Question & Critic about the increasing cost of the improvements

[Jojo_Fr]

Hello.

- Improvement cost gold and ressources. But their cost is strangely affected by the total number of improvements in your empire, according to what I see.

This is strange, I don't understand this system, and his logic.

Is it an anti exponential (snowballing) system, to limit having some cities (so some improvements ?). I don't like it at all, because having some cities is already hard to do :

- Settler cost hammer.

- You need to kill the barbarians lairs, which need some units or very experimented units.

- You need to bring workers, build improvements, and develop this new city.

- The maintenant cost over your empire are increasing, and the increase is more and more important as you have more and more cities.

- The more cities you have, the harder it is to defend your empire. It's far more easy to have 3 cities and your army stationned near them, than protecting 7 cities.

To that, so if I well understand, we got a new system which is :

- Improvements cost more and more at the global level, not only at the size of the city.


My question is :

- What is the lore & logical reason, and gameplay reason, to this increasing improvement cost ? Would it be not more logic if improvements should just have always the same cost (I don't see the logical reason).

 

[esvath]

- What is the lore & logical reason, and gameplay reason, to this increasing improvement cost ? Would it be not more logic if improvements should just have always the same cost (I don't see the logical reason).

Improvement's cost inflation is part of vanilla MOM and had been discussed in details years ago (during the development of MOM).

Things that I can still remember:

• To prevent late game empires to spam improvements in all tiles. This is a harsh fantasy world, not modern world with improvements all over the earth.
• To force players make meaningful choice: what improvements should be build, when?

And even though having cities require lots of investment (in hammers, military units etc), you get reward more than you have spent. So, your description on how hard it is to build city is negated by the benefits of having cities.

 

[Linvega]

I actually like the anti-expansion features in this mod. In regular civ, you can easily push the maintenance so much down that you can literally conquer the world and still get stronger with each city. Having more than ~30 cities is micromanaging hell imo, and if I remember correctly I had games with much more cities than that.

In this mod, you can still get fairly big and get huge advantages from it, but after a certain point expansion becomes not as good anymore, and pretty fast after that, you just shouldn't expand much anymore. Imo, still having some unconquered land left makes the game feel more like an actual fantasy world.
Also, any system that punishes the strong makes the game stay interesting for longer since you can't snowball as hard. And honestly, for the first ~10 cities, you don't notice this too much anyway, so it's not like expansion is completely unrewarding.

Increasing improvement cost is actually the one thing that never hindered me. Even double or triple the cost is still pretty much nothing for an endgame civ. It's number of cities maintenance that kills you. From a lore pov, just consider how hard it is for medieval civs to keep vast areas under control. It needs an increasing amount of bureaucracy, which costs a lot of money.

The only things I dislike about this are:
1)city maintenance gets pretty crazy quite fast above size 10. Having such a big, arbitrary jump is annoying and if you can't grow wide, you should at least be able to grow tall. Though winter/summer palace remedy this at least for two cities.
2)any civic that increases the maintenance suddenly becomes terrible once you grow to a certain size, even if it's otherwise great.

 

[Ogi123]

On the other hand any civic/building/GE decreasing maintenance becomes OP at larger empire size. Order for example gives you temple + basilica for -40% additional reduction, Dural courthouse has crazy -50%, their order college additional -20%, Justice GE gives -20% etc. So no at late game maintenance for most civs isn't a problem... well unless you are running liberty, but why would you?

 

[Linvega]

On the other hand any civic/building/GE decreasing maintenance becomes OP at larger empire size. Order for example gives you temple + basilica for -40% additional reduction, Dural courthouse has crazy -50%, their order college additional -20%, Justice GE gives -20% etc. So no at late game maintenance for most civs isn't a problem... well unless you are running liberty, but why would you?

Well then I seem to have played the wrong civs so far
With Malakim and Aos Si, all I could get was 40% with courthouse + Justice GE with their "appropriate" religion. Mazatl even get +20% maintenance.
Okay, then I have to say I don't quite like so big differences between the civs in terms of maintenance bonuses/maluses.

