacts on the balance.
It's basically native TPs with the current trickle, except it doesn't create issues with ATP, and it doesn't deny your opponent's fb.

But it is a nerf to TWC and TAD civs.

Japan, India and Aztecs are already among the best civs on no TP maps, they wouldn't need it. Buffing the exp dance for villagers is an option for Iro and Sioux. And ye, it's a nerf to China, which is going to be weaker on no TP no livestock maps but it's ok.
We want more than 2 viable civs on no TP maps, not all of them.

so if you click into QS as China you just have a massive disadvantage compared to other civs? that is bad logic

Not really, no. People started to build TPs as China in 2017. Before that, they would just go double village every game. I even remember a post of H2O in 2016 explaining why building a TP instead of a 2nd village is terrible, and still China was totally viable.

China would still have fair/good MUs against Japan, India, Otto, Spain, Germany and Port, so they'd be an average civ. And it's not like they would be totally unplayable in the other MUs, 0.7 exp/sec is half a TP, the TP civs would still be much weaker.

[[Armag] diarouga]

well if the church cost is being increased, tacking an xp trickle it to the monastery shouldn't be an issue ay? since it already costs 225w

The monastery is the main reason I'm hesitant to try this change. It already doubles as a saloon. Maybe this could end up being a problem?

As I said, don't touch the monastery. Japan and India are already top tier on no TP maps, and China isn't doing that poorly.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Churches can't be the answer because not every civ has them, and that makes for a bad alternative

All the nilla civ have it, TAD civs don't need an exp trickle, and just buff the vills on exp dance and TWC are fine.

[helln00]

I dont think attaching the xp to monastatries for Asian civs is a good idea and not just because it doubles as a saloon but that India and Japan already have xp alternatives so it will potentially doubles their xp choices while China is sort of left the odd one out always.

I do like the idea of maybe attaching xp trickle to a card maybe like trade empire and unlocking the native xp(or boosting it from a very low base).

For asian I think you will just need to adjust the other options that already exist for india (sacred fields) and Japan (shrines) and give china an alternate source.

[chronique]

"TP balance" only became relevant when we started getting good, new maps into the pool. From 2005 to 2017-18, no one even thought about messing with TPs, even when they became 200w in the RE patch.

This is not 100% true, for what i remember, i have always played with tp and always hate no tp map. The only civ who wasn't play tp before is china.

I think 200w church (like before) + xp trickle is good, but i don't know what to do for TWC because if we buff xp dance, aztek will be op.

[Rikikipu]

I think the church granting exp is a solid option, but I would like to make the strategy and options behind more interesting than just dropping a 100w building and that's it. Furthermore, I think we could use the church as an option to also consume this extra (or part of it) 100g starting crate which has always been a headache if you don't open with a market.

My proposal would be:
- Church by itself is untouched, it costs 100w and doen't bring exp natively
- You can research a tech in that church (~100g or less) that gives church an XP trickle (~90% or less of a tp)
- possible option: this tech can be improved other ages (like the vills tech in the mosque) to at the end make church on par with one TP

In that way you will have now 3 possible opening options age 1:
- TP: 200w
- Market + HD: 150w + 50g
- Church + XP tech: 100w + 100g

The trade off would be that with a church you have a safe tp at base but that grants you less exp and doesn't synergize at all (no possible upgrade to stagecoach) neither gives you map control, neither annoys your opponent compared to a TP. Also it tackles the problem of consistency with asian civs, they just got other techs than euro civs in the monastery.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I think the church granting exp is a solid option, but I would like to make the strategy and options behind more interesting than just dropping a 100w building and that's it. Furthermore, I think we could use the church as an option to also consume this extra (or part of it) 100g starting crate which has always been a headache if you don't open with a market.

My proposal would be:
- Church by itself is untouched, it costs 100w and doen't bring exp natively
- You can research a tech in that church (~100g or less) that gives church an XP trickle (~90% or less of a tp)
- possible option: this tech can be improved other ages (like the vills tech in the mosque) to at the end make church on par with one TP

In that way you will have now 3 possible opening options age 1:
- TP: 200w
- Market + HD: 150w + 50g
- Church + XP tech: 100w + 100g

The trade off would be that with a church you have a safe tp at base but that grants you less exp and doesn't synergize at all (no possible upgrade to stagecoach) neither gives you map control, neither annoys your opponent compared to a TP. Also it tackles the problem of consistency with asian civs, they just got other techs than euro civs in the monastery.

