Better RoM: BuildingUpgradeChains & Balance

Afforess,
i've checked the sports buildings i wanted to do next and realized that most of them are from your mod i default with default settings. except for your sports buildings have no upgrade paths (they just obsolete) there are some concept redundancies with already existing RoM buildings. for example the fighting pit comes one tech after the arena buildings. both buildings serve the same purpose. other redundancy is the jousting arena and the royal tournament - this are two different names for the same building though they are different in their stats.

however, all the changes i plan are limited to your module. in order to prevent adding new prerequisites to this mod it would be better - in case you like the changes - to replace the original files with my version.

to give you some more insight on what i plan:

• fighting pit (move to an ancient tech or drop it altogether) => arena (moved to combat sports) => jousing arena/royal jousing tournament (both buildings should be merged to one) => fencing academy
  this path increases little specialized military xp and at the expense of maintenance.
• the modern continuation gives other stats:
  • minor league stadium => major league stadium => ? e-Sports Tournament (static for maintenance)
  • speedway XOR water speedway => spaceway (static for and small maintenance)
  • winter lodge => ski resort (+% and trade route yield for & maintenance)
  • ice rink => battlebot arena (?)
  where only the speedway and ice/battlebot lines are mutually exclusive. the rest just slow down the construction of other lines (by -50%) so it'll be hard to get them all.

Okay, sounds fine. I was already thinking about revising a few of those buildings, since they are a bit redundant.

Killtech, I believe I have your stuff working standalone w/o Early Buildings now. I fixed a few icons.

Also included is a spoiler for 1.74. In the toolmaker XML, there is a new tag


Put a building class in the tag, and if the Toolmaker can't be constructed for whatever reason (too many, obsolete, etc...) all the production is shifted to the BuildingClass in the XML. It won't be parsed in 1.73, but in 1.74, it's working perfectly. A message appears in game when this occurs.

Should I put anything in the civilopedia about that tag? I'm not sure it's very pertinent to most players.
View attachment Killtech.rar

a prerequisite for a building - but at global level. i.e. a building needs a world wonder finished to be available and it does not matter who build the world wonder.

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I've added all the tags you asked for in 1.74, except for this one, I need some clarification.

Should this be a list of PrereqAND or PrereqOR, or a single building class tag?

for my purpose of world wonders a single tag would do. as for other modders i'm not sure what is more useful - the or or the and tag. maybe the OR tag? will they use it anyway?

perhaps the simple tag is enough.

Okay, I've got all your tags done.

that's excellent!

You need to code in the way such that City Council replace BOTH village hall and town hall (forgot their exact names but you know what I talk about). Why? Because when I built City Council, Village Hall is still available to construct .

os79 said:

You need to code in the way such that City Council replace BOTH village hall and town hall (forgot their exact names but you know what I talk about). Why? Because when I built City Council, Village Hall is still available to construct .

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oups. fixed. had the same bug with several other buildings. thx for the report.

Afforess said:

Killtech, I believe I have your stuff working standalone w/o Early Buildings now. I fixed a few icons.

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thx for the effort. ok it is included now. uploaded my current version. i checked and it worked both with and without early buildings.

Construction Cranes (available at Machinery and obsoletes at Steam Power)

I'm confused by its stats. It say it require power, doesn't it? Because when I hover over it, it doesn't give Actual values...

there are several relicts from the original buildings stats like this i guess. these are not intended ofc. but it is easy to miss to adapt a single tag when you have to change nearly every tag in every building. i'll fix it in the next version. maybe if hydro releases his cranes i will upgrade the (treadmill) cranes to hydraulic cranes first before it continues with the construction firm.

the cranes itself does not require power but it gives a production boost with it. (i.e. when you acquire power your cranes become more efficient). this is because it stands for both modern hydraulic cranes as it does stand for the wooden medieval treadmill cranes.

