A New Dawn Beta Builds

[Killtech]

How does that help balance towns?

it doesn't. it's just that i forgot that i've nerfed their stats a lot in my version... they are quite balanced in my version. so either i revert the changes or your nerf the cottages-town improvements adequately. thus the question is which way?

note, that as i dislike too excessive yields i've tuned down the stats of all improvements. also the society civic changes i've made affect the yields too.

I don't follow your math:

If I add it up...

1 Industrial Complex: -2 , +8 : hammers:, +2:commerce, 3
1 Trade Center: -1, +6commerce:, 1.5
1 Farm: + 7,

Total: 4, 8, 8, 4.5

3 Towns: 9, 12, 12, 3

I do agree that towns are still too powerful. But how would adding a specialist make them less powerful? My gut reaction is to remove the food penalties from the Industrial Complex and Trade Center, lower the production from Personal Robots on towns from 2 to 1.

why do you subtract the negative values? i thought they only reduce their tile bonus down to zero at worst. so you'd get at least 7 food.

 

[JanusTalaiini]

I don't appear to be able to build either fish markets or toll houses, even when I have one of the prerequisite buildings.

 

[climat]

My gut reaction is to remove the food penalties from the Industrial Complex and Trade Center, lower the production from Personal Robots on towns from 2 to 1.

and remove food bonus from cottage line. Actually, I don't understand why it gives food bonus. Food bonus makes cottage line OPed, and significantly reduces usefulness of farms.

 

[Killtech]

- The display of some modifiers seems incorrect and strange. School of scribes displays a negative modifier to research and money. But it should bring +10% commerce and just some maintenance cost.

note that building the school of scribes you replace and thus lose the satic boni of the elder council (which gives +1 and +2 with priesthood). thus your city must at least have 30 base income for the 10% modifier to be better (in case you don't have any buildings boosting science additionally). this said i think i should give the schools of scribes and additional +1 bonus to make it better then the elders council for smaller cities.

I don't appear to be able to build either fish markets or toll houses, even when I have one of the prerequisite buildings.

the fish market requires a resource in city vicinity - not just access to a sea food resource.

 

[climat]

this said i think i should give the schools of scribes and additional +1 bonus to make it better then the elders council for smaller cities.

I thought that schools of cribes are worse than elder council and usually didn't build it (I prefered building monastery later instead.). Definitely additional bonus needed.

 

[JanusTalaiini]

the fish market requires a resource in city vicinity - not just access to a sea food resource.

Indeed. There's one right next to my capital all hooked up, and still no go.

 

[Kurenin]

One of the things I find is that towns / farms will always win out just because industry doesn't matter for poop.

A city can be size 20 and have only farms, but a bunch of specialists instead and it'll do fine.

For example, in 1.73, I currently build on improvements, mines on all hills and cottages on every other tile.

There's no downside to playing like this in 1.73, and in beta 8 I found that cottages were still the ultimate for me, it's hard to say why but I suppose it's the fact it gives a mix, rather than a specialised thing.

Incidentally it always made me wonder why towns/cottages give food, surely since people are going to live there and they use the land for residence, they should TAKE food? Hammers kind of makes sense, people do productive things in towns. Commerce also makes sense.

I'm fine with them giving commerce and hammers, but that would make them too similar to other improvements.

In a way I don't really support nerfing towns though - one of the things I dislike is the micromanagement of workers and if I can just plonk down cottages/villages, it makes my life easier.

I could let the workers auto build but they end up doing crazy things like giving a town ONLY trade posts, which then causes the town to stagnate.

 

[Kurenin]

Incidentally, what is the thought process behind removing a lot of the +1 trade route bonuses and converting them to +x% bonuses?

It's not particularly bad changes, it does mean that trade routes are quite heavily nerfed unless you can get a couple more routes from techs (then the +x% make them really powerful).

