.

[Aussie_Lurker]

True, but you could also argue that a VERY high production city wouldn't neccessarily have to choose between constructing the building or training the unit.
Still, it isn't really a priority for me.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Here's why it's a bad idea:

Let's say you have a city that produces 20 hammers per turn... and you want to build a unit that costs 60 and a building that costs 120... It would thus cost 3 turns for the unit and 6 units for the building bringing us to a total of 9 turns for both.

Now, we cut the production in half, it's going to be 10 hammers going to each... so it takes 6 turns to train the unit instead of just three... and it takes 12 turns to construct the building assuming that you line something else up after the unit is built... let's say another 60-hammer unit... by the end of 12 turns, you'll have two units and a building... and using the current method, by the end of 12 turns you'll have... two units and a building! The difference is that using the current method you could have two units in the time that it would take to build one by splitting production and you would get the building after exactly the same length of time...

Of course, if you factor in food production for military units like you do for settlers & workers, this might make the system more advantageous for the player, but it'd also slow down the growth rate of cities which might leave you right back where you started...

What I would like to do is have State vs. Private production... it would work something like commerce... each city would produce a base amount of raw production, but then that production would be split between state production and private production. "State" production would be things that the player controls... private production would be things the player has no control over... and it would be adjusted by civics... so under State Property, for example, the player would have total control over a city's production, but under Free Market, the player would have very little... but th player also wouldn't be responsible for building stuff like Banks and Supermarkets... And under Free Religion, for example, the player wouldn't be able to build temples, but the private forces in a city could...

Basically, the loss of control would be the new negatives for the player to certain civics that, for the society, really have no negatives.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

no bombers

I live in Tucson Arizona, Davis Monthan Airforce base in located here and on it their are several THOUSAND aircraft mostly dating from the Vietnam era in storage. Many are used for replacment parts, some ae just scraped but a lot are sealed with a protective rubber coating and can be reactivated and put back into service quite quickly. If thats not an aircraft reserve system I dont know what is. I understandy your concernes over an offensive force suddenly popping out of reserve and doing massive damage I just wanted to point out its a fudge to come up with arbitrary and unrealistic restrictions like that.

Perhaps rather then a hard coded "capitol halves chance of fleeing" their should be a City level bonus to Morale which is added in at the time of checking the fleeing chance. It would be local to the city, units cant take it with them when they leave (remember the Childrens Crech from SMAC). Then Buildings like the capitol could individual be given modifier like "+50 Defender Morale" and the you have nearly the same effect AND its more flexible for tweaking/balancing and giving it to other buildings as well.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Rare though it is, I think Call to Power 2 had a good system...

There were three different levels of readiness you could put your military at... if you set the readiness way down, they'd be at (I think) half health and could not get above that... but if you set them to full, then they would regain health again.

This would be a good way to do this.

Personally though, I think reducing maintenance to 0 is not good. I think unit maintenance should be higher than just 1... maybe like 3... so units in reserve would cost 1. But, of course, to do that, then you have to change the amount of money being earned by the player by fiddling with numbers elsewhere. Well worth it, IMO.

The other way to keep this from being over-powered is to have them lose experience/promotions when they're not at full ready... I mean, if they sit around for a few hundred years being lazy, they're going to need to be retrained and learn all their old tricks over again

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

I think the City should have a flat Moral bonus rather then a modifier on the chance to flee/rout. This should be more understandable to the player as chance to rout is calculated on the fly and changes durring a battle its quite unpredictable. But players will generaly be able to grasp the effect of having realy high morale because they will be using promoted units which have equaly large amounts of moral.

As for the buildings/Wonders

ship warf - the -25% hammers is a killer, no one would build what amounts to tearing down their forge
trading post - why do we lose food, another unessary negative
trade - this is a Process basicaly equivilent to Wealth but with 50% greater returns correct?, if so why not just have the Civics modify the output of the normal Processes rather then create a new process
East India Company - what kind of Commerce? I would assume gold, personaly I think it would be more flavorful to have it give you a large sum of free resorces with an emphesis on ones from tropical areas (spice, silk etc etc)

Civics - Only thing that looks weird is Universal Sufferage getting Trade Routes but Free Trade gets none, that seems illogical

Giving Village and Town health penalties is brilliant, it could go a great way towards making health buildings important (most are currently rather useless) and reducing the Cottage Spam strategy, infact it might even be stronger (cottage -1/4, Hamlet -1/2, Village -3/4, Town -1). It makes perfect sense two urbanization has always been asosiated with disease and all thouse satilite comunities around a city would contribute to spreading disease as people move between the commercial centers.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Another way you could approach it is to have cottages strip 1 food from the land they are built on. This will make cottage building much more strategic. It would also be easier to achieve than a health penalty. Anyway, just a thought.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I'd say that having a Cottage remove food is excessive, but a Village or a Town would make good sense IMO.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Why excessive? Workshops strip food, so why not cottages. What cottages have done is to reintroduce Infinite City Sleaze by stealth. Their immediate and ultimate benefits make them a total no-brainer, but if they removed 1 food, then you would be forced to at least think about the ramifications of building them-much like you do with workshops.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Aussie: No one builds Workshops

Olleus: I ment the bonus should be an int added to the units calculated moral, so if a unit had 60 Moral and the City has a total bonus (cumulative all buildings built their) of +40 the Unit would have 100 moral when inside that city. The value of each building would be defined in XML with a new tag which takes and int argument. I did not mean that the bonus should not be adjustable simply that it should directly add to Moral rather then modify the probability of fleeing in combat directly.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

What's a work-shop? Am I saying that right?