 

[Vital Brasil]

I have never seen the increasing of the improvements costs as a problem. Imo, it works like a nice gold shrink and usually prevents me from getting filthy rich in the beggining of the game (even in late game !). Also it fits pretty well on the philosophy of the mod, gives me some sense of immersion and add more strategic choices on how you spend your resources (not only gold, but also wood, stone, metal, herbs and leather).

There are so many things to do when in financial troubles. You can assing more citizens as merchants, build more merchant districts, spend some turns using the profits civic, build wealth, reduce science slider, rush to technologies that will help with the problem, spend culture in the merchant guild, or even in the cult of esus guild to steal gold from other civilizations. You can also get the headhunter promotion if you are a warmonger, invest your spellresearch in the life school to get some nice GE that reduces maintenance or adopt The Order religion if you feel like so. There are more than enough options for any strategy you want to adopt, and that's what i love about this mod.

In my last playtrough i was having some serious trouble with goblins pillaging my plantations, and thus, stealing a crapload of gold every few turns. I had absolutely no gold to keep building improvements for my cities (had cities of size 10 with almost all tiles unimproved) and had to develop a strategy to get gold fast, so i decided to explore the world and to sell the maps for other civilizations. It worked so nice that i could improve all the working tiles of my cities with only that gold.

So, i think there are plenty of strategies out there to get gold do keep your civilization going. Some will not be avaliable in early game, some won't be useful in late game, but there are always something you can do.
If you want to build a huge empire, you should specialize well your cities. Build many merchants districts to keep your finances health and some military specialized cities to help to defend the borders from barbarians.

But i agree with some of your points though. I think that barbarian lairs overwhelm your empire in the early game. Sometimes i destroy a lair, move to another lair, just to find out that the lair i destroyed a few turns ago is already full of goblins asking for tribute, or already inside my lands. This can get pretty annoying after you destroy the "same" lair after the 10th time, and want to engage a war with a civilization, but you can't because you need to destroy that lair for the 11th time. The respawn rate for lairs should be greatly reduced imo.

Regarding the improvement cost, one thing to "fix" this (i don't think it needs a fix, but i can see a problem in this for huge empires) could be to not make favorite improvements susceptible to the inflation. Or to make guilds reduce the improvement costs of the improvements related to them, so artisan's guild would reduce the cost of workshops and mines; ranger's guild would reduce the cost of camps and lumbermills, and so on...

But, since i am not a modder, i have no idea if those suggestions are doable

 

[Jojo_Fr]

As I said, I am opposed to the inflation of the improvements at a global level (not at at city level, isolated) because (I repeat myself) :

- Others anti exponential mechanis exist and are strong enough. And they are naturals (barbarians + maintenance + threat of the others empires are naturals).

- This is unlogical.

- Do you think it's smart to force players to build more and more new mechants districts, to compet with the growing cost of improvements and maintenance ?

- If you conquier the city of an ennemy, and you don't like the improvements, replacing them can be super expansive if your empire is big.



In conclusion, I don't like this mechanics, because it gives me the feeling of a pure artificial mechanic to castrate my will to build a large empire. It's not a natural difficulty : barbarians or others empires. It give me impression that the creator of this idea personnaly don't like the large empire, so wanted to implemanted a mechanic which flavour largely the "tall" strategy against the "wide" strategy.

Another reason why I don't like this mechanic, it's it make the Enchangement to produce ressources a better way to produce them than to use improvements. When you have it and enough mana, you can purely ignore ressources improvements, as they will increase again and again the global improvements cost, thus making others improvements what you need (food or hammer improvements) much more expansives...



To dissuade large empire, it would be simplier to do natural ideas like :

- The A.Is tend to declare war to an expansive player (who has builded several cities).

- The A.Is tend to declare war to a player which is near him (I think it do that already).

- The A.Is tend to declare war to larger empire than him.

- Creating two kind of lands : untamed land, and savage land. Untamed posseded normal barbarians and animals. Savage possed exceptionnaly strong barbarians and dangerous barbarians. The two tend to attack and raze cities, not only pillage their improvements. It would require bringing a realy army to pacifiate these dangerous threats. Savage land exist in the farest land distant from the starting capital of civilizations. This idea already is applied because there are Allausars and others powerfull creatures, in Xtended. But it may be further applied. I think it's a largely and logical suffisant anti exponetial feature.

