Building consolidation and stat balancing

I've put together a draft proposal for consolidating buildings. Some highlights:

- 20 new buildings. I have many other new buildings planned, but this document only lists those whose purpose is consolidation.
- Proposed replacement, obsolescent tech, and other proposals and comments related to many buildings.

As currently structured, this proposal has little effect until the Transhuman Era, and by the end of the Transhuman Era, a huge effect. Without adding new buildings, it might leave the late game too barren.

Building proliferation in the Industrial and Modern Eras is an issue, and I simply don't see any good way to deal with it other than removing some buildings, which I wouldn't want to see happen (a couple of removals are proposed, though). Thoughts there are greatly desired.

The proposal only begins to clean up the excessive dependency trees in the late game. At least I think they are excessive.

This is, I admit, an aggressive plan. Maybe overly so. But I also think that the building proliferation issue needs to be taken head-on, and a piecemeal approach will not be adequate, if we want a playable "Cosmos" in Caveman 2 Cosmos.

While awaiting feedback, I will put some time into new buildings, including the ones in the proposal. As for implementation, I guess I will submit draft replacements of the XML files.
 

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Ok, looking at the document it's clear you've done a fantastic job here and have put a lot of hard work and thought into this so far. Excellent! I just have a few questions and suggestions from here.

Have you mapped out, against the backdrop of a tech tree, perhaps beneath the techs, for each building chain, where the buildings are being accessed and where they replace previous ones? I would personally find this view VERY helpful at seeing how these upgrade chains are progressing. I think you would as well. Did I do this for units? Well... sorta yes. I did this with the document I'm posting for example here that I called the tech tree with tags (It's already been a little outdated but feel free to use the template by updating the tree to the latest adjustments and using the remnants of the early stages of the latest unit review planning as a guideline):

This was the project core plan where I noted where every unit upgrade in various categories were being accessed by tech x. I could see from this roughly the 'stages' where we had upgrades - and unusual long stretches where we didn't. I then began to start shifting some around and making adjustment notes, where to add, where to remove, where to adjust techs to meet staging needs.

Something similar for each building chain, where it also shows where other buildings in the same category are being accessed and obsoleted, can make things very visible where there may be huge and poorly planned gaps in the links in the chain and where there may be clusters that need to be broken up some.

It can show where some adjustment factors like, for example, additional production % drops from buildings, may be a little strong in some parts of the tree while weak in others. Via this viewpoint, you'll be able to create a better, more purposeful gradient plan.

This is not to say that sometimes you may not WANT some asymmetries from perfect gradual charting... this is the art of purposeful design. We do want to consider historical significances and attempt to cast certain regions of the tech tree into unique challenges to consider and this purposeful variation can achieve this deliberately where desired.

My next step was to define 'mini' era groups where, in the case of units, upgrades were clustered for parallel and equivalent or opposing unit types. Once these 'mini-eras' were defined, it allowed me to start creating charts like those you'll find on the second document I'm uploading here, the Expanding Unit Review document. Hopefully you'll be able to follow me better on this when you see these charts.

Maybe this kind of approach could help with your visibility on the full range of issues.


Also... are you considering adjusting the base suggested build costs by a factor that helps to show some building types to be more or less easily constructed, despite the tech access point? It looks like you did an excellent job with your chart showing how dramatically off some construction costs currently are!
 

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I haven't attempted to do anything visual. There is the Lifespan column, which tells us how many columns it is until a building goes obsolete (if it does). I ought to rewrite it so the Lifespan also cuts off at the first available replacement. Some buildings, such as the Railgun Battery, would have very short lifespans. I'll think about ways to visualize the data. Maybe something that looks like the Building Upgrade page in the Sevopedia, but with x positions corresponding to where they are in the tech tree. I like what you did with superpositioning the units on the tech tree, so I will try something similar.

The cost guideline only takes into account the X value and whether the building is a National/Great wonder. As the categories are now, they bunch together a lot of dissimilar buildings, so if we were to introduce standard multipliers for each category, more care on the categorization would be needed. Were you thinking that almost all building costs should follow guidelines, with just a handful of exceptions for things like Castle, or would there be a lot of exceptions and the guidelines would only serve as averages?
 
I haven't attempted to do anything visual. There is the Lifespan column, which tells us how many columns it is until a building goes obsolete (if it does). I ought to rewrite it so the Lifespan also cuts off at the first available replacement. Some buildings, such as the Railgun Battery, would have very short lifespans. I'll think about ways to visualize the data. Maybe something that looks like the Building Upgrade page in the Sevopedia, but with x positions corresponding to where they are in the tech tree. I like what you did with superpositioning the units on the tech tree, so I will try something similar.

