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[member66170]

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[Amrunril]

The issue I see with this system is that virtually everything contributes to the overreach counter, leaving you with little to do if you want to give it a chance to cool down. Under the current system, when your settlers get expensive, you can build builders. When your builders get expensive, you can build districts. If all of them contribute to the same counter though, you don't have many options besides eating a penalty or artificially slowing your progress.

Personally, I think the settler and builder scaling is fine as is, except perhaps for some minor balance tweaks. The district scaling, to which I think your criticisms apply more strongly, definitely needs an overhaul, but I'd rather see something comparable to settler/builder scaling for each district type than putting all types of progress on the same scaling counter.

 

[stinkubus]

The district scaling, to which I think your criticisms apply more strongly, definitely needs an overhaul, but I'd rather see something comparable to settler/builder scaling for each district type than putting all types of progress on the same scaling counter.

Why not just have fixed district costs with discrete increases as you advance eras? So a district, any district, costs X in ancient, X+Y in classical, etc.? This way costs scale as you advance, and it would discourage some of the crazier beelines which are available in the tech and civics trees. This also has the benefit of being very simple and easy to plan around.

Though I would like to point out the current game does have a mechanic to mitigate scaling costs, as you can get a deep discount on any district that you have fewer of than others. Since I tend to spam encampments, campuses, and commerce hubs or harbors early I can usually get industrial zones on the cheap, and will often build them first in new cities to try to get things kick started.

 

[Amrunril]

I think having everything linked together adds an interesting layer of strategy however. It means that there's an extra level of empire specialisation that goes in - you can't both fill up all available land on your continent AND have the maximum of number of trade routes. Or you can, but then you pay a price for it the rest of the game.

But maybe this system doesn't need to apply to everything. Having it apply to new cities (both built and conquered) and for new districts definitely makes sense.

The issue though, is that if everything contributes to the same counter, you aren't generating trade offs between different actions, you're generating trade-offs between doing something and doing almost literally nothing.

More generally, I'm still not convinced that anything is fundamentally wrong with the current scaling system for civilian units. Your complaints of counter-intuitiveness, opacity and encouraging weird tactics are all very much valid when it comes to district scaling, but a simple cost increase for each unit of the same type seems quite simple and intuitive to me, much more so than an overreach/corruption would be.

Why not just have fixed district costs with discrete increases as you advance eras? So a district, any district, costs X in ancient, X+Y in classical, etc.? This way costs scale as you advance, and it would discourage some of the crazier beelines which are available in the tech and civics trees. This also has the benefit of being very simple and easy to plan around.

I would argue that the issue with the current district system is tying costs to tech/civic progress in the first place, not the precise mechanism by which it does so. Switching districts to the same mechanic as civilian units, would make for a more unified, intuitive system and would avoid actively penalizing tech and civic progress.

 

[stinkubus]

I don't think of district scaling as punishment but rather a balance mechanism to keep the player from snowballing too quickly.