Killtech said:

there are several relicts from the original buildings stats like this i guess. these are not intended ofc. but it is easy to miss to adapt a single tag when you have to change nearly every tag in every building. i'll fix it in the next version. maybe if hydro releases his cranes i will upgrade the (treadmill) cranes to hydraulic cranes first before it continues with the construction firm.

the cranes itself does not require power but it gives a production boost with it. (i.e. when you acquire power your cranes become more efficient). this is because it stands for both modern hydraulic cranes as it does stand for the wooden medieval treadmill cranes.

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And so...? Clarification time: the construction crane does give production, just not shown in Actual effect, correct? Then when I get power, it is boosted?

the default boost should be +5% (while -5% for military) and with power you get another +10% for production. that's what my pedia tells me and that's what i set the stats to. the default +5% are directly behind the building name so maybe you just missed it.

i like the idea of this but i think it may make corporations useless b/c the 2 city maintenance modifiers and the corporate maintenance modifier r effected the same by buildings. +100% maintenance would really killthe usefulness of corporations or make them OP weapons to defeat a rival. i think a possible solution is to make the modifiers from the building as specific as the 1s from civics. that way u could create some more give and take.

Killtech, I appluad your work so far. My test games with your latest revisions have been much more balanced, with only the capital getting over 50 hammers a turn, 400 turns into the game. It has slowed the frantic pace of the game down considerably.'

However, your buildings seem to have excerbated the existing health/happiness balance. I have cities with a surplus of anywhere of 5-10 happiness, and 5 health, sometimes more. Adding more unhappiness to buildings is a quick fix, but I don't think it's a very good catch-all solution, especially the entire problem stems from the 10-15 happiness and health from resources. I wonder if resources should be given fractional health and happiness. Same with building bonus happiness and health changes, that way the grocer could give +0.25 or 0.50 health per resource. What do you think?

Afforess said:

Killtech, I appluad your work so far. My test games with your latest revisions have been much more balanced, with only the capital getting over 50 hammers a turn, 400 turns into the game. It has slowed the frantic pace of the game down considerably.'

However, your buildings seem to have excerbated the existing health/happiness balance. I have cities with a surplus of anywhere of 5-10 happiness, and 5 health, sometimes more. Adding more unhappiness to buildings is a quick fix, but I don't think it's a very good catch-all solution, especially the entire problem stems from the 10-15 happiness and health from resources. I wonder if resources should be given fractional health and happiness. Same with building bonus happiness and health changes, that way the grocer could give +0.25 or 0.50 health per resource. What do you think?

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Hey, did you pass Industrial era into Modern era yet with the above situation? If yes, then I agree. If not yet, I suggest you go through Industrial and Modern era because they are seriously punishing in happiness and healthiness, more unhealthiness...

Of course, if Killtech buildings increase He/Ha a lot by mistake, then yeah go for fractional resource he/ha, but be sure to test it out in Industrial and Modern eras . Don't want to risk being too harsh on players like me .

This has done a good job fixing the middle age super cites.

Afforess said:

However, your buildings seem to have excerbated the existing health/happiness balance. I have cities with a surplus of anywhere of 5-10 happiness, and 5 health, sometimes more. Adding more unhappiness to buildings is a quick fix, but I don't think it's a very good catch-all solution, especially the entire problem stems from the 10-15 happiness and health from resources. I wonder if resources should be given fractional health and happiness. Same with building bonus happiness and health changes, that way the grocer could give +0.25 or 0.50 health per resource. What do you think?