- At last, to complicate the discussion and say an annoying thing ^^ I can say that : I don't think this system will change, as no one except me seems to suffer from it, it seems. But it will never prevent me to grow large, and I can do it even without one merchant district. You know how ? By pillage. Pillaging give ridiculous huge amounts of gold. Why would I build a merchant district, when I just have to pillage an improvement to have immediatley +300 gold at least ? And if I use the Raider trait, I just have to regularely send few cavalery units, without any army to protect them.

 

[esvath]

Dural courthouse has crazy -50%

This is going to be nerfed. In future version, Dural courthouse gives -20% and +2 science from people studying the laws.

Order for example gives you temple + basilica for -40% additional reduction

I am thinking to change Order temple from -20% maintenance to +10xp for disciple units. Basilica will retain -20%.

you are running liberty, but why would you?

Unlimited number of specialist slots is not good enough for +50% maintenance? Should I decrease the penalty to +30%? I don't want Liberty to be OP, though, just in same level with Arete and Guardian of the Nature. Social Order is deliberately rather weak, Order has so many strength already. Sacrifice of the Weak has its own problem: the hell terrains.

Mazatl even get +20% maintenance.

Mazatl really needs a rework...

favorite improvements susceptible to the inflation

Favourite improvements have independent threshold, so you can spam them a bit before they start causing inflation.

I think that barbarian lairs overwhelm your empire in the early game. Sometimes i destroy a lair, move to another lair, just to find out that the lair i destroyed a few turns ago is already full of goblins asking for tribute, or already inside my lands.

Lairs won't spawn inside your culture so the best way to secure your land is by expanding cultural border. That being said, I agree that the spawn rate is too high at this moment.
Especially the Ogres!

it will never prevent me to grow large, and I can do it even without one merchant district. You know how ? By pillage. Pillaging give ridiculous huge amounts of gold.

Then you have done the right thing with Raider leaders! Pillage all the way is one of the ways to support your empire.

- Do you think it's smart to force players to build more and more new mechants districts, to compet with the growing cost of improvements and maintenance ?

Yes. You have to choose bigger army (Noble Districts), faster research (Sage Districts) or more money/yield (Merchant Districts). Choices like this is interesting if each has their own consequences. If you have lots and lots of money/yield what is Merchant District for? You'll just plop Noble Districts everywhere.

If you conquier the city of an ennemy, and you don't like the improvements, replacing them can be super expansive if your empire is big.

That is what happens in real life wars too.

It give me impression that the creator of this idea personnaly don't like the large empire, so wanted to implemanted a mechanic which flavour largely the "tall" strategy against the "wide" strategy.

Actually, no. You can spam cities to your heart's content. Smaller cities cost you lower maintenance. With smaller cities, you will spread your improvement thus less inflation. This inflation on improvement's cost work against snowballing, be that from tall or wide empires.

it make the Enchangement to produce ressources a better way to produce them than to use improvements. When you have it and enough mana, you can purely ignore ressources improvements,

But doing so will prevent you from summoning units or casting damage spells. Good trade off, I'd say. Otherwise, what is the use of Nature school? Atm, Nature does not have any damage spells but the best in economy because of these enchantments.
If you decide to go Nature+something else, you need at least one other mana type, or go deep in Magi Circle to build vault, or beeline for wonders which give you mana, or lucky enough to settle near unique improvements. Again, choices.

To dissuade large empire, it would be simplier to do natural ideas like :

That would be forcing players to play one game: wargame. Warmongers might have no problem with that but peacemongers will dislike it.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

- That's not normal that with three units you can gain 1000-2000 gold + huge amount of ressources. It's not a question of pillage strategy against another strategy. Everybody can pillage. Even Elohim monks can pillage I guess. It's simply insanely overpowered. You invest a very small quantity of hammer to have these units, and obtain immense reward. At contrary, building two functionnal merchant district, will need a lot of hammer (cleaning barbarians), a lot of time, some workers, a lot of ressources and gold invested into the new improvements. And you will have a very small quantity of gold if you compare.

