Improvement Balancing

Workshop/Industry/Industrial Complex is the flatland equivalent of Mine. It's almost pure production, dipping into commerce just a touch.

The yield curve for Workshops is pretty close to Farm and Mine:

• Default: +2 production, -1 food (+1 production from Road or better, which is available before Workshop can be built)
• Medieval Era: +1 production from Guilds
  • Net: +3 production, -1 food (total yield +2)
• Renaissance Era: +1 production from Chemistry
  • Net: +4 production, -1 food (total yield +3)
• Industrial Era: +1 production from Organic Chemistry; Workshop upgrades to Industry at Assembly Line, gaining +1 commerce and +1 unhealth (no net yield change); Industry gets +1 production at Combustion; Industry upgrades to Industrial Complex at Industrialism (+1 production)
  • Net: +7 production, +1 commerce, -1 food, -2 health (total yield +5.5)
• Modern Era: +1 production from Manufacturing
  • Net: +8 production, +1 commerce, -1 food, -2 health (total yield +6.5)

Overall, the beginning and ending yields from Workshops are close to Farm and Mine. This is the era by era breakdown.

The only real changes I see the need to make are to clear up the absolute knot of bonuses that are all clustered in the Industrial Era. Yes, it is the Industrial Revolution, but it doesn't need to be this steep. So these are the changes that I would like to make:

• Delete the bonus to Workshops at Organic Chemistry. It overlaps with the transition from Workshop to Industry and makes Industry no real bonus at all (Workshop with all techs is +4, Industry is base +4, and the +1 commerce from Industry is fairly cancelled out by Industry's +1 unhealth).
• Move the Industrial Complex from Industrialism to Manufacturing. This gives Industry the better part of an era to be buildable and not immediately replaced. The +1 production at Manufacturing can be rolled into the Industrial Complex base yields, making it a flat +7 rather than +6 at Industrialism/+7 at Manufacturing. This lowers the yield during the Industrial Era from 5.5 to 4.5.
• Move the Industry bonus from Combustion to Industrialism. That gives the basic Industry a little bit of time to be the best. I don't mind a small bonus at Industrialism, and I think it fits better than Combustion.

Vokarya said:

I kind of agree, but I don't have a good way of really comparing food to production. I am trying to be the most careful about food yields. I know we have removed a lot of bonuses from Farms that we had in past versions of AND, and I'm treating the Farm as the baseline that everything else gets compared to and brought down to if necessary.

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There is a tutorial on balancing new specialists by Saibotleih. Food to hammers is about 3:2

TBH I don't see the problem with the current improvement system...

youmakemefart said:

TBH I don't see the problem with the current improvement system...

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Vokarya is just trying to finely review the balance on improvements, like he did with techs, units and buildings. We can trust him

Curious how this will come out. Vokarya's work here and in C2C, impo, has always been well thought out with an exemplary attention to detail.

JosEPh

The Cottage line needs some help compared to other improvements. It starts out behind from the get-go and reaches its best performance in the Renaissance relative to other improvements before flattening out and getting left behind again.

The current yield curve for Cottages looks like this:

• Default: +1 commerce (+0.5 total yield)
• Classical: Cottage upgrades to Hamlet at City Planning, gaining +1 commerce
  • Net: +2 commerce (+1 total yield)
• Medieval: Hamlet upgrades to Village at Civil Service, gaining +1 commerce default, +1 commerce from Road [already available], and +0.5 unhealth
  • Net: +4 commerce, -0.5 health (+1.75 total yield)
• Renaissance: +1 commerce from Printing Press; Village upgrades to Town at Social Contract, gaining +1 commerce, +1 production from Road, and +0.5 unhealth
  • Net: +6 commerce, +1 production, -1 health (+3.5 total yield)
• Transhuman: +1 food from Organic Cities
  • Net: +1 food, +6 commerce, +1 production, -1 health (+4.5 total yield)

Comparing Cottages to other improvements shows that Cottage is behind in the Ancient Era, about average in the Classical, falling behind in the Medieval, about average again in the Renaissance, and then flat and falling way behind in the Industrial Era and later, except for a minor boost with Organic Cities that comes a little too late.

So I think this is what we need to do.

