Better RoM: BuildingUpgradeChains & Balance

[Afforess]

For city size maintenance, what kind of formula would you suggest?

 

[Killtech]

piecewise linear exponential function

i think of following structure:
size 1 - 4: no maintenance for city size
size 5 -10: 0.2 /turn per size
size 11-20: 0.5 /turn per size
size 21-30: 1.0 /turn per size
size >=31: 1.5 /turn per size

this means:
city of size 5 costs 0.2*1 = 0.2 city maintenance + empire size maintenance
city of size 10 costs 0.2*5 = 1.0 city maintenance + empire size maintenance
city of size 15 costs 0.2*5 + 0.5*5 = 3.5 city maintenance + empire size maintenance
city of size 20 costs 0.2*5 + 0.5*10 = 6.0 city maintenance + empire size maintenance
city of size 35 costs 0.2*5 + 0.5*10 + 1.0*10 + 1.5*5 = 23.5 city maintenance + empire size maintenance

the numbers i used here are to be understood as merely orientation values. an average renaissance city can be expected to be about size 20. thus the total of default buildings (buildings one can build in every city) that grant static gold bonus should not exceed +6 on renaissance technology level.

----
further for mega cities market and bank buildings should improve merchant specialists such that one merchant specialist produces enough gold to maintain 3 additional population for a 30+ sized city. in this case he should produce at least 4.5 per turn.

i also think to change maintenance for factories and universities to static gold cost. but here i'm not sure on the appropriate numbers. is -4 for a manufactory and -6 for a factory too few/much? needed to get some analysis on city income of average cities of the corresponding ages.

in this scenario only the maintenance changes for courthouses and the metropolitan administration (opens up 3rd city radius) would remain. and i think then it will be logical if they also act on the city maintenance term in the formula. so it will be TotalMaint = (BaseMaint*Fac_CityNumber*Fac_DistToCapital + CitySizeMaint)*Fac_BuildingModifiers.

EDIT:
the city maintenance values should be adjustable via XML thus mod components that add additional gold buildings can increase city maintenance to compensate for the additional gold.

 

[Snofru1]

Thanks for your answer, Killtech. I have to apologize for implying that you only think about the expert players when doing these modifications, though I still think there is a tendency. Having some increased maintenance on large cities is not a too bad approach, IMO.

My concern is just that there are buildings with too many downsides so that they aren´t constructed anymore (e.g. university with production and/or maintenance malus). IMHO a building should typically improve the situation in the city, at worst do nothing but never make things worse. A factory with a cost of 6 gold would definitely hurt lower production cities as there might be only a small benefit with it of 2 or 3 hammers. BTW, I definitely would like to see the hammer increase of factories etc. be a combination like +3 and +15% so that both smaller and larger cities can benefit.

BTW: Godson is "Patensohn" in german, I´m also not a native english speaker. And I am not a god, just a godfather, I know this sounds strange, at least for a German ...

 

[os79]

Revision 349:
Classical Era start (after switching into Monarchy and Prophets anarchy)
Only have two cities so far.

 

[Killtech]

perfect os97. thanks so far.

 

[Killtech]

Thanks for your answer, Killtech. I have to apologize for implying that you only think about the expert players when doing these modifications, though I still think there is a tendency. Having some increased maintenance on large cities is not a too bad approach, IMO.

well, indeed i see the game through my eyes and my gaming experience. sometimes it is hard to see the problems less experienced players face for me. but that's what the forums are for. just need details to understand what's going wrong.

My concern is just that there are buildings with too many downsides so that they aren´t constructed anymore (e.g. university with production and/or maintenance malus). IMHO a building should typically improve the situation in the city, at worst do nothing but never make things worse. A factory with a cost of 6 gold would definitely hurt lower production cities as there might be only a small benefit with it of 2 or 3 hammers. BTW, I definitely would like to see the hammer increase of factories etc. be a combination like +3 and +15% so that both smaller and larger cities can benefit.

i'd like to change the universities too. the current production trade-off of -10% is more or less symbolical. e.g. for a developed city that produces something within 20 turns it rises up to 21 turns. not a big change. and since it doesn't do much but is noticed by many players as something bad i'll probably drop it.

as for the factory: note that the metal processing buildings chains already grant a static production boost wile the factory building chain only grants pure percent boost. i don't see the why i should make the factory buildings similar to the metal processing chain. if low hammers cities are still considered to have too low production i'd rather rise bonus hammers for forge and later buildings.
furthermore i wanted to make the factory something for larger cities. they weren't usually build in villages.

BTW: Godson is "Patensohn" in german, I´m also not a native english speaker. And I am not a god, just a godfather, I know this sounds strange, at least for a German ...

yeah. it didn't come into my mind that someone could call it that way.

 

[os79]

perfect os97. thanks so far.

Unfortunately I ran into Infinite Loop, most likely the same one DudeSDCA reported to Afforess. Therefore I advance now to Revision 357. Just FYI. New screenshots coming during the week .

 

[Afforess]

358 Now.

 

[os79]

358 Now.

Thanks, should be simple process of copying over affected files to my exported folder. Hadn't even built an installer yet . Thanks again.

