#The Economic Legacy Path is severely underwhelming in the Modern Age

57 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

placid ibex
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I wrote a long diatribe of my problems with the Exploration Age's Economic Victory Legacy Path, but Modern is worse. Oh god, it's worse. Honestly all of the Modern Age Legacy Paths have problems, but Economic easily takes the cake.

So first, to even get started, you need to research Mass Production, which is fairly deep into the tech tree. Then you need to produce Factories AND Rail Stations in all of your cities.

Okay; for sake of argument, let's say you've got a whopping 15 settlements on your home land mass, all with a Rail Station and Factory. That's pretty impressive! After all of that back-breaking legwork, you know how long it's going to take to get enough points to win?

At least 30 turns. 30 turns of just...waiting. No way to speed it up. Nothing left to do. Just...waiting. You'll notice that the Exploration Age Economic Path has this same problem, and the solution I posed there is the same as it is here: allow the player to speed up the process with production or money. When I'm making a cool 1000 gold per turn but all I can do is spend it on things that get me more stats that I don't need anymore, it makes me resent spending so much time building up my economic empire.

And that's the best case scenario. What if you play tall with just 3-4 huge cities? You really want to spend 125 turns waiting? What if you spent the Exploration Age setting up island colonies? You know, the thing that the game is specifically instructing you to do? Good god, don't get me started. So first you need a Fishing Quay to "connect" your island to the mainland. Then you also need a Port to connect it to a Rail Station back home. Then you need a Rail Station on the island before you're even allowed to build a Factory there. And after you've done all that, the Quay, the Port, the Rail Station, now can you finally build a Factory there? I mean...sometimes?? The game just seems to arbitrarily decide whether you're allowed, and never fully explains it! It's madness!

I love, love the idea of completing 500 little objectives to win this path, but it needs improvements. Here is what I recommend:

  1. Remove the Rail Station requirement to build Factories; that's nonsense. Factories can be built anywhere. Period.

  2. If an island has a Port, it's connected to the mainland. Period. Its Factory now counts for points.

  3. Allow more than one Factory Resource to be slotted into each Factory. Every game I end up with WAY more Factory Resources that I know what to do with, which is a huge problem. Add a Project (that you can complete with time or money, that's important) that adds a slot to a Factory. And make its cost additive; say first slot costs 300 gold, second costs 600, then 900, or 1200, or 1500, you get the idea. You want to incentivize tons of factories, but you also want to make a handful of huge factories an option.

  4. Have points multiply. This is the biggie that would make it way more fun. Each Factory Resource earns you one point per turn, right? Well, let's say you have three connected by a Rail Station (making them a boon without being a requirement, take notes); now they multiply. 3 x 3, that's 9 points per turn. Add a fourth, now that's 12 per turn, and so on. "Oh, but then the win condition would happen to quickly!" Are you kidding me? Putting aside the MASSIVE amount of setup required to even initiate this Legacy Path, when you compare to others being winnable in a matter of 20 or so turns (cough artifacts cough), asking a player to sit around for 30, 50, 100 turns, doing nothing to speed up the process and just hitting end turn over and over? It's madness. Allow the player a means to speed it up so that every endgame turn is engaging and not boring.

Hopefully the devs will read my rants and they won't be lost as ravings of a madman.

waxen salmon
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What the hell are you on about? You can speed it up... do tou know what i do with all my money i get? Thats right, buy more ports, rails and factories!

Usually i have about 4 cities in modern age. They each easily can house 6-7 ressources, i rarley have more than 2 or 3 different factory ressource types of which i have 5 or more instances.
Then there's usually a few other factory ressources of which i have 2 or 3 instances... for those i make some towns into factory towns, buy a railway and factory there when i get the money and slot those ressources in there.

I honestly dont get your problems. I research the railways first, then i start building them everywhere (or more likely, buying them) while i research the factories.

rain delta
mystic plover
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You can add as many factory resources as the city can fit to speed it up. The UI makes it look like it’s only the one resource, but every subsequent resource of the same type speeds it up.

rain delta
mystic plover
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Yeah, like many things in the game at the moment, it’s not really clear in the UI.

fair marten
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The two things I would agree with on this list are

  1. The UI absolutely needs to change to make it clear that a settlement can slot more than 1 factory resource. I think this is the only real problem, as I spent a couple hours in the civopedia, forums, and multiple discords looking for the tech or building that allowed for a second factory resource and found no info.

  2. Settlements on islands shouldn't need a rail station, as there is nowhere to actually build rail. I can see this remaining as a cost balancingthing, or perhaps the code about 'connected' settlements somehow requires a rail station for the settlement to count. but needing the extra building is pretty illogical for 3-tile islands where 1 is the town hall and the second is the TF resource.

unkempt rapids
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So that's how it works? I was trying to figure out how to add more Factory Resources because it implied that you could, but that's one of the things I did not try... well thank you for clearing that up

naive tinsel
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So yeah the UI here isn't obvious, I only worked it out when the legacy path text had a tip saying you should specialise as each factory can only have one resource type.

But yeah each Factory can support a single specific resource, but as with treasure resources, it produces a number of points equal to the number of copies of that resource the factory has equiped

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But it is 100% not obvious, the easiest thing would be to put a # Points production on the resource screen for each factory

placid ibex
placid ibex
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It's based on the number of improved resources in that settlement, right? Those resources don't exist elsewhere, so you can't plug them in from homelands.

naive tinsel
# placid ibex Wait, what's this about treasure resources?