• Remove the unhealth from Village and Town. It seems unnecessary for these to be penalizing health. Mines and Workshops are unhealthy for many reasons, but I don't see it as so important for Villages and Towns.
• Increase the commerce yield of all four improvements by +1 from the default. This will make Cottages equal to early Farms and keep net yields up.
• Have the +1 production from Towns only appear at Railroad. Increasing Town yields by 1 and removing unhealth from Towns makes Town just a little too good in the Renaissance with +1 production as well. On the other hand, Town needs to keep pace in the Industrial Era and giving it +1 production with Railroad or better will work.
• Add +2 commerce to all improvements at Mass Media. Again, this lets it keep pace with the other improvements in the Modern Era.

Now the yield curve will look like this.

• Default: +2 commerce (+1 total yield)
• Classical: Cottage upgrades to Hamlet at City Planning, gaining +1 commerce
  • Net: +3 commerce (+1.5 total yield)
• Medieval: Hamlet upgrades to Village at Civil Service, gaining +1 commerce default and +1 commerce from Road [already available]
  • Net: +5 commerce (+2.5 total yield)
• Renaissance: +1 commerce from Printing Press; Village upgrades to Town at Social Contract, gaining +1 commerce
  • Net: +7 commerce (+3.5 total yield)
• Industrial: +1 production from Railroad route
  • Net: +1 production, +7 commerce (+4.5 total yield)
• Modern: +2 commerce from Mass Media
  • Net: +1 production, +9 commerce (+5.5 total yield)
• Transhuman: +1 food from Organic Cities
  • Net: +1 food, +1 production, +9 commerce (+6.5 total yield)

The resulting era-by-era comparison is much fairer to Cottages.

I know this is more radical than anything I have previously suggested. I'd like to know what you think.

Looks ok to me with just 1 caution point: there's already much more health than unhealth in the mod, so I'm not that eager to remove unhealthiness sources. I understand your proposal anyway, so it's up to you.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13714882 said:

Looks ok to me with just 1 caution point: there's already much more health than unhealth in the mod, so I'm not that eager to remove unhealthiness sources. I understand your proposal anyway, so it's up to you.

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This is the only unhealth I want to remove. Have you done any work on analyzing health/unhealth through the save games? I was actually thinking we could dial down some health sources and increase some building unhealthiness. For example, I really don't get why the Senate civic gives +1 health. It's already one of my go-to civics for the Classical Era, just because of its stability bonus.

I'm okay with removing the +1 from villages / towns if at the same time changes are made to offset those loses. I think removing the +1 from senate is a start, but not enough.

@Vokarya: What do you think of Delekhan's idea in terms of balancing?

Delekhan said:

Another option if the above are not that feasible: have the growth rate from cottage/hamlet/village increase if there is a road/railroad built on top of it. More advanced roads increase growth rate further. That also has the advantage of reflecting the real world historically. For example: Road: -5% time required to upgrade. Paved Roads: -10% time required. Railroads: -20% time required. Highways/Advanced Railroads: -30% time required.

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I could see +1 unhealth for towns, given how crowded and dirty they could be, but villages don't make much sense.

What if we kept the unhealth on Village and Town and added an additional +1 commerce at Applied Economics? This would balance out the unhealth at the end of the Industrial Era and slightly lower the fully-evolved yields in the Medieval and Renaissance Eras.

Vokarya said:

What if we kept the unhealth on Village and Town and added an additional +1 commerce at Applied Economics? This would balance out the unhealth at the end of the Industrial Era and slightly lower the fully-evolved yields in the Medieval and Renaissance Eras.

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Sounds better to me

dbkblk said:

@Vokarya: What do you think of Delekhan's idea in terms of balancing?

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It doesn't strike me as that great, but I feel more indifference than break-out-the-flamethrower hatred. I feel like it's too much of a micro-bonus to be a good idea, and it also is piling up advantages on something you are already doing (building roads). I almost think a better option is to apply bonuses from worker speed to improvement growth. I would have to look and see how many of them we currently have; I think Steam Power and Hagia Sophia are the only such bonuses right now.

So I've established a baseline of Farm/Cottage/Mine/Workshop. Now it's time to get to the hybrids. The first one up is Watermill. As several of you have pointed out and I noticed when I started looking, Watermill is very much overpowered compared to the baseline improvements and needs to be hit with the nerfing stick.

Here is what Watermill's yield curve currently looks like.