I don't understand you don't see the problem. You should maybe use more often pillage to see the problem (especially with a raider leader).

- I disagree, it would not force players to play one game : wargame. And it's not a question of war or peace strategy but off wide strategy (some cities and continuons expansion) against the (easy to do and to defend) tall strategy : few cities, then going at war to steal the already improved A.I cities. In reality, making new improvements so expansive, favour the war, because in war you don't need to build new improvements. Whereas when you expand, you need to clean barbarians, build improvements etc. and it's much more expansive than making the maximum of units what you can and send them conquier cities...

 

[esvath]

- That's not normal that with three units you can gain 1000-2000 gold + huge amount of ressources. It's not a question of pillage strategy against another strategy. Everybody can pillage. Even Elohim monks can pillage I guess. It's simply insanely overpowered. You invest a very small quantity of hammer to have these units, and obtain immense reward. At contrary, building two functionnal merchant district, will need a lot of hammer (cleaning barbarians), a lot of time, some workers, a lot of ressources and gold invested into the new improvements. And you will have a very small quantity of gold if you compare.

You are comparing the act of pillaging with the whole steps of building city -> Merchant District.
Fairer comparison:
To pillage:
- you need to have a city.
- you need to invest hammers to build units.
- you need to invest science to be able to build the units, unless you are using starting units*.
- you need to move the unit safely toward the enemy's territory, meaning you need to invest time as well.
- the unit needs to survive against Barbarians and enemy units.

*What is the survival chance of a lone Elohim monk travelling through hostile land? Very low, I think. Losing it means losing your investment. To be able to travel safely means travelling with groups of units instead of one unit and maybe arcane support or higher tech research or both and that doubles or triples your hammer investment.

Pillaging is not just hammer -> monk -> profits.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

You are comparing the act of pillaging with the whole steps of building city -> Merchant District.
Fairer comparison:
To pillage:
- you need to have a city.
- you need to invest hammers to build units.
- you need to invest science to be able to build the units, unless you are using starting units*.
- you need to move the unit safely toward the enemy's territory, meaning you need to invest time as well.
- the unit needs to survive against Barbarians and enemy units.

*What is the survival chance of a lone Elohim monk travelling through hostile land? Very low, I think. Losing it means losing your investment. To be able to travel safely means travelling with groups of units instead of one unit and maybe arcane support or higher tech research or both and that doubles or triples your hammer investment.

Pillaging is not just hammer -> monk -> profits.

- Having a city is free as anyone one one city and enough time to make it a decent unit productor (you can choose production improvement of going slavery + food improvments).
- Invest hammers to have three units is largely doable.
- You don't need to invest science to be able to build units, as you have immediately access to at least two kinds of racial units, including units with no ressources coast.
- I agree you need to invest time to scout then send safely these few units on the land. If the land is very far or if there are enough lair, it will not been possible.

The survival chance of a monk are important, because the A.I tend to ignore the units on his land. Sometimes, he attack them, sometimes (often) he ignore them. Another problem it's often, the A.I has only garrisoned units at proximity, and he cannot use them to clean your units.

I just did a game as Orcs with Jonas Edain (Barbarian, Faithfull and Raider traits). As barbarians I completely ignored barbarians. I took slavery, build one noble district, make some farms and a garrene (doubling the units I produce in the city). Then I send to the two proximates civs some goblins (no ressources needed) to start pillage. Goblins are slow, just one movement, but they don't cost ressources and cost a very few hammer cost.

Consider, dear architect, that I pillaged 3600 herbs (I never had in all my games so much herb) with one goblin on one plantation with encens. 2600 metal in one cooper mine. Isn't insanely high for you ? In 50 turns I cannot produce that, but one cheap unit give me that. No reason to build any ressources improvement in all my game.

About gold, I won 300 gold in a trading center, and 900 gold in a wine exploitation.

I will keep these cities alive and never take them, they earn me largely more ressources than I will never had If I had them on my rule (totally illogical)...

It's clear I will never have problem to have a wide empire with such enourmous ressources and gold availables...

