Better RoM: Improvement Balancing

[0100010]

What possible things can improvements provide?
Commerce, Food, Hammers....
Could they also provide culture, coins, health/unhealth, happy/unhappy, beakers, espionage?

How can we categorize what is available?

Think of improvements in terms of a chain which effect the yields above in different combination.
Some chains might be dead ends on purpose (meant to go obsolete Ex: grain grinding windmills/watermills) A dead end is when eventually, after a tech advance you get the option of building something to replace it which is gives better yields)

Some chains might be restricted to terrain type or feature available.

Each step up in a chain requires a tech advancement and/or a turn wait upgrade time. (Personally I think all steps up the chain should require tech advancements.)

What chains can we consider?
A few are obvious
Food Chain: Farms, Vertical Farms.... ( high food yield, zero commerce, zero hammers)
Production Chain: Workshop, industry sparse, light, med, etc... (zero food, zero commerce, high hammers) (and yes I am suggesting that workshop be folded into that as the start of the upgrade chain)
Commerce Chain: Trading post, market, etc. (zero food, zero production, high commerce)

These are the most efficient products of a particular yield type. No other improvement types should ever do better than them i their category. (included civic and tech bonuses)

All of the above are (at the moment) examples of "Flat land only" improvements.

Other improvement types obvious would be to make combos of the yield sets:
Chain A: some commerce, some hammers, zero food
Chain B: zero commerce, some hammers, some food
Chain C some commerce, zero hammers, some food

There could even be a chain D: little commerce, little hammers, little food.

The trade of for building chain A, B or C is versatility over specialization. How can this be appropriate weighted? Should the max production of Chain A be .5 the Max of the Food chain and .5 the Max of the Industry chain? I think it should be a little less, your gain is the versatility.

Some alternate chains might be based on A, B, C
A (commerce, hammers): Mines? (or should mines be hill only equivalents to an industrial chain?)
Lumber mills? (should lumbermills upgrade or be a 'dead end', I consider them a dead end when compared to the tree farm chain)

B (hammers, food) Tree farm/hybrid forest chain?

C (commerce, food) What could fill this role? (Windmills, Watermills) But these might go obsolete.
I foresee Wind turbine/Windtrap as a replacement (perhaps not belonging to chain C, but at least a commerce chain. There could be a new power plant type: Wind Farm requires X Wind Turbines in city vicinity. Likewise, Hydrodam is a potential replacement for Watermill. Like wise the Hydro power plant building should require X hydro dams in the city vicinity. (And 3 gorges damn wonder should require X hydro plants to build, and perhaps its reward should change some.)

What about Towns? Should they be Chain D? Or should they be something else entirely? Maybe instead of the standard yield types they should be the bonus beaker/coin/culture, etc providers.

 

[Iceciro]

If the Workshops can upgrade to industry, mines fufil commerce/hammer route, or should. And then you should be able to build industry on hills.

My thoughts is that all of the multiple-yield type of improvements would require specific land types, so they wouldn't be as spammable - watermills require rivers, windmills require hills, and lumbermills require forests. I'm not sure where to put lumbermills, though - do they overlap with watermills?
Perhaps Watermills are food/commerce and lumbermils are production/commerce.

 

[Elucidus]

What about add or subtract maintenance?

 

[Killtech]

ok, i had my thoughts on the issue and i've come up with following:

first let's summarize the basics: there are generally 3 types of yields: , and . for the game the most important is how much production a city has (with enough production it is most easy to dominate because you can build more wonders, gain more boni from buildings that you have faster then your competitors and of course a larger more trained military). thus the first two yields are most fundamental (food,prodution) as they both define how fast a city produces (food defines city size and so how much base you can get form worked plots and specialists). is important but you get quite a lot of it form trade routes and of cost tiles so no need to build special improvements for it. additionally science & gold are the only things that have two independent modifiers: consider a +100% for and a +100% for science - it makes out of 10 :commece: 10*(1+100%)*(1+100%) = 10*4 = 40 ! the factor is much higher in later ages in real game and cannot be compared to . as shown it is most easy to make a lot gain out of a few base income.

so now coming back to improvements:
1) mines: as are what it's all about they should be the most hard to get - and it's best if they can't be maxed on every tile. mines are optimal for the job as they too represent that all production comes from raw materials in the end. the means that as the mines develop they reduce food to zero (not until industrial for balance reasons) on their tile and give only hammers. maxed out the bonus should just give 6 (makes a total of 7 on hills and 8 on mountains - which should be reduced to 2 base yield).