• Default: +1 food, +1 production (total +2 yield)
• Medieval: +1 food from Agricultural Tools
  • Net: +2 food, +1 production (total +3)
• Renaissance: +1 food, +1 production from Replaceable Parts
  • Net: +3 food, +2 production (total +5)
• Industrial: +1 production, +2 commerce from Electricity
  • Net: +3 food, +3 production, +2 commerce (total +7)
• Transhuman: +1 production, +2 commerce from Environmental Economics; +1 commerce from Wireless Electricity
  • Net: +3 food, +4 production, +5 commerce (total +9.5)

Comparing this to the curves for the baseline improvements shows it to be better than any of them, and it is definitely better than Farm at just about any point. (This table does reflect keeping unhealth on Village and Town and giving them +1 commerce in the Industrial Era.)

With Watermill, there are two things that I took into account.

• Watermill should not outshine Farm as a food-producing improvement. Currently, it provides just as much food with production as well, up until the Modern Era.
• In BTS, Watermill only produces food under the State Property civic. This tells me that cutting food is a good place to start.

So here is a revised curve, with changes marked in blue.

• Default: +1 production (total +1 yield); remove +1 food.
• Medieval: +1 food from Agricultural Tools
  • Net: +1 food, +1 production (total +2)
• Renaissance: +1 production from Replaceable Parts; remove +1 food
  • Net: +1 food, +2 production (total +3)
• Industrial: +1 production, +2 commerce from Electricity
  • Net: +1 food, +3 production, +2 commerce (total +5)
• Transhuman: +1 production from Environmental Economics; +1 commerce from Wireless Electricity; remove +2 commerce from Environmental Economics
  • Net: +1 food, +4 production, +3 commerce (total +6.5)

This gives a much better yield curve, in line with the baseline improvements.

While rationally I agree that watermills should be nerfed somewhat, they can be built on far fewer tiles than any other improvement, so maybe they could be a bit better than the "baseline" and keep the +1 food from Replaceable Parts?

Noyyau said:

While rationally I agree that watermills should be nerfed somewhat, they can be built on far fewer tiles than any other improvement, so maybe they could be a bit better than the "baseline" and keep the +1 food from Replaceable Parts?

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Agree.

I also feel Vokarya's calculations a bit incorrect about the cottage line, since it doesn't take into account the fact that one does not build Town but Cottage even in the Trans-human era. I think it would be great to speed up their upgrade in newer eras.

I would like to be able to build Hamlets, Villages and maybe even Towns directly, like you can build directly Shaft Mines and Industries after discovering the right tech.

Actually, what to me makes sense:

- in the Ancient era, you discover the appropriate tech that allows you to build the original first improvement (Mine, Cottage)

- then you discover the next appropriate tech that allows the basic improvement to upgrade the first time (Shaft mine, Hamlet)

-at the next appropriate tech, that unlocks the second upgrade (Modern Mine, Village), you also gain the ability to directly build the first upgrade (so you can directly build a Shaft Mine or a Hamlet, which can then grow into Modern Mines and Villages).

And so on.

Maybe add to some really late techs the ability to directly build the last upgrade (Town), this to me seems appropriate to the late Modern or Transhuman era.

This hopefully would also help the AI a bit, since the AI really likes to build and rebuild over already existing improvements, destroying fully grown Towns with some Farm only to rebuild a Cottage some 30-40 turns later (seen from Epic speed).

Of course making the AI unable to build over already existing improvements also might help, though I'm not sure how much. I've no idea how and why the AI decides to build over existing improvements. I usually see it happen later on when they have a surplus of workers. Maybe the AI does not have the concept of an idle worker?

Noyyau said:

While rationally I agree that watermills should be nerfed somewhat, they can be built on far fewer tiles than any other improvement, so maybe they could be a bit better than the "baseline" and keep the +1 food from Replaceable Parts?

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I look at it as how good are the possible improvements on a given tile, not how many tiles can take a given improvement. The point is to encourage players to choose an improvement not because it's the best, but what fits their needs at the moment. Also, Watermill is ahead of Farm in net yield from the Renaissance onward, so I don't think it needs to be increased any more.

Noyyau said:

I would like to be able to build Hamlets, Villages and maybe even Towns directly, like you can build directly Shaft Mines and Industries after discovering the right tech.

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Actually, I don't think this is a bad idea. I think with more technology, you could have villages and towns built quickly; so Hamlets could be built at Civil Service (when Villages can grow), Villages build directly at Social Contract (when Towns can grow), and then Towns could be built directly at Civil Engineering -- this is mid-Industrial, so one full era after Towns become available by growth. How does this sound?