I can stop any strategies about gold or ressources, I will just send stay at permanant war with one or two A.I, and raid them every X turns (I precise I play on Immortal or Deity, as the A.I has great difficulties to stay competitive).

 

[Psychodad]

I also agree at the fact that the mechanics make every game similar in one way:
- first i grow tall with about 3 citys
- then i expand to about 5-7 citys letting all citys, but one or two, stop growing at 10 to not suffer too much maintain cost.
- after i grew strong enough i start taking the advanced citys of the enemies, because the cost of building new citys (improvements) is to high and pillaging is too rewarding.

I would suggest reducing pillaging results (especially those from recources) and destroy most improvements on city flip to make warmongering less rewarding.

When the feature of inflation of improvement cost was first implemented i was strict against this feature, but i got used to it. It could be an efficient way to hamper the already to strong empires, if there was not the possibility to take fully improved citys by war.

 

[esvath]

I will see what I can do to lower the result from pillaging. If it's in xml or python, I can change the value less than present one. However, I will keep pillaging as good economy strategy option, especially for Clan and Doviello players. They need to gain economic benefits from their warmonger traits, otherwise they can't possibly keep up with builder civs.

On building intact after capturing city, how many buildings are usually intact in your games? In my playtests, usually I get 0-4 buildings after conquering a city. That is reasonable imo. Should I lower the percentage of building captured?

 

[Calavente]

I also agree with reduced pillaging gain.
and that pillaging should be a viable economic strategy.

In fact from my last game it worked like that : you get 300+ or 1000+ from the 2-3 first turns of pillaging... (depending on ressource or gold pillaged, and on civ size). then, for latter pillage, you earn less : 15-100 : it's like the game was saying "the civ has no more reserve, so you pillage only the improvement's worth and no reserve... " please not;e that even those pillage can be worth more than 15-20 turns of yield of the improvement

ifyou refrain from pillaging for 20-50 turns, when you come back you can once again get the 300+/1000+ or more on 2-3-4 improvements.

getting 15 from pillaging is too low (even without raider trait). while IMO getting more than 100gold (50yield) is high enough : 200g / 100 yield for raiders should be enough.

as a side note, the bonus for raiding lairs, when you get yields, are a bit HUGE (they are disproportionate as compared to what you can gain).
a small fort can give 1500 lumber on exploring... which is more than what my whole Civilization get in 50 turns ! (and getting 30+lumber/turn is quite good IMO for a medium sized civ) : gaining 150 would be more realistic

For me it shows that normal yields gains are too low (or yield costs and non-normal yield gain are too big)

EDIT: grammar

 

[Jojo_Fr]

- Keeping buildings is funny. It's not really powerfull, but I think people like finds few buildings. It's good as it is.

- Reducing pillage reward is a priority, for me. If you exploit pillage, it completely break the normal shape and balance of the Game.

- Psychodad, I am opposed to the inflation of improvements. As I said there are some more possibles elegants mechanics to limit the fast growing of an empire (and mainly should be the others empire. Having two armies on two distant points is very difficult unless you got some supports available, which needed an advanced military infrastructure. So wide players should be cautius before expanding too much...).

- If you want to decrease the rewarf by conquest a city, you can divide the population of the city after the city has been conquered. It's not much logical than elves pop stay on a city conquered by the Orc Horde.
But it must happenned after the conquest, because if not, razing city would give less armageddon counter or Devils Manes (what would be a bad collateral effect).



- I think it's important to understand what have said Psychodad about the classical game schemat : building 3 cities -> teching -> making some units -> pillaging & conquering one A.I. Taking improvements -> continuing conquering the next A.I.

You can say what you want, but everybody do that, because it's the most efficient by far. You eliminate an A.I threat, you steal improvements, you steel good cities. If I want to be cost efficient, I only do that, I never expand cities by myself : too expansive, too hard to rush buildings, too slow to grow pop etc. compared to taking nice A.I cities.

That's why when you think what I describe is a warmongering strategy, I think it's a confusion. Warmongering actually, it's going with 3 city then making army and invading. Not planting several more cities. I just argue for easier city spawning (cheaper improvements buildings). I think making city spawning less expansive would be a better way to stimulate to stop with the 3 city spawning pseudo peacemonger strategy who everyone use, peacemonger or warmonger.