Revision 358, Killtech .

 

[os79]

New screenshots for Classical era cities (two now). Revision 358.

 

[Killtech]

thx os97. certainly there isn't any gold problems around that early game stage. you don't have any port cities but still...

 

[os79]

thx os97. certainly there isn't any gold problems around that early game stage. you don't have any port cities but still...

Dislike to start with a port city. Prefer the first two cities to be landlocked for hammers for military production (first for colonization/conquest units and second for border patrolling/hunting units) and then later a port city for sea units .

 

[Afforess]

In a move that's likely to make Killtech happy (but noone else), I've added Dom Pedro's Maintenance Modifier's into AND's codebase, which adds a slew of new maintenance tags to buildings (and civics, and techs, and projects...)

			<iMaintenanceModifier>0</iMaintenanceModifier>
			<iGlobalMaintenanceModifier>0</iGlobalMaintenanceModifier>
			<iAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iAreaMaintenanceModifier>
			<iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>
			<iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>0</iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>
			<iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>0</iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>
			<iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier>0</iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier>
			<iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier>0</iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier>

iMaintenanceModifier - The original BTS tag.
iGlobalMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities
iAreaMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities on the same continent
iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities on other continents
iDistanceMaintenanceModifier - Affects the maintenance from distance to palace calculation (for all cities)
iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier - Affects the Number of Cities maintenance modifier (for all cities)
iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier - Same as the distance modifier, but only for coastal cities
iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier - Same as the iGlobalMaintenanceModifier, but only if the city is connected to the palace

Before you worry - I haven't used any of them.

 

[dudeSDCA]

In a move that's likely to make Killtech happy (but noone else), I've added Dom Pedro's Maintenance Modifier's into AND's codebase, which adds a slew of new maintenance tags to buildings (and civics, and techs, and projects...)

			<iMaintenanceModifier>0</iMaintenanceModifier>
			<iGlobalMaintenanceModifier>0</iGlobalMaintenanceModifier>
			<iAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iAreaMaintenanceModifier>
			<iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>
			<iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>0</iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>
			<iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>0</iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>
			<iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier>0</iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier>
			<iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier>0</iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier>

iMaintenanceModifier - The original BTS tag.
iGlobalMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities
iAreaMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities on the same continent
iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities on other continents
iDistanceMaintenanceModifier - Affects the maintenance from distance to palace calculation (for all cities)
iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier - Affects the Number of Cities maintenance modifier (for all cities)
iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier - Same as the distance modifier, but only for coastal cities
iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier - Same as the iGlobalMaintenanceModifier, but only if the city is connected to the palace

Before you worry - I haven't used any of them.

Actually, this could be pretty cool.

What about this scenario? So I'm #1 civ and therefore paying a LARGE maintenance cost. All my cities are fairly large (>16) on 1 continent. Then I go and establish a beachhead city on a new continent. Maybe there's a way to use iAreaMaintenanceModifier or iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier to lower maintenance costs for the new city until it's a larger city (e.g., >8). I mean, the city is probably already being penalized for distance from capital, so that might be an interesting way to make maintenance more realistic and less...well, uniform?

Another might be integrating with some of the Events. For instance, there's the event where you can get power for your entire continent. Maybe, since power usually has a high cost (employing citizens), you could have an iAreaMaintenanceModifier increase associated with that event instead of paying the current gold level?

Just a few thoughts!

P.S. @ Afforess: I think there's something off in the inflation rates as they're currently scaled in the gamespeed file. I find when I'm playing on slower speeds (epic), inflation doesn't seem so bad...but it is a gamebreaker on normal speed. Especially since it wasn't going down on normal speed (would only drop 1% every 4-5 turns...but if I hurried 5 buildings, it would go up 5% and therefore take 20 turns to go back down)

 

[Killtech]

In a move that's likely to make Killtech happy (but noone else), I've added Dom Pedro's Maintenance Modifier's into AND's codebase, which adds a slew of new maintenance tags to buildings (and civics, and techs, and projects...)

			<iMaintenanceModifier>0</iMaintenanceModifier>
			<iGlobalMaintenanceModifier>0</iGlobalMaintenanceModifier>
			<iAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iAreaMaintenanceModifier>
			<iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>
			<iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>0</iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>
			<iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>0</iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>
			<iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier>0</iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier>
			<iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier>0</iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier>

iMaintenanceModifier - The original BTS tag.
iGlobalMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities
iAreaMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities on the same continent
iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier - Affects all cities on other continents
iDistanceMaintenanceModifier - Affects the maintenance from distance to palace calculation (for all cities)
iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier - Affects the Number of Cities maintenance modifier (for all cities)
iCoastalDistanceMaintenanceModifier - Same as the distance modifier, but only for coastal cities
iConnectedCityMaintenanceModifier - Same as the iGlobalMaintenanceModifier, but only if the city is connected to the palace

Before you worry - I haven't used any of them.

i don't think these modifiers make much sense on buildings but they could be of good use for civics (currently we have more civics then tags they can modify).

though... maybe the different court buildings could use these mod since they lower maintenance. they could do it more directed.