Celtic Gold Mine rework

[Kulcsos12]

Gold Mine is an Unique building for the Celts. Its only build on gold deposit and here is the problem. Its work well in Skirmish, PVP and in most of the original quests but the new Celeste quests ruin it. Gold deposits most often placed too close to cliffs, rocks, other deposits or other objects making to build a Gold Mine there impossible. The map design looks good and natural with this "merge objects together" style but we loose an unique building with it. Celts has only 1 gold gathering upgrade while all other civs has 2 or even 3 upgrades. Loosing the Gold Mine by the map design make a drawback for Celts. Its not a game-breaking issue and they can make Caravans too (if its not forbidden by a secondary objective) but its don't solve the problem. What if we loose the training time reduction on a Babylonian Gardens? Nothing serious, just loose something what desinged for a civ.

Suggestion:
Check every Gold Deposits on every quests and fix them is definitely a lot of work and its ruin the map desing. So, its maybe easier to change the Gold Mine itself.

#1
Gold Mine should be a special storehouse for gold only.
+ Build near to Gold Deposits as other Storehouses
+ Grants +50% gold drop-off bonus (similar when Priestess of Ra empower a storehouse) instead of Conservation
- Can't garrison Villagers because don't need that
- It will be a Treasury instead a Mine

#2
Gold Mine should be build everywhere and give you a new source of Gold.
+ Can build everywhere
+ Give you a source of 2000 Gold as a regular Gold Deposit
+ Must garrison Villagers to mine out the Gold
+ Grants the original +50% Gold Conservation
- Only 1 build limit. (For balance. Since it can be build everywhere, you can build it in safe area while other civs must go to the risky area for Gold if Caravans are forbidden by objectives.)

I don't know which solution would be better but as a Celt player, I really want to see something about this problem.

 

[Donar]

As you mentioned it, the problem is that the goldmines are not placed properly. I only use the mine in candy kourion thought, all other maps caravans are usually most effective.

Changing the goldmines so the goldminer camp can be placed over it is for me the solution.

Having a +50% goldmine drop off bonus is a bit too high for pvp, would be ok in pve since caravans are anyway so much faster then mining.

 

[PF2K]

Make a list of all the quests where the gold mine building cannot be placed properly, and I will see into adjusting the maps of those quests.

 

[Slyrevick]

Make a list of all the quests where the gold mine building cannot be placed properly, and I will see into adjusting the maps of those quests.

there is one at Idalion.
the goldmine south to our forum.
Looks like it is too close to the "cliff"

 

[Kulcsos12]

Make a list of all the quests where the gold mine building cannot be placed properly, and I will see into adjusting the maps of those quests.

In Zabol:
Turanian Trouble:

Join Forces:

Totally Turanian:

Other gold deposits also show a red building but it allow to build.

Return the favor:

Can build the Mine IF you rotate it, still shows it red.

Only the little deposit at the middle allow to build a mine.

 

[Slyrevick]

By the way,

I don't catch the advantage of Celtic gold mine,

it's available at silver.

at that time,

the caravans or transport ship should already be running, no ?

 

[Kulcsos12]

As I said, this don't break the Celt economy. Its just a unique building/feature for a civ what don't work properly.

 

[Donar]

By the way,

I don't catch the advantage of Celtic gold mine,

it's available at silver.

at that time,

the caravans or transport ship should already be running, no ?

I only use it rarely eg. On candy kourion

 

[MechSmith]

I play a lot of celts, but because i switch between greeks and romans too i often forget to use gold mines (when i can) since they don't ever feel like they do very much. Maybe it does need a slight tweak, a small rework, so that it offers something unique?

Celts never seem to feel short on gold anyway, since they're infantry focussed you should have barracks, and if you've got barracks, you can make swarms of celtic spearmen, which only cost food. 10 barracks and 20-30 farms puts an unbreakable wall of meatshields soldiers between you and your enemy.