 

[Psychodad]

On building intact after capturing city, how many buildings are usually intact in your games? In my playtests, usually I get 0-4 buildings after conquering a city. That is reasonable imo. Should I lower the percentage of building captured?

It was not my intention to have more buildings destroid (i would rather keep more) but improvements.

@jojo_fr: some good points, trooplimit and Barbarian respawn really hampers wide empires. Maybe with decreased possibilities of reducing maintain cost for cities (esvath already announced some), there is no need for improvement inflation.

 

[Icezera]

While pillaging rewards do need to be reduced, the increasing costs of improvements has been a design decision that was implemented as the original wildmana mod matured into master of mana. It needs to be in there to reduce snowballing as Civ itself is a very snowbally game. The reason for its importance in MoM is the fact that weapons exist. Not only do units that gain xp grow stronger over time, but civs that snowvall got ever increasing yields from spamming improvements which completely trivialized combat. Furthermore, improvements are that much more important in MoM because of the yields they get. In Civ 4, improvements just give you more hammers, food, or gold and still people spam them because spamming improvements is the way to win. With MoM, improvements are much more important so there has to be a pushback against spamming them.

Seriously guys, stop trying to change things that have been put in this mod through its long development cycle just to suit your tastes. You think you're the first people to complain about this? There have been years worth of arguments over some core features of MoM and the fact that they have stayed is a testament to their necessity to the health of this game.

@jojoRV
Just please stop. Stop assuming everyone uses this 3 city strat you think about. Stop assuming everyone uses the same playstyle you use. Stop assuming that a strategy that you use demands that the game be changed to suit your tastes. You've done this with every single topic you bring up as if the entire mod exists to suit you and your narrow needs.

 

[esvath]

RE: Improvement inflation
It stays. I agree with the underlying philosophy of maintaining some of the tiles as "wild lands".

RE: Improvement raiding result
I want to reduce it. Unfortunately, it's in the DLL.

RE: Lair exploration result
I reduce it to 1/3 of its initial value code-wise. Hopefully this will also reduce in game result to 1/3 (~100-200 yield per lair).

RE: Maintenance
I think there are lots of ways to deal with maintenance so it stays.

I will put notes on [FUTURE WORK] the download thread as documentation on this.

Overall, I value our discussion in this thread and elsewhere but please take into account that there are differing game styles. Some may love to play competitively, some may play leisurely. Also, this mod might not be the most balanced one; infact I repeatedly say that I do not aim for Xtended to be the most balanced one. But I will always welcome any balance suggestions as long as they fit the civs' lore.

Further note, when observing about balance, please take into consideration civ's special ability and leader's traits. Faithful leader getting huge benefit from faith and religion is working as intended. The same with Raider leader getting more benefit from pillaging. How huge these benefits are open to discussion, however, so let's discuss about that.

 

[Psychodad]

There have been years worth of arguments over some core features of MoM and the fact that they have stayed is a testament to their necessity to the health of this game.

Thats simply not true. Sephi was not nearly as sensible to to community thoughts as Esvath is. I don't think every design decision he made shoud be taken as "god given". Improvements did not always cost yield to build in MoM. First they were limited per city with the possibility of buying additional "slots" for each Citys with culture (not a bad system to prevent improvement spam at all). And there were some good reason not incrasing cost for each additional improvement (with the best reason that it is not logical and counterintuitive). To bad the diskussion got lost with the MoM forum (another bad Decision by Sephi to use his own Forum).

Don't missunderstand me. Sephi did awsome work with this mod, but i would not rate all his design Decisions "AAA".

 

[Icezera]

Yes, we have gone from absolutely limiting improvements to a softer limit on them by increasing cost. The design philosophy behind both are the same. Spamming improvements is a big contributor to snowball in civ 4 and there is no reason NOT to build improvements which makes the actual decisionmaking moot. MoM already introduces other mechanics like weapons and spells because the focus was on the units snowballing rather than the civ snowballing. The design focus is on snowballing units, not the civ so improvements MUST be limited.