The cost guideline only takes into account the X value and whether the building is a National/Great wonder. As the categories are now, they bunch together a lot of dissimilar buildings, so if we were to introduce standard multipliers for each category, more care on the categorization would be needed. Were you thinking that almost all building costs should follow guidelines, with just a handful of exceptions for things like Castle, or would there be a lot of exceptions and the guidelines would only serve as averages?

Well... if you look at the cost page of the expanding unit review, you'll see that I added a flat % adjustment to different unit lines. I rarely left them at exactly 0% modifier (there were a few). I think among buildings some would be significantly less by the line while others maybe significantly higher.

The way I gave it consideration was to get an idea of a 'moderate effort' to train (and in your case it would be trying to get an idea of what you'd imagine to be a 'moderate effort to plan and build') and then tried to consider the buildings along the line and compare what I would envision the extent of involvement would be to a standard amount.

Thus, for buildings, I would think 'shops' would be a little less, like maybe -20%. Barrack buildings might be right at 0%. Large defensive buildings like walls maybe +50%.

This may not be as easily determined with buildings for a whole chain as I was able to for the units, upgrade line by upgrade line. You might want to consider them more individually. An example there being that a wall would probably have a significantly reduced modifier in comparison to a castle even if they were in the same categorical path.

Make sense?


It's truly amazing how visible game imbalances become with these methods. Recently Joseph challenged me on the positioning of the first LE unit upgrade from the watcher to the enforcer but if you look at that first tech chart you can see exactly why it had to be where it is. I agree it's pretty quick but it falls in line with all other units it was designed to run concurrent with. If we move that forward, we'd need to adjust other units that are staged to upgrade at about the same place on the x-grid of the tech tree, to the point that it would enforce a tremendous amount of shifts and adjustments to the tree as a whole. Maybe this could be re-configured for all of them but it would be a very tricky procedure. I think that chart shows this pretty clearly.
 
Hey Pepper, take a look at the last few posts in the Crime and Punishment thread... we've brought up some discussions that point towards some need to take a careful look at making the earlier defensive buildings a little less potent in adding defense.
 
I am not sure that is quite correct. Having your city in a cliff or on the top of a butte would make siege units useless. Having your city there should limit its possible size but people don't like that idea.
 
I am not sure that is quite correct. Having your city in a cliff or on the top of a butte would make siege units useless. Having your city there should limit its possible size but people don't like that idea.

We'll have to take a hard look at how we can appropriately model this sort of thing without making the city impossible to capture. You bring up a good point but if followed too closely without some deeply thought out planning, we're going to have Joseph blowing a gasket.
 
I am not sure that is quite correct. Having your city in a cliff or on the top of a butte would make siege units useless.

Don't we already have this simulated when a city is built on a hill?

Having your city there should limit its possible size

How so?

but people don't like that idea.

Has this been discussed before or just an impression? :dunno:

JosEPh
 
I am not sure that is quite correct. Having your city in a cliff or on the top of a butte would make siege units useless. Having your city there should limit its possible size but people don't like that idea.

The alternative strategy was to surround a city, cut off their food and water supply, and wait for months or even years, until the inhabitants starve, die of thirst, or leave the city in a counterattack.

However as soldiers don't need food in civ 4, they can live in a surrounded city forever.
 
...should limit its possible size but people don't like that idea.

Has this been discussed before or just an impression? :dunno:

JosEPh

I had a mod that did just that, it limited the size that a city could grow to. Only implemented the Civ III style stuff and put it up for discussion. It was not liked very loudly. This is way back probably in the mid-10s. I mentioned it again recently an people again said they did not like the idea.
 
I had a mod that did just that, it limited the size that a city could grow to. Only implemented the Civ III style stuff and put it up for discussion. It was not liked very loudly. This is way back probably in the mid-10s. I mentioned it again recently an people again said they did not like the idea.

Limits, from an absolute perspective, are pretty annoying, yes. BUT, another way to address this may be to give some dramatic situational modifiers to the amount of food needed for the city to grow.
 
Limits, from an absolute perspective, are pretty annoying, yes. BUT, another way to address this may be to give some dramatic situational modifiers to the amount of food needed for the city to grow.

The problem with that is that there are physical limits, in space on the butte or in the cliff complex and also in the amount of food that can be distributed through a city. Same of course with water.

Perhaps a massive unhealthy boost when cities try to grow beyond what is possible. Nah, I prefer a flat limit to growth, with maybe just a bit of leeway.
 
The problem with that is that there are physical limits, in space on the butte or in the cliff complex and also in the amount of food that can be distributed through a city. Same of course with water.

Perhaps a massive unhealthy boost when cities try to grow beyond what is possible. Nah, I prefer a flat limit to growth, with maybe just a bit of leeway.

You'd think the city would eventually outgrow such limits but would by doing so lose the defensive benefit that said cliff or butte would be granting them.

Question though, on a civ map, how would you define a cliff or butte city at all?
 
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