Renaissance update review

[lebeststratege]

Definitly some improvements, as well as some growing pains.

I like the snowy map, although marches are tedious as f, I can understand how some buildings are meant to dry them out with time.

I went for what I call a suboptimal run (religious leader all the way through, no actual good or relevant bonuses to play the game).

The only milestone I didn't reach was "resource point" under 300 turns (which seem hard, but is probably easier with upgrading building rather being resource efficient (ie building more lumberjack which produce wood faster with WAY less pop than upgrading it once).

Apart from that, I overshot every other milestones. By a huge margin and it all stem in one very problematic type of building : Wonders.

Wonders are tedious to place (because you can't build them near your actual city... people like to build wonder 4 or 5 miles away in this game), they are cheap, they provide ludicrous amount of satisfaction points, they don't require any pop maintenance either (they even help a bit with keeping building between ages). Only reuirement is you need to have faction powerful enough for you to unlock them (which you want anyway cause it's a milestone, and factions pay taxes, and are mandatory to unlock core buildings as well as boons in medieval age).

And you end up having no needs uncovered AT ALL because of them.

But wonders are "cool" and should be a milestone on the game. Especially one willing to talk about a city florishing over millenias.

But that's not a conendrum at all =>
1 : reduce the number of buildable wonders at ONE per age (maybe with a bonus for craftsman to build 2?).
2 : wonders should not generate safety space over what they use (say a wonder use 300m² then it provide 300m² of safety for the associated safety node. that's it.
3 : Wonders should have 3 types of impacts :
3a before building it you need to get enough votes (it's a massive project involving the whole city), probably with strife between faction amplified.
3b during construction it should be a big trickle of resources per turn (instead of a "moderate" actual buyout say divide actual cost by 50 and make the player pay it every turn for the 250 turns of construction).
3c Once finished the wonder provide a BIG impulse for the city depending of the choosen wonder (say exclusive trade routes, better ratio of resource transformation, the birth a of religion which will unite all the city, etc...)
3d A wonder should have a lasting effect (including maintenanc fee) in the later ages => the new city center MUST be built within the range of the wonder (who would want to have his admnistrative center far from the glory of it's town?). Construction of a new wonder would either stretch the resources thin (because of additive maintenance), political tensions (if both wonders are from different sides of the spectrum), or both. But for that cost you get to rkeep the bonus of the wonder(s) you choose to keep for the whole game.
3e Wonders should generate WAY more attraction and thus shape the future political landscape of the city (but not necesseraly in a snowbally way => a wonder could influence differently depending on multiple circles of influence (say the closest are politician, second ring traders, third ring religious) and/or quarters (say north of pyramid would be religious, south scientist, east labors, west politicians).

That's it for Wonderland.

I liked how the evolution of cultural buildings provided unique boons (contrary to last patch), that's appreciated (and could become important if the game was harder).

Culture points are absolutly useless (I ended up with a combined 100 000 of them, and used like 500 modeling district). Sure you can use them to create multiple copies of the same building, but you already don't want to do that anyway (since there is no incentive whatsoever to do so). But I think they could add more flavor to the game (more on that later)

One thing that was already reworked once is the faction system, the first one was tedious (like 40 factions always at war with no impact other than asking for your attention), and this one is boring (get them asap, make them as powerful as possible, it's both needed and with no real penalties). As well as .. kind of bland.
I mean, you get 3 ages, and each ages birth his own version of the same 6 factions. You never have any incentive not to take one, and old factions from antiquities are just ... there. In there small houses (so less power), no use (they can't unlock buildings anymore), no real need (you don't need tax money anyway). Meanwhile the newcomers are the one you cajole (you need those buildings) until the next age.
I think the game needs more conflict between old and new factions, both in term of influence (if the antique faction wins over the middle ages, it gobbles it start a transition maybe shrinking a bit vacating political space for a bit, and if it loses, it may join the winner... or another antique faction as retaliation, fighting another culture war), as well as in terms of needs : When you are powerful and new tech is invented you want it first (see the Rothshield Family, their power dates from 15th century, but they didn't miss any trend in the banking technology.. and they don't live with 15th standards either ^^).

Culture points could thus be used to influence how those conflict results. Merging, upgrading, spliting, etc...

Factions needs to be able to be so powerful the player lose, either as a coalition or a single entity, depending of the governement system chosen by the player between ages.
For exemple antiquity would mostly rely on the player never letting one faction out of control, while middle age he get to choose between imperial court (little chance of losing, all faction provide small bonuses, and need to fight corruption), Monarchy (establishing faction-related vassals which bring more wealth... with risk of them seeing themselves so powerful they don't need YOU, but maybe you have enough friends so they can't do that yet) or republic (athene style) where a faction become so popular you just can't go against their wants despites emerging problems).
Last points about factions => they should provide concrete bonuses by their sole presence to your economy/developpement. Right now what you have access to is the result of a threshold from a faction (buildings, services, wonders). But if said faction is erased after, the game don't really care. What if, on top of that, you'd get needs that are solved by the faction presence?
There are actually 6 factions : Religious, scientist, politicians, traders, laborers and militaries.
Politician helps regulating troubles between elites and nations
Scientist makes progress their sole focus
Religious take care of the common people
Traders help transporting goods and aim for wealth
Laborer make the production of society
Militaries take care of violence.
But often time (and depending of the societies types) the mixes were differents.
I don't know how hard it would be for you to make but what if production buildings would only make laborers? Traders family would open more and more commercial roads and be the result of the setting ports/tradepost/internation treaties. Militaries would take care of public order as well as out of city threats (possibilities of pillaging and defending from threats). Finally scientist would rename as "thinkers" and include the people working in cultural buildings... that the other factions wants in proximity of their homes. Religious people would occur from temple (or altar, depending how player interact with religion) emerging as a need (say from turn 200/300). All those people would regularly claim more and more until a portion of them (who the player gives boons) emerge out as the ones having wisdom => the political class, spliting out from different groups (the more you helped a group the more split from them), with their own needs and resources. Of course, those same politician would either need to forefront or face the change of age, high spots are often perillious.

As a last bit of my wall of text I'd like to point out how ludicrously pricey ramparts are to build and upgrade : for the same price as a tier 3 rampart I can build 5 or 6 renaissances wonders. That's insane (I managed to make it, only by having a 1 million resource point, despite renaissance milestone being 300 000...)