If the tech gives 90% of a TP, it's something you'd want to get every game, and it can't be destroyed (while a TP can), so it's not really something we want.
If we give an exp trickle to the church, it has to be tier 2 (so 0.7/0.8 exp/sec).
I agree that a tech which costs 100c at the church is probably better than the church giving exp automatically though.

[Rikikipu]

I think the church granting exp is a solid option, but I would like to make the strategy and options behind more interesting than just dropping a 100w building and that's it. Furthermore, I think we could use the church as an option to also consume this extra (or part of it) 100g starting crate which has always been a headache if you don't open with a market.

My proposal would be:
- Church by itself is untouched, it costs 100w and doen't bring exp natively
- You can research a tech in that church (~100g or less) that gives church an XP trickle (~90% or less of a tp)
- possible option: this tech can be improved other ages (like the vills tech in the mosque) to at the end make church on par with one TP

In that way you will have now 3 possible opening options age 1:
- TP: 200w
- Market + HD: 150w + 50g
- Church + XP tech: 100w + 100g

The trade off would be that with a church you have a safe tp at base but that grants you less exp and doesn't synergize at all (no possible upgrade to stagecoach) neither gives you map control, neither annoys your opponent compared to a TP. Also it tackles the problem of consistency with asian civs, they just got other techs than euro civs in the monastery.

If the tech gives 90% of a TP, it's something you'd want to get every game, and it can't be destroyed (while a TP can), so it's not really something we want.
If we give an exp trickle to the church, it has to be tier 2 (so 0.7/0.8 exp/sec).
I agree that a tech which costs 100c at the church is probably better than the church giving exp automatically though.

Yeah I'm fine with yours numbers, we can tweak it anyway. My point was more about the design of the change indeed

[chronique]

I think the church granting exp is a solid option, but I would like to make the strategy and options behind more interesting than just dropping a 100w building and that's it. Furthermore, I think we could use the church as an option to also consume this extra (or part of it) 100g starting crate which has always been a headache if you don't open with a market.

My proposal would be:
- Church by itself is untouched, it costs 100w and doen't bring exp natively
- You can research a tech in that church (~100g or less) that gives church an XP trickle (~90% or less of a tp)
- possible option: this tech can be improved other ages (like the vills tech in the mosque) to at the end make church on par with one TP

In that way you will have now 3 possible opening options age 1:
- TP: 200w
- Market + HD: 150w + 50g
- Church + XP tech: 100w + 100g

The trade off would be that with a church you have a safe tp at base but that grants you less exp and doesn't synergize at all (no possible upgrade to stagecoach) neither gives you map control, neither annoys your opponent compared to a TP. Also it tackles the problem of consistency with asian civs, they just got other techs than euro civs in the monastery.

If the tech gives 90% of a TP, it's something you'd want to get every game, and it can't be destroyed (while a TP can), so it's not really something we want.
If we give an exp trickle to the church, it has to be tier 2 (so 0.7/0.8 exp/sec).
I agree that a tech which costs 100c at the church is probably better than the church giving exp automatically though.

Also if we add tech like that on church, we add the same tech on firepit? Just afraid about aztek with that.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I think the church granting exp is a solid option, but I would like to make the strategy and options behind more interesting than just dropping a 100w building and that's it. Furthermore, I think we could use the church as an option to also consume this extra (or part of it) 100g starting crate which has always been a headache if you don't open with a market.

My proposal would be:
- Church by itself is untouched, it costs 100w and doen't bring exp natively
- You can research a tech in that church (~100g or less) that gives church an XP trickle (~90% or less of a tp)
- possible option: this tech can be improved other ages (like the vills tech in the mosque) to at the end make church on par with one TP

In that way you will have now 3 possible opening options age 1:
- TP: 200w
- Market + HD: 150w + 50g
- Church + XP tech: 100w + 100g

The trade off would be that with a church you have a safe tp at base but that grants you less exp and doesn't synergize at all (no possible upgrade to stagecoach) neither gives you map control, neither annoys your opponent compared to a TP. Also it tackles the problem of consistency with asian civs, they just got other techs than euro civs in the monastery.

If the tech gives 90% of a TP, it's something you'd want to get every game, and it can't be destroyed (while a TP can), so it's not really something we want.
If we give an exp trickle to the church, it has to be tier 2 (so 0.7/0.8 exp/sec).
I agree that a tech which costs 100c at the church is probably better than the church giving exp automatically though.

Also if we add tech like that on church, we add the same tech on firepit? Just afraid about aztek with that.

I would just buff the exp dance for villagers to 0.7 or 0.8. It wouldn't affect aztec because you want warrior priests on the firepit, not vills, and 2vills dancing would be slightly better than a TP, which is fair because it's really expensive.

