Why are some Roman inventions so weak?

[Ololorium]

I'm referring to the Arches, Insulae and Bacon:

The descriptions seem thought out, but the bonuses are... worse than meh.
Arches give -5% construction time. If it was build cost, it would be sort of useful, but how is 5% off build time even a bonus?
Insulae give +1% population capacity. One. Percent. Maybe the devs forgot to add zero at the end? 5% would have been alright, but 1% is just laughable.
Bacon gives +1% global monthly food modifier. Again, maybe a zero is missing here? There is no way it is a useful bonus.
Now, not all inventions should be super powerful, and Rome needs no additional buffs. But why have inventions that are absolutely, completely useless? They are not even blocking anything interesting down the chain, so there is no reason to take them. And invention points are never in abundance, you can never get enough of them to take all the useful inventions, so they don't need a "sink". So, why do these exist?

 

[Daft]

Yeah, seriously, bacon is extremely nerfed. We all now it's the best thing of all.

Now I'm hungry...

 

[Poliut]

Yeah, seriously, bacon is extremely nerfed. We all now it's the best thing of all.

Now I'm hungry...

It should also give bonuses to population happiness.

 

[Akbar The Great]

Rome doesn't need any more buffs, it's OP as hell already.

 

[Ixtli613]

Rome doesn't need any more buffs, it's OP as hell already.

Yeah but the wider point remains, why have such useless inventions at all? For anyone?

 

[Akbar The Great]

Yeah but the wider point remains, why have such useless inventions at all? For anyone?

Agreed. Never have understood "construction time" in any PDS game as a "buff" - it's not its pointless and worthless.

Ooh i can build a unit faster, a ship faster, a building faster...I mean seriously?

You plan a war? you need to beef up your navy? you go on a building spree?

If you've neglected your armed forces and you're under attack, it's already too late. But, if you've planned ahead during down time, you don't need the buff.

 

[Ixtli613]

Agreed. Never have understood "construction time" in any PDS game as a "buff" - it's not its pointless and worthless.

Ooh i can build a unit faster, a ship gaster, a building faster...I mean seriously?

You plan a war? you need to beef up your navy? you go on a building spree?

If you've negeclted your armed forces and your under attack, it's already too late. But, if you've planned ahead during down time, you don'ty don't the buff.

I could see construction time buffs being useful at extreme levels, like >60-70% but of course you generally can't actually get that high so it's still useless

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I'm referring to the Arches, Insulae and Bacon:
View attachment 706975
The descriptions seem thought out, but the bonuses are... worse than meh.
Arches give -5% construction time. If it was build cost, it would be sort of useful, but how is 5% off build time even a bonus?
Insulae give +1% population capacity. One. Percent. Maybe the devs forgot to add zero at the end? 5% would have been alright, but 1% is just laughable.
Bacon gives +1% global monthly food modifier. Again, maybe a zero is missing here? There is no way it is a useful bonus.
Now, not all inventions should be super powerful, and Rome needs no additional buffs. But why have inventions that are absolutely, completely useless? They are not even blocking anything interesting down the chain, so there is no reason to take them. And invention points are never in abundance, you can never get enough of them to take all the useful inventions, so they don't need a "sink". So, why do these exist?

Not coming up with any rational explanations here, so here are a few blindfolded dart throws @ the board:
Not all options are good?
A Golden Arches (McDonalds slang) nothing burger with bacon thing?
A public joke under the guise of a cursus?
Err.

 

[Nominus]

Agreed. Never have understood "construction time" in any PDS game as a "buff" - it's not its pointless and worthless.

Ooh i can build a unit faster, a ship gaster, a building faster...I mean seriously?

You plan a war? you need to beef up your navy? you go on a building spree?

If you've negeclted your armed forces and your under attack, it's already too late. But, if you've planned ahead during down time, you don'ty don't the buff.

I think that reducing build-time is actually nice, for example when building temples, theatres and wonders. That takes quite while and is very useful, so you want those buildings asap.
A -20% build time reduction is imho just as useful as say a -5% build cost reduction in I:R.

 

[Nostalgium]

Compared to a lot of other cultural/national techs, this does seem underscaled. Especially the food modifier, which is completely pathetic compared to just for example the 5% pop cap that the Seleukids get. And yeah, sure, Rome doesn't need more buffs, but these are just trap choices that make you spend four inventions because you want bacon.

... Yes, I do that every time I play as Rome. Why do you ask?

 

[Akbar The Great]

I think that reducing build-time is actually nice, for example when building temples, theatres and wonders. That takes quite while and is very useful, so you want those buildings asap.
A -20% build time reduction is imho just as useful as say a -5% build cost reduction in I:R.

