Better RoM: Improvement Balancing

[Killtech]

@chrisj8804

i'm not sure about that. mines & farms will be basic with these changes, sure. but you can't just leave out building cottages as that means that you will earn no commerce. truth is that trade routes generate quite a lot of commerce but i'm not completely sure it that's sufficient to cover not building any cottages. especially since modifiers on commerce are mostly perceptual you gain most if you can spare few cities to concentrate solely on commerce and they'd use cottages & farms only.

industry is furthermore not a direct concurrent to mines; it's more or less the possibility to yield production from non-hill tiles. though i'd like it to be a intermediate commerce-production improvement to make it more unique.

point is that there is a lot of commerce actually in the game. i think we need some ways to decrease it first before commerce improvements become more interesting.

@1011101

i somewhat disagree on the floodplains +1 more food is a huge difference for a town that can only work 2 tiles. it can almost double growth speed. it won't make a huge difference for a size 10 city though. though i agree on your idea to restirct crop rotation to give a bonus strictly to non-floodplain farms.

 

[chrisj8804]

@chrisj8804

i'm not sure about that. mines & farms will be basic with these changes, sure. but you can't just leave out building cottages as that means that you will earn no commerce. truth is that trade routes generate quite a lot of commerce but i'm not completely sure it that's sufficient to cover not building any cottages. especially since modifiers on commerce are mostly perceptual you gain most if you can spare few cities to concentrate solely on commerce and they'd use cottages & farms only.

I would just use specialists. Commerce will either go toward research or gold. I can use a merchant or scientist to get that. As the citizen itself costs 3 food and then a town will give a -3 food penalty as well, that will account for 2 specialists which will give me a total of 6 units of research or gold compared to the 7 commerce for the town. I personally would rather have the 6 research or gold and the 6 great person points rather than 7 commerce and 1 unhealthiness.

 

[Afforess]

I would just use specialists. Commerce will either go toward research or gold. I can use a merchant or scientist to get that. As the citizen itself costs 3 food and then a town will give a -3 food penalty as well, that will account for 2 specialists which will give me a total of 6 units of research or gold compared to the 7 commerce for the town. I personally would rather have the 6 research or gold and the 6 great person points rather than 7 commerce and 1 unhealthiness.

Chrisj, you don't quite understand how negative improvement yields work. Let me clarify for you:

A grassland gives +2 food. If I put an improvement on it that gives +2 commerce, -1 food, the tile will give +1 food, +2 commerce. Follow? Now, if I put an improvement that gave -3 food, +5 commerce, the tile would give +5 commerce. No negative food. Tiles can not give negative food or negative yields. Yes, there would be the opportunity cost of working the tile, which is 3 food, but it's not quite as bad as you are painting it to be.

Specialists would still be less efficient means than using improvements.

One last note, for anyone concerned about the AI; don't be. The AI is not a factor in these decisions. I'll just rewrite the AI to work.

 

[NBAfan]

The changes you made are much better. I like trade posts too, but I don't see the point.

 

[Killtech]

One last note, for anyone concerned about the AI; don't be. The AI is not a factor in these decisions. I'll just rewrite the AI to work.

that's a great relief.

 

[chrisj8804]

Ok, duh, my fault, thank you for clarifying, that makes a lot more sense.

However, I still dislike the disproportionate scaling of food and the benefits. But at the same time I don't think you can make it give -1.5 food. I think an extra benefit would be helpful to offset the food loss, however I think just increasing the commerce or production yield would be counter-intuitive and unbalanced as well.

Would it be possible to add a percentage modifier to each level of town and industry? For example, since towns will be all commerce again, given the yields you came up with in addition cottages give +.01% to commerce, hamlets +.02% to commerce, villages +.03% to commerce, and towns +.04% to commerce. These would add to the commerce or production modifiers for a city for all plots within the city vicinity.

This would then add a benefit, albeit small, to help offset the food reduction and unhealthiness increase. I don't know if this is even possible or even a good idea, but I just thought I'd try to throw in an idea.

 

[Afforess]

However, I still dislike the disproportionate scaling of food and the benefits. But at the same time I don't think you can make it give -1.5 food.

Why couldn't I? I can do whatever I want, I'm an SDK modder, remember?

Would it be possible to add a percentage modifier to each level of town and industry? For example, since towns will be all commerce again, given the yields you came up with in addition cottages give +.01% to commerce, hamlets +.02% to commerce, villages +.03% to commerce, and towns +.04% to commerce. These would add to the commerce or production modifiers for a city for all plots within the city vicinity.

That seems rather small. A static 1 commerce would almost always be greater than those.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have a basic test for historic acurracy of a mod. It boils down to can I build the pyramids by 2400 BC if I start on flood plains in the desert like Egypt. In RoM the answer is no because only the city plot produces hammers. The test is a bit more complex - I should have one size 4-5 city and three or four size 1 cities (all healthy) as well as build the pyramids.