[aqwer]

The irony is that the very people who were strongly against "Design changes" and stuff bcz it was getting away from RE, are suggesting such changes. So the real problem was to have the power of implementing changes than the changes itself.

[chronique]

I would just buff the exp dance for villagers to 0.7 or 0.8. It wouldn't affect aztec because you want warrior priests on the firepit, not vills, and 2vills dancing would be slightly better than a TP, which is fair because it's really expensive.

I understand, i have always thinking than 1 priest = 2 vili and nothing you can do about that.

[RefluxSemantic]

I don't support the XP native trading post. It seems like a terrible bandaid solution, it's ugly design and I would like the patch to stick to RE gameplay as much as possible. So I voted no on this poll

But I don't really know if I support any other xp alternatives. It seems kinda counterproductive to give civs TP replacements on no TP maps. Isn't the entire selling point of no TP maps that you have to play differently because you can't get a TP? If you then introduce a pseudo-TP building, that seems to kind of defeat the purpose of a no TP map. I think it's better to just accept that some civs aren't that good on no TP maps, just like some civs aren't very good on low res maps or on water maps. We're not giving some civs some magical building that spawns 20 bisons because they are weak on low res maps either, because that defeats the point of low res maps. The same principle should apply to no TP maps.

I know that that means no TP maps won't be very interesting because of the limited amount of viable civs, but that's just the problem with 'gimmicky' maps. It's better to accept that no TP maps just don't have as much diversity. Besides that, there is currently a pretty popular suggestion to solve the no-TP problem: Nerfing TPs a little bit. By doing so, we'll ultimately have to end up buffing TP reliant civs a little bit. This means those civs will probably be a bit better on no TP maps as a result. I feel like we will solve part of the no-TP map problem automatically if we nerf TPs in general and then balance afterwards. I strongly prefer that over coming up with all sorts of ugly ways for civs to have a pseudo-TP building (at that point, why not just play TP maps?).

[Rikikipu]

@RefluxSemantic The shade here is not to add TP on no TP maps, it's to add alternate possibilities to gather XP resources for civs. TP maps add some dynamic with a trade route / TP control that still won't exist on no tp maps. The gameplay is and still will be different between those 2 map types. It's more about adding another possibility for some civs to gather XP, particularly on no TP maps because usually those maps tend to narrow the strategic options available to those civs.

[iNcog]

The irony is that the very people who were strongly against "Design changes" and stuff bcz it was getting away from RE, are suggesting such changes. So the real problem was to have the power of implementing changes than the changes itself.

yeah reading through this thread........... I agree with you. it was basically a personal vendetta against zoi.

See on one hand I want to not bring it up so that we don't muck up the discussions with flaming. On the other hand, it's kind of hard not to flame when madrouga's garbage suggestions are basically like zoi's but even worse

[chronique]

We need to stay focus on what is the purpose of this thread, please guy!!

[iNcog]

Silence is exactly what the cancerous people of the community would want right now, but as respect to the non cancerous majority, I'll leave it at that.

Frankly I don't see a need for XP alternatives to trade-posts. Especially if they go for a TP nerf of 15%. More so especially when all the alternative ideas in this thread are so uninteresting, to me.

If you put a gun to my head and told me to suggest something, then I would look at the mercantilism tech in the church. Perhaps make another, light version of the tech that costs less but gives you a shipment or two. Could even make it available in discovery age so that you can research it while aging up or something. Wouldn't be worth it on a TP map, but it'd something to do on a non-TP map. You could make the tech different for every civilization to make it more unique and for balance purposes.

[[Armag] diarouga]

The irony is that the very people who were strongly against "Design changes" and stuff bcz it was getting away from RE, are suggesting such changes. So the real problem was to have the power of implementing changes than the changes itself.

yeah reading through this thread........... I agree with you. it was basically a personal vendetta against zoi.

See on one hand I want to not bring it up so that we don't muck up the discussions with flaming. On the other hand, it's kind of hard not to flame when madrouga's garbage suggestions are basically like zoi's but even worse

It's okay to make suggestions and have ideas you know, that's not an issue. Being a dictator and implementing controversial changes which are unpopular, and ignoring other's opinion is not fine.
So ye, in a way it was against Zoi, not because of his ideas, but because of the way he would implement his changes.

Feel free to disagree with my suggestions, but since many people think that no TP maps shouldn't be removed from the game (I actually wouldn't mind it, but it's a fair opinion), we need to balance it. Nat TP was a failure both from a design and from a balance perspective, so we need to find other solutions.
I actually suggested to give a trickle to the church even before nat TP trickle was implemented but it was ignored, because that's what Zoi would do.