Yes. its the number of resources worked in a given settlement. I normally have no issue getting settlements with 2 treasure resources. So a couple of settlements gets to 30 without much issue, especially given that settling the new world and the islands between is kinda crucial in the exploration age.

But settling on more than a single treasure resource instance is key

placid ibex
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that is extremely rare; not saying it doesn't happen, but i'm lucky to catch more than one double-resource island per game

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and i am excessive about island-grabbing.

naive tinsel
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And unlike factories a settlement gets points for all treasure resources it works, not just one type.

Though it does seem to mean interior settlements on the distant world settling treasure resources was not useful for the victory

placid ibex
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either I end up with crappy islands that only have non-treasure resources, or the moment I see one the AI snags it first.

naive tinsel
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I mean that second one is easily solved. The AI can be ..... forcefully relocated (I have started a few wars to snag treasure resources)

placid ibex
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not saying it's impossible, just that when you weigh how much effort it takes (researching up through shipbuilding, finding the islands, building the settlers, getting to the islands before the AI do, building the fishing quay, waiting the 10 turns per batch, getting each batch home safely, and then waiting for that another 10 times) compared to science (big number go brr) or culture (piety is literally the first thing in the civics tree)

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it's kind of imbalanced. and by kind of, i mean extremely.

naive tinsel
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I would agree that of the 4 victory conditions it takes the most work, but I think its easy to do as part of the general play of the game. I don't feel its imbalanced, but it isn't as straightforward. I very much struggled to get 40 yield tiles in my playthrough, but got 30 treasure points easily.

placid ibex
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i never, ever to get 40 yield tiles

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you literally just take any urban district with two exploration buildings in a big population city, and cram in specialists whenever the population goes up

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hell, you do it while doing other things, the population growth happens in the background. all too often i'm trying to go for econ exploration, and oops look at that I got science on accident

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that does not strike me as "balanced" when I get one accidentally while desperately trying to get the other.

naive tinsel
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Shrug, my experience differs.

placid ibex
naive tinsel
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I think the only part of the modern age Economic path that I found underwhelming was building the World bank. Just teleport banker to city, click build, repeat, done (But I was down to only 2 AI left at that stage, and I don't know if there is a way the AI can stop the Banker as I have only done this path once)

pallid glacier
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I just completed modern era with a economic victory. It took 18 turns from when I discovered the ability to build factories, until I won the game.
6 turns to move my banker to every capital.
10- 12 turns to earn 500 factory points. My first turn I got 36 points from factory goods, and I was getting over 50 by the last turn.
You don't need a rail and factory in every city or town, I had 8 factories out of 19 settlements.

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The banker was hard for me, because I didn't have enough influence at first. Luckily, I didn't have many towns with a focus so I was able to convert them all to hub towns and gain an extra 20 influence per turn.

naive tinsel
naive tinsel
pallid glacier
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Don't need open borders. I was not at war, but was hostile with one civ, and it cost 200 influence. The civ I was allied with cost no influence, and the civ I was helpful but not allied witht cost 50 influence.

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I have no idea how much gold was required because I had over 25K.

naive tinsel
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That sounds reasonable

And year resource costs didn't seem to scale well with production in the modern age

pallid glacier
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As far as I can see, there are two ways to hinder someone going for an economy win. 1 disrupt their trade routes. 2. Win faster.

naive tinsel
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Looks like being hostile will also slow them down. I imagine a few well placed destroyed ports might hurt too

waxen salmon
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Its another UI atrocity that it shows nowhere how much the banker action costs! Its just... click this button and good luck.

pallid glacier
pallid glacier
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Factory bug has supposedly been fixed in the latest patch

brisk edge
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I literally had no idea you could stack multiple factory resources. 18 settlements with factories and didn't reach the economic victory. This makes so much more sense now.

nocturne crest
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I got first economic win on sovereign last night. I barely won before trung trac almost completed the space race.

I couldn’t get any railroads going on the other continent I think due to a glitch he I had 2 cities over in distant land and 4 cities homeland, but could only get homeland cities producing

brisk edge
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yeah that part should now work

nocturne crest
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I’m ps5 so gotta wait 😂

brisk edge
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though the way they phrased it, it's one specific scenario they identified as the reason why it didn't work. Hopefully that turns out to be the only one

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ah the joy of console patch certifications! Sorry!

pallid glacier
brisk edge
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I have a Patch 2 save where I also was unable to build a factory on a small island, while the city was on the coast. But until I try in Patch 3, no way to know if that's fixed now :/ Also I do have the feeling there's probably bugs and confusion, where sometimes it's correct but I don't understand why. But that's just my speculation.

waxen salmon
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General reminder that you can in fact buy factories in towns too, provided they have railstations (and ports if on islands) and you designated them as factory towns. They will fit less factory ressources, but they're good for the ones you only have like 2-3 of.

unkempt rapids
brisk edge
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No, factory towns make them cheaper, but you can buy them in any town

placid ibex
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So now that I've played the game for over a hundred hours and I understand how factories can equip multiple of one type of factory resource (terrible UI implementation there), I will admit that, yes, this legacy path is much more reasonable. Still would be cool to be able to earn points quicker via city projects or by spending money, but that's more of a wish list thing that a necessity at this point.

mystic plover
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IMO it's the easiest victory condition as is, so I don't think it needs a buff, tbh.

native sundial
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I think it's not as underwhelming as Cultural Modern.

I don't like your #3 or #4 suggestion.

rich lotus
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I feel like all the victories conditions are underwhelming tbh, they all need rework. They all fell anticlimactic.