So of course, I'm going to post about one structure that I feel may not be well-balanced.
City Guard comes with two penalties - a decadence hit and a tax hit - takes up a slot, and costs 1 upkeep to boot. In return, you get a revolt risk decrease and some garrison troops if you're under siege. Is it just me, or is this not a very good bargain even for edge cases like a border city with low loyalty? Am I missing something? Have other players found a use for this structure that I'm not seeing?
I was thinking that a re-balance along the following lines could make this structure more interesting:
- There are no Red buildings that provide a direct Loyalty bonus that I can recall. City Guard would seem well-suited for this. Even if they take some funds under the table, presumably the City Guard provides some level of law-and-order that could be reflected as a Loyalty bonus, and not just a revolt risk decline. This would be a more balanced benefit for the decadence penalty, I think, than the revolt risk/garrison benefit alone.
- There could also be interaction with the Courthouse/Prison, so that the Loyalty bonus from the City Guard is increased if the region also has one of these structures. A combination of legal adjudication and enforcement would presumably have a greater impact than either alone. The Prison benefits could be toned down a bit to reflect the interaction, as the Prison is pretty powerful currently (though the Courthouse seems okay as is).
- Instead of a direct taxation hit, I think a more interesting approach to the "corrupt City Guard" risk would be to have a random event - or set of random events - associated with this building, the same way there is with Stoas and the like. Right now, the percentage cost makes City Guards worse in big cities, whereas big cities should be the ones most suitable for a City Guard, I think. A random event that costs you money from time-to-time would make the cost flatter. To capture the greater impact of corruption in bigger cities, however, there could also be a less common event where the corrupt City Guard triggers a 5 turn money penalty in the region, similar to a corrupt Governor.
- Finally, as an offset to the bad special events, there could be a new Decision that is dependent on having either a City Guard, a Courthouse or a Prison, where you would be able to eliminate Unrest or if not in Unrest then increase Loyalty for a few turns in any region that has at least one of these structures. Alternatively, instead of being a new Decision, this could be a new option under the existing Decision associated with ancient law.