As to if the flood plains are OP, I would say that they aren't because they are in reality

If we could implement a change like the one suggested by 0100010 where desert flood and plain flood plains do not get the increase in yield from crop rotation and some other techs I think we will be on a better track.

If you must decrease the food production then at least increase the desert flood plain production to one hammer, up from zero as now.

 

[Hydromancerx]

If a new feature types like 'scrub desert/cacti forest' which gave +1 food existed, then perhaps they could be more easily offset.

Yeah a cacti forest would be awesome!

@Afforess

What do you think of this?

Ok here is a radical idea but what if ...

Cottage

• +1 to City Size Limit

Hamlet

• +2 to City Size Limit
• -1 food
• +2 production
• + 0.25 unhealthiness

Village

• +5 to City Size Limit
• -2 food
• +0.50 unhealthiness
• +1 commerce with Roads, Paved Roads or Highway

Town

• +10 to City Size Limit
• -3 food
• 1.0 unhealthiness
• +1 commerce with Roads, Paved Roads or Highway

In other words you would need to build Cottages (and upgrades) in order to allow your city size to grow bigger. Thus if you had 5 cottages your city could grow to size 5. While if you had 5 towns your city could grow to size 50. Note that all cities would have a starting city limit of 1.

---------------------

I have a basic test for historic acurracy of a mod. It boils down to can I build the pyramids by 2400 BC if I start on flood plains in the desert like Egypt. In RoM the answer is no because only the city plot produces hammers. The test is a bit more complex - I should have one size 4-5 city and three or four size 1 cities (all healthy) as well as build the pyramids.
.

You are forgetting that the Egyptians also had a stone quarry. Which means in the game if you have stone and a flood plains in the desert you should be able to build the pyramids.

 

[Killtech]

@Hydro

it will be confusing without additional display information because it city size limit will become more important then health. and since there is no other benefit that rising max city size in your current suggestion one would build a cottage only when ones city has reached max size so it can grow further. if it grows too fast one builds a second one. then when your city reached a good size and is not expected to grow much further you just replace the towns around it with more useful improvements.

so what happens if surrounding towns are razed/pillaged/replaced by another improvement? will you make it so that a city loses size?
and what should happen if a tow (tile improvement) is in range of two cities? do both gain it's bonus? or do they need to work it?

all in all it's an interesting idea. but it would require quite some testing to find balance for it. not sure it will help to balance things now.


@Afforess

i think we need to discuss mines (and their development path) in this context since up to now they were the core source for production. in case you want industry replace mines in later tech mines should have a yield maximum that lies much below that of industry.

and as i mostly play in the early ages it is really important how you manage forest. do you want leave tile improvements compatible with forest or will you bring it back as they were before? mines + forests yield too much production imho.

 

[konradcabral]

Wise post, Killtech. Wise post.

 

[GigaNerd]

Instead of increasing output, what if Cottages, Hamlets, Villages, & Towns could increase input?

Let's me elaborate; Farms collect food, Mines collect production, and Trade Centers collect commerce. But the more people working at these facilities, the more profit we generate, no?

I propose that every Town, Village, etc. provides a small multiplier to the resource output of the improvements adjacent to it. If the player builds a Cottage next to their Gold Mine and lets it grow into a Town, it'll increase the Mine's output by about 2 or 3 !

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Hydro

it will be confusing without additional display information because it city size limit will become more important then health. and since there is no other benefit that rising max city size in your current suggestion one would build a cottage only when ones city has reached max size so it can grow further. if it grows too fast one builds a second one. then when your city reached a good size and is not expected to grow much further you just replace the towns around it with more useful improvements.

so what happens if surrounding towns are razed/pillaged/replaced by another improvement? will you make it so that a city loses size?
and what should happen if a tow (tile improvement) is in range of two cities? do both gain it's bonus? or do they need to work it?

all in all it's an interesting idea. but it would require quite some testing to find balance for it. not sure it will help to balance things now.

I think it would need to have 2 factors. For instance the population of a city could still grow without the city size increasing. Thus anything OVER the city size level would result in people being "homeless". And thus create unhappiness and unhealthiness.

Likewise you can still build enough cottages for there to have enough people to have a home but still get the effects of not enough food or health, etc like it is now.

Thus if a cottage is razed or replaced by another improvement then the size would shrink but the population would not (at least initially). Thus creating lots of homeless population.

 

[vincentz]

Interesting; but that's pretty much the way things are now.

And there's a reason for that It took a long road to get here.

Why build anything other than towns? They provide everything.

