Why is it a problem that incas/japanese/swede house are “2 in 1” buildings ?
Chinese academy feel like a barraks + stable building
Russian block house is a barracks + outpost building
Chinese houses are house + livestock pen building
And then there are Asians monastery/castles/rice paddies and Native Farms being 2 in 1 buildings too.
So it’s not like the concept is not in the game already.
House + resource generating buildings favor outlaws oriented strategies.
Resource houses are definitely bad design, there’s no disagreement. But I also think that the balance of civs that use Resource houses isn’t entirely reliant on them. The “No reason not to build them because they are a must” argument is straw man at best. The high wood cost that you pay for those houses could have been techs, units and other buildings. The opportunity cost is kinda high. This isn’t an issue with all other civs that pay standard house wood cost. Your argument sounds something like, “It doesn’t matter if I build 7 or 20 shrines, what I need now is a 2nd rax and more Yumis and my eco won’t look bad with 7 shrines” while both shrine count make a hugely significant difference.
If you had asked me about Japan like 2 or 3 years ago, I would just go and say “fckin delete this civ” but since DE, it’s been nerfed to a point where I think it’s ok. I wouldn’t entirely want to revamp the civ’s mechanics because it’s been like that for 15 years and I would want to let it stay somewhat true to its original but in a more balanced way.
I’m not a huge fan of the DE civ design choices except for US maybe. We’ve only been seeing nerfs for Swedes for a long time, as for Inca, well, it has more broken stuff that Kancha houses don’t even matter. I hope they get addressed in the future patches.
I’d say your understanding on the subject is rather limited. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it is bad or that it does too much. The only one that was actually doing too much was the torp. It got nerfed. We can now move on to more pressing matters.
I don’t think it is fair to say that factory houses have no drawbacks. You could argue that the advantages outweigh the drawbacks but there are definitely some drawbacks.
While a normal house can be built in base where it can be protected by tc fire and in-base units as well as being generally close to military production buildings, shrines and torps are generally spread out making them easier to siege.
I think they aren’t too hard to scout as well. If 4 hunts are in a square you know there’s a shrine there and torps are generally built on mines so you know where to look. Torps also have exposed villagers so sometimes you can get a free villager kill.
As for Inca, since they cost 180 wood for 0.6 food trickle, I would assume most people would build them for population space. I think that makes it similar to India’s bonus of getting a trickle of villagers via shipments only it is in house form. Maybe people still do a hard kancha boom but I haven’t come up against it recently since the cost nerf.
I see your point that these are not perfect buildings either.
Blockhouses may have a noticeable drawback lategame, but also a significant advantage early game.
That is how you see it, which is fine. For me rice paddies are fine for indians and japanese who got no factory to compensate (compared to european civs).
Shrines (and recently torps) are balanced by a lower villager population limit. Late game 22 shrines give you much less eco compared to 2 factories and 24 villagers (despite also compensated with some japanese military boni).
For japan especially, a shine gives 0.43 f/s = 0.15f/s + 0.07f/s per hunt. Early game japan only gather food at 0.67 f/s, so 0.17 f/s less than a hunting villager. If both the japanese and his opponent aged up with 14 villagers, you would need 5.5 shrines to match the berry gathering rate deficit. And this is while assuming that japanese take 3 ships (each at 0.67 f/s) and not 2villagers//heavenlyKami while the other civ take 3 villagers. And without taking into account the fact that enemy explorer will take more treasures while the japanese explorers build shrines. And the shrines are the japanese eco bonus, while all other civs have something else to boost their eco.
So I’m not saying japan is weak, just that the resource generation from shrines is compensated by the berry gathering rate.
For incas, Kanchas are so expensive for what they give that I don’t believe you can kancha boom early the same way as japan/british/dutch/swedes can. I think you could decrease the Kancha cost and remove the tickle and it would not change much to the civ for the whole early to mid game.
For Swedes, I don’t know. Torps are really strong, but the civ got nerfed to the point that they do not feel OP even with torps.
So all in all, I understand your point, also thanks to the rice paddies remark: you do not like some buildings that are way stronger than their “standard counterparts”. And it sounds fair, even though I disagree with this opinion.
And I believe that none of the 3 house-factories (Kancha/Shrines/Torps) are any close to the british manors in term of eco boost.
Care to enlighten me on what intricate complexities I’m apparently too stupid to understand?
It’s a dead simple mechanic and someone disagreeing with you doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re talking about. Even if the game’s balance stayed 100% the same, I still think removing factory houses would make the game better.
Giving them resource generating buildings is not the problem. It’s resource generating houses that are the problem. My suggestion is still to give them resource generating capacity, just with dedicated buildings instead of houses.
Not saying you are too stupid, you just tend to overthink some aspects of the game, and the factory houses are part of that.
The numbers make up for the presence of the houses. Japan doesn’t have a 3 or 5 villager shipment, no hunting. So the shrines make up for that.
Sweden doesn’t have a 5 villager shipment either.
For inca, i doubt anyone is still doing the house boom anymore, since they have been nerfed pretty well.
So in the end it is about not liking these mechanics for arcane personal reasons, because similar mechanics like banks, factories, churches, monasteries, taverns are basically the same, and all these buildings do more than just generate resources. In fact, banks are so tanky they act as formidable defensive buildings but nobody seems to be bothered by that. You can’t really punish a dutch going banks, but you can destroy shrines…
You keep arguing the houses do too much. They really don’t. In fact, I’d rather have all houses do something other than being houses.
I’m not complaining so much about the balance, it’s mostly okay right now. Although I do think Japan is too strong in some aspects at some points in the game and Shrines certainly don’t help. Before the nerfs, the issues were just much more obvious.
There are many reasons to not like it.
Thematically it makes no sense. How do forest shrines support population? Why do Buddhist monks build Shinto shrines?
Gameplay wise it’s super annoying and cheesy. You have to dance around the map putting down shrines all over and can deny hunts to your opponent and allies. The opposing player just plays whack-a-mole. Having a different building in a smaller quantity would cut down on this. They could be more about tending to the Shrines instead of plopping them on your opponent’s hunts.
You have to build houses no matter what so there’s no extra thought process for Kanchas. You just spend an additional 30 wood for extra production and forget about it. Shrines are also significantly cheaper than houses. A different building would make this an actual choice that needs to be made. Getting Llamas from Kanchas instead would also give more strategic decisions.
Churches, Monasteries, and Taverns are so limited in number they don’t make much of a difference and they are also optional. You can get through a game without ever making them but you can’t do that with houses. Adding a trickle to a mandatory building doesn’t add any strategic choice and is just a boring buff that needs to be balanced in other ways.