Also, I find that the +x% commerce buildings are very odd to play with, I can dedicate cities to building these buildings and whenever I need cash I can just drop my science output from that city to get an instant massive boost which I can then spend on buying units/buildings, effectively turning the old way of getting extra science into a new way of pumping out fast units.

 

[Afforess]

One of the things I find is that towns / farms will always win out just because industry doesn't matter for poop.

A city can be size 20 and have only farms, but a bunch of specialists instead and it'll do fine.

For example, in 1.73, I currently build on improvements, mines on all hills and cottages on every other tile.

There's no downside to playing like this in 1.73, and in beta 8 I found that cottages were still the ultimate for me, it's hard to say why but I suppose it's the fact it gives a mix, rather than a specialised thing.

Incidentally it always made me wonder why towns/cottages give food, surely since people are going to live there and they use the land for residence, they should TAKE food? Hammers kind of makes sense, people do productive things in towns. Commerce also makes sense.

See, I think exactly the same thing.

Perhaps if the stats were more like this:


1 Industrial Complex: +8 : hammers:, +2:commerce, 3
1 Trade Center: +6commerce:, 1.5
1 Farm: + 7,

Total: 7, 8, 8, 4.5

3 Towns: 6, 9, 12, 6


Basically, I removed the negative food yields from the trade center and industrial complex, and subtracted 1 food and 1 hammer per town, and doubled town's unhealthiness. Now, it would be less clear which to choose.

 

[0100010]

I was considering Terrain in my calculations

[FONT="Courier New"]
Grassland	    2F
Irrigated Farm	    1F		
Crop Rotation	    1F		
Biology	            1F		
Agricultural Eng    1F		
Machine Tools	    1F		
Gene Manipulation   1F		
Route               1F		
Biofuels                  1C
Derivatives               1C
Total:              9F 0H 2C
						
Grassland           2F		
Industrial Complex -2F 6H 1C
Manufacturing          1H	
Route               1F	
Stock Brokering	          1C
Total               0F 8H 2C
			
Grassland           2F		
Trade Center       -1F    3C
Conglomerates             1C
Globalization             1C
Route                     3C
Total:              1F 0H 8C
			
Grassland           2F		
Town                1F 2H 2C
Printing Press            1C
Personal Robots	       2H	
Vertical Farming    1F		
Organic Cities      1F		
Route                     1C
Total:              5F 4H 4C
			
Town x3 =          15F 12 12C
			
Farm                9F 0H 2C
Industrial Complex  0F 8H 2C
Trade Center        1F 0H 8C
Total:             10F 8H 12C[/FONT]

In my original Spec:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArGEV8QiVgM6dFFNMndKMEtnbGZWNWZGalZfT2VtckE&hl=en#gid=0

Towns never got a free food bonus, in fact the only food bonus they ever got, EVER was from Organic Cities.

In my Spec Towns didn't start w/ 2 Hammers either and also only got 1 hammer bonus from Personal Robots.
Maxed Town Total (on a grassland) under my Original Spec is:
3 2 6

In retrospect the commerce yeild should be less than in my original Specs, and probably max out at 3. (+1 at cottage, +1 at village, + 1 for route)

However, assuming we keep the other improvements unchanged, the make for
Townx3 = 9F, 6H, 9C. There clear winner becomes the Farm + Industry + Trade Center
So Why ever bother building Town? For the Free Specialist.



In Terms of balance and AI choices:
First you can't build towns except on Flatland adjacent to freshwater. (note that with Jungles still flagged as freshwater, which is something I still disagree with, and it would make your freshwater calcing code alot easier Aff) this could still become a lot.
This is also why Cottage->Towns in my original spec could not be built on marshes (who wants to live in a swamp?) as an extra limit on their number.

When Automation is choose what to build when the choices are Trading Post, Workshop or Town:

No Freshwater or on a Marsh? Trading Post or Workshop, depending on the need for commerce vs hammer.

Is fresh water available? Most cases you'll want a town. If the underlying terrain is Desert or Snow though, you might want to go with the workshop or trading post instead though since the food penalty does not have any effect on those terrains.