I haven't got any particular ideas, but i'm sure that they could be something other than storehouses that need rebuilding each time the gold runs out, and can't be used for other resources. I don't play babylonians much, and i don't know what high end players do, but i always make sure i'm maxed out on gardens as i age up. I'd love to see this unique celt feature be closer to that level of usefulness, even if it means changing something from the base game.

 

[frogs.poison]

I play a lot of celts, but because i switch between greeks and romans too i often forget to use gold mines (when i can) since they don't ever feel like they do very much. Maybe it does need a slight tweak, a small rework, so that it offers something unique?

Celts never seem to feel short on gold anyway, since they're infantry focussed you should have barracks, and if you've got barracks, you can make swarms of celtic spearmen, which only cost food. 10 barracks and 20-30 farms puts an unbreakable wall of meatshields soldiers between you and your enemy.

I haven't got any particular ideas, but i'm sure that they could be something other than storehouses that need rebuilding each time the gold runs out, and can't be used for other resources. I don't play babylonians much, and i don't know what high end players do, but i always make sure i'm maxed out on gardens as i age up. I'd love to see this unique celt feature be closer to that level of usefulness, even if it means changing something from the base game.

So the Celtic Mines are basically supposed to be the A3 gold mining tech for Celts - Celts are the only civ with only 1 gold mining tech (Compared to Babylon, who only have 1 tier stone and 1 tier farm, but have gardens, ox carts, and special A4 tech to make up for that). Celts gather gold in a gold mine at a speed equivalent to having 2 techs of gold mining, but also gain 50% gold conservation on top of that.

Of course, the main thing is that you shouldn't be mining gold with Villagers but instead using Caravans, as your gold generation per caravan is easily 2-3x that of Villagers, and it's infinite rather then limited.

Of course, we have a number of maps in which you can't use caravans (Kourion and Cold Cata for this winter event), and while Merchant Tranports have even higher gold generation per second then Caravans, they also have hefty collision issues - With Cold Cata, you can make 2 seperate merchant transport lines, 1 on the bottom and 1 on the top, but with Kourion you can only make a single merchant transport line, and if you get over 15 or so combined Merchant Transporrts with both players you start to get significant collision (Collision is a significantly lesser issue with Caravans outside of early game extreme boom, or bad building placement)

With these maps, gold generation becomes much more important, and Celtic Mines even more so. And tbh Celtic Spearman Spam is the 3rd worst spam possible for Celts, only behind Slinger and Ram spam. Even spamming Druids gets you farther compared to spamming Spearmen.

 

[purpleganja]

Those gold mines could use some tweaking to make them more reliable for sure, but when you get used to it it's not so bad.

On top of not be buildable or buildable even if red, another small problem is the villagers not entering inside automatically after building it all the time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

 

[CrimsonCantab]

another small problem is the villagers not entering inside automatically after building it all the time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Yes! That's an issue in PvP as well, where gold mines play a much more critical role.

Is there a way around that? I think I've shift-clicked the mine after ordering vills to build the foundation, but I haven't paid close enough attention to know if that consistently fixes it. Or if shift-clicking the foundation again works.

One thing I sometimes do when I assign a villager to a storehouse, but they already have a different resource partially-collected:

• order build storehouse
• shift-right-click next to storehouse
• shift-right-click storehouse foundation
• shift-right-click adjacent resource

It's a lot of click-spam, but that allows the vill to drop of their resources at the storehouse before they get wasted when the vill collects something different. I try to avoid it when I can by having the vill drop off at an existing storehouse first, but that's not always feasible.

Would be nice if a simple shift-right-click on storehouse would do the trick (that does not seem to work), or even if they would auto-drop when finishing the storehouse. I wonder if the gold mine build&idle behavior is related to this.

 

[purpleganja]

@CrimsonCantab I tried shift clicking the foundation and shift clicking the gold under the foundation, but it doesn't seem reliable. I should try shift clicking away and back to the foundation like you do with storehouses.