But in a smaller scale. The cottage-town is an allrounder, which should give less than the specialized improvements. It also take quite a while before they are developed, and finally : Take a aerial photo of big cities. They are surrounded by suburbs, towns and villages. So if the later game have a lot of towns, I'd say : Perfect, just like IRL But to avoid too much spamming, maybe make cottages -towns require fresh water.


For realism, in the early game, we need to force players to emphasize farming. Then, as farms become more efficient, they can specialize with cottages and trading posts.

I was unhappy about the early farms, as their foodoutput was too low IMO. Thats why I gave farms a +1 with roads and later. But might give +2 with irrigation instead of 1.

Further, we need a very rigid trichotomy. 1 improvement needs to focus on food alone; one commerce alone, and one for production alone. There can be a few that do multiple yields, but they should be less efficient that using the above trichotomy.

Which is why I suggested what I did. The +++ is in a relative way, describing that a mine should be very productive but not necesairily 3 times more than a town.
The cottage-town definately needs to be nerfed as they have a HUGE amount of bonuses from techs and civics. My suggestion is that no improvement should give more than 9 in yield no matter civic/tech boni.

 

[chrisj8804]

Why couldn't I? I can do whatever I want, I'm an SDK modder, remember?



That seems rather small. A static 1 commerce would almost always be greater than those.

Good point.

I mistyped the percentages I meant. I was thinking like 1%, 2% bonuses etc. But now I still think that would be too small to be much benefit. Doubling those numbers though to 2%, 4%, 6%, and 8% for the cottage levels respectively would be better I think.

I think this could be used instead of an extra commerce to offset the extra food cost and unhealthiness because I don't think one extra commerce would be enough. This is because I value food more than commerce.

Each food is 1/3 of the ability to maintain a citizen. Therefore, if i have a usable plot in the city that gives me 5 production or 5 commerce or even a specialist, say a merchant. That one food is then worth 1.67 production or food, or 1 gold and 1 great person point.

No matter what, one food is always more valuable than one commerce. Add the unhealthiness increase to the picture and it's even worse.

However, I don't think increasing the commerce yield is the answer. A town giving 10 commerce would be absurd. Therefore the smaller, percentage yield increases.

I like this idea as well because in general a town is only going to be able to produce so much (the commerce yield), however they provide a great outside market to sell goods from the city in. The larger the village/town, the more people it has, and so the more goods can be exchanged and sold to them. This would be the purpose of the percentage increases.

This percentage increase would be fairly significant, for example, if you were getting 40 commerce in a city and had 3 towns and a village, the commerce bonuses from them would net you a 30% increase in commerce, a 12 commerce bump.

As mentioned before, it could also be used the same way for industry...
Any thoughts? Or is this just an incredibly stupid idea?

 

[Killtech]

i see many interesting ideas in this thread but this discussion seems a bit aimless. i mean where are we heading too? what do we want things should play? i mean it's quite easy to calculate the right values for each improvement if we precisely state how large should classic-age cities grow; how long should it take on average to train a industrial age military units (determines balanced production values for cities and thus the required base hammers yield); and how turns should researching a tech last if one has 10 developed cities at 90% research rate (defines commerce).

we can calculate how much size/production/commerce a developed city will in any age easily given the tile improvements (that define the base yield) and the buildings that can be assumed (that define additional boni (bonuses) and modifier). so we can easily fit these to the wanted numbers.


so i suggest the following: we define for each age a unit (or building) and discuss how long it should take to build it on marathon speed. this will be the cost reference for an age. the unit will be our measure for production speed of the ages specific buildings and units. with it's cost i can calculate back how much base hammers we need. if we now set how large cities are to be expected at a certain age we will know how many citizens we will have available to work tiles. that's how it goes for production

as for food/city size it's a bit different and more complicated because food is one thing, health & happiness the other. all these define max city size. but i can do the calculation here too.


the only problem with this balancing approach is that i need total values - which include all possible boni/mali (bonuses/un-bonuses) from not only improvements but buildings, civics AND resources too. but that's the problem of balance it general: it needs to balance ALL things out such that they work together.

 

[Hydromancerx]

so i suggest the following: we define for each age a unit (or building) and discuss how long it should take to build it on marathon speed. .

I always through that AND was made for "Snail speed".

 

[Killtech]

I always through that AND was made for "Snail speed".

i play mostly on snail. but i'm not sure about others. i thought marathon was most played. but speed is not that relevant as production should scale accordingly. for the calculations though i need a fixed speed to maintain consistency.

 

[Arakhor]

I play mostly on Marathon/Huge, but then I only have Windows XP, so my 4 Gb of RAM does have its limtations

 

[Hydromancerx]

I play mostly on Marathon/Huge, but then I only have Windows XP, so my 4 Gb of RAM does have its limtations

Heh. I play Snail/Large for similar reasons. I would rather have a longer game than a bigger map.