I didn't know the Town Hall, City Council would have a free specialist all on its own, I'm not sure if it should. The free specialist per town is good enough on its own.

 

[Afforess]

Heh; figures. The root argument here is that values we all want, and that I coded weren't matching up with real in-game values. I found an old left-over XML file that was overriding the town yields; because I did code the town just like you wanted, and said to do. So I guess the argument is moot.

Now, the town should be giving +1 specialists, regardless of any buildings the city has, right? Then I agree with all your changes, and will add it immediately.

 

[Afforess]

One distinction for the town: Who gets the free specialist? The city working the tile? Or any city who's BFC is over the tile? Or another option?

 

[0100010]

Who gets the specialist might have to be determined after play testing.

My original though was that any city who has a town in its workable radius got a specialist. Sure you could end up getting extra specialists, but at the cost of having an overlapping tile. This might even make those overlapping cross tiles more useful.

The reason I suggested a building to enable the specialists in the spec was because I wasn't sure how adding them would need to be implemented, but I know a building could do it based on knowledge of the boatyard.

And just to reiterate again, I recommend turning off the freshwater flag for jungles. Imagine a city in the middle of a burned down jungle w/ 20 town improvements in its fat cross.

Another thing to remember is that, if the groundwater well gives freshwater to adjacent tiles, then it just possibly enabled a max of 8 town sites. That might be a good thing though.

 

[ichbinsehselber]

I like the idea of needing something (in this case a tech) for the cottages to upgrade.
Where can we see, which tech is needed?

 

[Justin Cray]

edit: I just realized I was still playing beta 8, disregard if already fixed

bugs: I can build Armament Industry in every city, meaning I have literally a million Ammunition (doesn't one corporation require that?)

with Refrigeration I can build every single improvement on a desert tile (yes, empty pastures, plantations, wineyards and even windmills)

 

[strategyonly]

EDIT: Also i have finally figured out how to get rid of that Options ShortCut Reminder (if anyone is interested) PM me.

 

[DRJ]

Beta 9:

I had an Open Boarders agreement with Sitting Bull, but when i tried to cancel it, each and everytime if CTD

I tried others civs and same thing, each time CTD, when i tried to cancel.

Yeah i just reported the same issue in the bugs&feedback-thread. Glad to know I'm not the only one. Sad to know I can leave my game now...

 

[climat]

Was Jungle camp removed? I can't build it.

 

[lichen8566]

For revision 235, why the The Pryamids dosen't give me the free river regulations for now? Must I research the required tech for the free buildings from wonders?

 

[dyerbods]

If the growth/properties of urban (hamlet/cottage/village/town) tiles are made a function of the surrounding (worked) tiles, then I suspect the problems with balance will go away. Towns tend to grow by providing services to the surrounding land and passing trade, and are in competition with other towns. Consider a farmed tile as having an amount of commerce/production that is shared between adjacent urban tiles (possibly based on size and connectivity), and doing something similar for mined/fished/... tiles. Urban tiles themselves don't share anything. A town surrounded by worked farms/mines/etc is going to be wealthier and grow faster than one that isn't, and a town surrounded by other towns should go into rapid decline.

If its practical to work out a measure of how much trade passes through a tile, then urban tiles could 'tax' that and trade posts as a separate improvement may be unnecessary.

I also feel that water/wind mills shouldn't be improvements as they are not themselves primary or secondary industries, but the earliest forms of machine power. Consider instead something like a 'mill workshop' building chain that grants bonuses and has maintenance based on worked tiles. Water mills have been around longer than wind mills, and are more powerful. The Construction tech might enable the earliest form of mill workshop that will give a bonus to river tiles (more if they are hills, or perhaps flatlands have to wait for the Machinery upgrade). The bonus corresponding to windmills might come with Engineering and apply to tiles without forest/jungle (and might be greater on hill/coast tiles). The construction/maintenance cost for the mill workshop could depend on the number of tiles that will be affected.