Yeah maybe in extremis, like Wonders, I can see that and when I posted Wonders did spring to mind - but I think we can have a more interesting and impactful buff than construction time.

 

[windwalker14]

Imho, the devs have thought out the ideas quite well.
1) There are at least two ways to make options at the beginning.
One idea is to make the trees with a far far smaller number of inventions,with but bigger options and much much slower research rate ( does start here to make building far less useful)
Two : what we have now, lots of ideas that by themselves are small, but are additive, but lead to large bonuses, but spread out on large trees and branches, so one can direct to a good extent what big bonuses they want and yet get a diverse group of minor to midrange side groups.
Three: I feel it is more realistic and better game play for large technology advances to grow over time, not wow 1 day my building and design skills increase by 20 to 50 percent Specially in this time frame of Rome.
4: the game is built on small percentages. Base pop growth 1%. A bonus of 1 % is a 100% increase. Build 5% increase is small by itself , but there are enough to combine if you want to get a big bonus, but for me, I pick the 20% build time reduction and usually my research path does not take me down to many of the 5% ones.

 

[Akbar The Great]

Imho, the devs have thought out the ideas quite well.
1) There are at least two ways to make options at the beginning.
One idea is to make the trees with a far far smaller number of inventions,with but bigger options and much much slower research rate ( does start here to make building far less useful)
Two : what we have now, lots of ideas that by themselves are small, but are additive, but lead to large bonuses, but spread out on large trees and branches, so one can direct to a good extent what big bonuses they want and yet get a diverse group of minor to midrange side groups.
Three: I feel it is more realistic and better game play for large technology advances to grow over time, not wow 1 day my building and design skills increase by 20 to 50 percent Specially in this time frame of Rome.
4: the game is built on small percentages. Base pop growth 1%. A bonus of 1 % is a 100% increase. Build 5% increase is small by itself , but there are enough to combine if you want to get a big bonus, but for me, I pick the 20% build time reduction and usually my research path does not take me down to many of the 5% ones.

Yeah, I like the design of the tree very much. Maybe I just don't get the utility of build time.

 

[olivenkranz]

Yeah, I like the design of the tree very much. Maybe I just don't get the utility of build time.

the Lex frumenatria can be useful for big expansion sprees. After you've gotten through the religious tree though.

 

[Akbar The Great]

the Le frumenatria can be useful for big expansion sprees. After you've gotten through the religious tree though.

I donlt know what that is? I'm assuming it's a Roman idea, I have not played Rome since release.

 

[olivenkranz]

I donlt know what that is? I'm assuming it's a Roman idea, I have not played Rome since release.

its the one below the bacon; it gives national freeman happiness and national slave happiness.

 

[Akbar The Great]

its the one below the bacon; it gives national freeman happiness and national slave happiness.

Ok, thanks.

 

[Nostalgium]

4: the game is built on small percentages. Base pop growth 1%. A bonus of 1 % is a 100% increase. Build 5% increase is small by itself , but there are enough to combine if you want to get a big bonus, but for me, I pick the 20% build time reduction and usually my research path does not take me down to many of the 5% ones.

I agree with you for the most part here, but none of these techs have a 1% pop growth speed, which would indeed be really good (to the point of being OP, even). There is one 1% food modifier and 1% pop CAP modifier. The first means that i.e. wheat produces... 5.05 food instead of 5 food. The second that a city with 100 pop cap can now house... 101. I'm sure you agree that neither of these two warrant a whole innovation point, especially when other techs for food and pop cap tend to rest at around 5-10%. 1% food is less than a third of one vegetable. And unless you already have a pop cap of 400 and no other modifiers to pop cap, the cap one is less than one aqueduct. For the staggeringly vast majority of your provinces, it's not even 1/10th of an additional pop. The build time is the only one here which I feel is decent, since I tend to like fast build times, but the other ones are literally trap choices. There is no sane reason to go down this tree, since it's not even required for the followup tech, which can be taken immediately after the tech leading into this branch.

... Although of course, the game is a civilization builder, and do you REALLY want your ideal civ not to have bacon?

 

[Jiben]

the Lex frumenatria can be useful for big expansion sprees. After you've gotten through the religious tree though.

The thing is you can get that one by going left side on the italic mini tree aswell. Rightside is basically meme level and a waste of points as is is right now. Especially compared to most culture group specific inventions.

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

Perhaps there is a developer working for Paradox who thinks bacon is overrated and decided to make his opinion known through the invention.