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yes i am aware of this problem. i wanted to work on that later. in my game the problem wasn't that huge however. the reason is that i tried to remove lots of health and happiness boni form resources and move them to buildings (no resource prerequisite). because a +/- 10 depending on which resources you were able to acquire is just awful to balance. it also renders large empires very powerful compared to small ones with access to few resources.

the example for my policy is the grocer. as you can see it give +2 without any resources - so for everyone who builds it. the additional health you can get from it is limited (only +2. it was much higher earlier). also other resources can even give you some but grant some instead (so it's a kind of weakened happiness bonus from these resources). the reason why it gives a +2 health from start is that there are now quite some resources that produce with the grocer.

it's not the best solution i know. but resources seem a bit less overpowers. at the other hand... if you don't have that many resources you see how the game plays if you had them .

my suggestion is to remove all pure happiness/health form resources. so to get something out of a resource you will need some buildings. AND: the maximal health/happiness bonus form resources must be bounded - and not only by the count of resources in the game. my older concept was:

Killtech said:

the <BonusHealthChange> tag for buildings could have a list of different boni (resources) that give the same bonus.

what i mean is that a 'port' could give +1 with 'fish' OR 'shrimp' OR 'crab' resource to keep overall resource-boni bounded.

additionally one could replace <HealthChange> with tags like <iMinHealthChange>, <iMaxHealthChange> and <iHealthChangePerBonus> to make it possible to get iMinHealthChange for a single resource on the list and iHealthChangePerBonus for any other resource up to a maximum of iHealthChangePerBonus

thus it is possible for give a 'port' +1 per sea resource but only to a maximum of +2 . (+4 seems far too much for a port considering how many other buildings give you resource specific health boni)

same idea for happiness and maybe yield changes too...

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from this the idea i'd say the iMaxHealthChange is the important tag. it should not replace anything.


EDIT: btw. the port happiness problem i solved by removing the health bonus altogether and adding the fish market. instead of giving + per resource it gives only default +2. the limiting trick i used is that it requires a sea resource in vicinity. so actually you see that in my last game this would mean i get much less health in my coastal cities - because i acquired access to fish, crab and clams.

EDIT2: forgot to answer to Afforess original suggestion on floating point health/happiness from resources: well it is an option. but: the difference to my proposal is that acquiring the first few resources won't give you much of a benefit. you need to get a full one health so it's not rounded down to zero. my suggestion gives a direct benefit from the first resource on, but if you acquire many resources you stop benefiting from new ones as the MaxHealth values are reached.

as for a pedia or building display quick info i'd suggest to display the MaxHealthChange the following way: in case you have health bonus from resources (the tag only refers to that health bonus!) the supermarkets display could look like this:

"+1 from cow, pig, sheep, deer, salt up to a maximum of 3"

EDIT3: btw, could you apply the same stacking of resource bonus display for commerce and yield boni from resources? the bazaar info looks a bit spammed through the many "+n for resource"

first version of sports buildings is ready - see attachment. this time its only the files. it is intended as an overwrite for the "Rise Of Mankind\Assets\Modules\Afforess\Sports" directory. i'm not sure if they find all the graphics resources if they are used as stand alone (graphics use a afforess/required directory which should always exist).

i'm too tired to write a description for all changes but they do orient on my previous post on this topic. furthermore all changes can be view directly trough the buildings upgrade page as always.

Killtech said:

first version of sports buildings is ready - see attachment. this time its only the files. it is intended as an overwrite for the "Rise Of Mankind\Assets\Modules\Afforess\Sports" directory. i'm not sure if they find all the graphics resources if they are used as stand alone (graphics use a afforess/required directory which should always exist).

i'm too tired to write a description for all changes but they do orient on my previous post on this topic. furthermore all changes can be view directly trough the buildings upgrade page as always.

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Great, I'll take a look.

Killtech said:

from this the idea i'd say the iMaxHealthChange is the important tag. it should not replace anything.

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It sounds hard to implement though. How would I identify where health is coming from? Some is distinctly coming from buildings, and I could limit that, but resources? Resource Health from buildings are actually saved in resources. Weird, but true.

Killtech said:

EDIT3: btw, could you apply the same stacking of resource bonus display for commerce and yield boni from resources? the bazaar info looks a bit spammed through the many "+n for resource"

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Yeah, I can rewrite the way that works. I'll add it to my todo.