 

[Dom Pedro II]

What cottages have done is to reintroduce Infinite City Sleaze by stealth. Their immediate and ultimate benefits make them a total no-brainer, but if they removed 1 food, then you would be forced to at least think about the ramifications of building them-much like you do with workshops.

Ah, but if the later encarnations of the Cottage, Villages and Towns, removed food, it certainly would be something to keep in mind... a cottage will inevitably become a village or town unless left unworked or pillaged in which case it won't matter WHAT was on that plot.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

But this is why the penalty should exist from the very beginning. That way you avoid unusual effects like those described by Lord Olleus. As I said, if it is good enough for workshops, then it is good enough for cottages through towns. Maybe this way people actually WILL start building workshops occasionally, instead of spamming cottages. In a current MP game, Cottage Spam is now so exploitable that a player with over 25 cities-built over the space of less than 2000 years-can maintain a healthy tech lead over someone with half as many cities, built over a wider time span. If you ask me this sounds like the return of Infinite City Slease-albiet via an alternate route. Bigger is always better MUST be stamped out for good and all, and ending Cottage spam is a perfect way to go about it!

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Another alternative (requiring SDK work) to to make the evolution of Improvments respect the TechRequirment of the Improvment. So for example Cottages cant even start ticking down to become Villages untill the TechRequirement for Villages has been obtained. Then have requirments something like this

Cottage - Pottery
Hamlet - Hereditary Rule
Village - Fudalism
Town - PrintingPress (and drop the Town/Village commerce bonus from PP)

Thus you cant get anware near towns untill the Mid game, though I am afraid this might be bad for the AI unless it was also modified to take into account the distance to the next upgrade tech for its improvments.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I onced played a game where towns had a -1 food penalty. It was entirely evil. You have a nice and prosperous city, surrounded by lots of lovely villages, and all of a sudden you start starving and the population of the city drops dramaticaly. I send workers to erradicate some of my towns and replace with with farms. In the end, the city made mopre money with all villages, than with half towns and half farms. Wierd no?

How is that weird? Of course you're going to make more with all villages than half towns and half farms... but that's the whole point: strategy. Knowing that there would be a penalty eventually, you should've taken this into account and built fewer cottages... the whole point of doing this is to make it so that the cottage isn't the "no brainer" option Aussie_Lurker described...

 

[Dom Pedro II]

The Revolution Mod makes big empires much more unwieldy.. but the ultimate solution would be to have an average rather than cumulative value to beakers...

so they would be the number of beakers/population...

so whether a massive pan-continental empire, or a small island nation, you'll be on fairly equal footing in terms of science output... what will be the deciding factor will be the number of universities, libraries, etc., and in that case, the smaller civs would have the upper hand because they'd have less cities that would require these structures...

But bigger civilizations would have the advantage in being able to distribute production of units and wonders across more cities and they'd get more GPs, and if you combine TheLopez's Tech Resource Modifier, they may also have access to more Bonuses to reduce the costs of certain techs where a smaller civ might have to trade.

So at the very least, it levels the playing field somewhat... which is what I think would be best. You don't want to make it useless to have a big civ, but you don't want it to be the be all and end all either... some of the largest countries in the world have been some of the most bass ackwards technologically at certain points in their history too.. so I say make beakers based on an average and not cumulative.

 

[PatrickDockens]

The Revolution Mod makes big empires much more unwieldy.. but the ultimate solution would be to have an average rather than cumulative value to beakers...

Maybe this could also be solved but tweaking the cost of being far from the capitol? Maybe increased distance should cost increased maintenance and a decrease in hammers/science? This could reflect the difficulty of controling output from a central goverment.

Oh, this gives me an idea also. A republic-type civic that decreases the cost of distance from the capitol (republics being a more decentralized goverment) but increases the chance that a split or revolution might occur?

some of the largest countries in the world have been some of the most bass ackwards technologically at certain points in their history too.

I think those large empires were probably bass-ackwards becuse they didn't invest in research, not because they were large. I think this shows that technology should be a reflection of investment in research/academic infrastructure and not just size. A city with no libraries/universities/monastaries etc. should maybe produce no science (or very little)?

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think those large empires were probably bass-ackwards becuse they didn't invest in research, not because they were large.

Yes, but currently, just having a big empire will keep you at the very least competitive technologically in Civ. Again, I'm not saying they should be penalized for being large... I'm saying that being large shouldn't be the determining factor of technological advancement as history shows. But, of course, the United States, certainly one of the top five largest civilizations in terms of square mileage, has managed to remain competitive in terms of technology over a period of a couple hundred years... so it's not that being big is the downfall technologically.

I think this shows that technology should be a reflection of investment in research/academic infrastructure and not just size. A city with no libraries/universities/monastaries etc. should maybe produce no science (or very little)?

Yes, that's the idea.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

I personaly like the "leak tech from the leader to the followers" as this is how it happens IRL, Zimbabwa didn't have to re-invent Electricity it got "leaked" their from nations that had it already. Some things realy were invented multiple times (Writing, Animal Husbandry) but post Printing Press almost everything was invented once (or nearly simultaniously) in one place and spread to the rest of the world by Commerce.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Still leaves people trailing however since they won't be able to pursue a new line of technology without falling dramatically behind in those techs made cheaper by others researching them...

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Yes, but you can still have a good economy and be a small country... or are we not talking about that anymore?