2) farms are the equally important as explicitly define max city size. i agree on the suggested that they should specialize more and more into food during development and kill all other yields on their tiles. a max of 6 is reasonable. 7 form flood plains, no additional gain from civics, small or 1 gain instead!

3) industry (staring with workshop as suggested): should not be as efficient as mines can be so high production is restricted to special locations. still should help to improve production. thus i suggest to make it an intermediate between and . maxed they should give 5 and 2, and kill all from tile. you can even reason it: industry is the process of making complex products out of raw materials. this process carries innovation with it. and these manufactured goods increase trade. so the bonus is more then legitimate.

4) cottage-town: because of the lesser importance of commerce from tiles i see no reason to reduce them to only. i think they not penalize food yield and even increase it on later developed stages (village?) so they give no net city growth (a tile with 3 food is only enough to maintain the citizen who works it). and after all even the city tile gives food! however they should not give any hammers. if you want to have a realistic reason for it think of the food processing industry like mills, slaughter houses but also storage buildings which are usually located in settlements around a city. these are not covered by industry improvement. i favour 1-2, 4-5 for towns (so 3 for grass land... problem about the plains).

this still won't make cottages very attractive to build. so i had the following idea: instead of giving a +1 yield for improvements with a road connection this bonus should be modified. why not give all improvements around a cottage a +1 yield bonus that have a road connection? thus villages are a most important improvement and yet give no reason to spam them. placing them becomes even very strategical. (hope it won't be too hard to make AI workers understand how to place them). i think that it's quite obvious that this realistic bonus and it should lead to make realistic improvement spread: satellite towns surrounded by farmland.
btw. one could think of an additional bonus to the city tile (which is always worked) if it has a town next to it (commerce? hammers?). after all it's better if the workers in a city have a shorter way to their work in the city.

if the concept is liked more of the yield bonus form improvements could be become only available through neighbouring towns.

5) trading post: why not let them return with a max of 7 , no food nor hammers from the tile. they are not really attractive to build as it means that your city has to accept a smaller food and production income but they make some sense for cities that do have huge boni on commerce, science or gold from wonders. they'd be rare but i think that's as it should be.

6) forests: no improvements should be compatible with these! we really don't need that additional one hammer on each tile. and it's not realistic that so many forest remain! europe had nearly no tree left standing during the medieval and all bigger wild animals were gone. only the plague who killed lot of the population allowed nature to retake lot of the land as it was abandoned as population heavily decreased. it the industrial age the same happened again.
if one wants to see forest in the late game i rather suggest the following realistic approach: tile with improvements become overgrown after they are not worked long enough. how to do: (invisible) random event for not worked tiles occurs and causes a new event that after 30 turns that again checks if the tile is worked. if not... improvement gone and a new forest (roads remain).

 

[Killtech]

as for the complain about mills for food production/electricity should be different improvements

following my cottage idea grain mills could be thought to be in villages on hills. as for the game the wind mill enabling tech could give +1 for cottage-towns (graphically, if possible, too). later techs make that obsolete by giving +1 on grass land and plains.

as for wind power generators of the modern: they produce clean energy. and since farmland give why not make farmland compatible with them (if you drive out of town they are everywhere here in germany!). i.e. building a wind power generator on farmland means effectively you just upgrade it to 'farmland with a power generator on it' improvement. the effect should be no direct yield gain but a small bonus form the tile.

ok, i think i'm done writing.

EDIT: actually forgot something:

i's not directly connected with improvements as they do produce and it fits in here:
i think we should think of indirect limits for cities for each epoch and how these should be realized using health and happiness only. first i think it will be most interesting if health and happiness problems alternate through the different epochs.

1) ancience: city size should be bound by . i can't imagine a size 10 stone age city (like it is frequent in my games) having no health issues... as to improvements: farmland might generate quite some to prevent city growth.

2) classic: there were quite some advances in medicine in the classic thus it should not be a problem here (unhealth form farmland stays but health buildings compensate). but as slavery becomes popular (this civic should give most benefits in that age and be less efficient in the ancients to be consistent with history) and as more people populate the land different conflicts rise and happiness becomes an issue that limits primary further growth. unhappiness form lack of protection should come up in this age first as wars between civs start to occur. querries and mines generate unhappiness since they are mostly done by slaves. religions - although present in this period - should not help much with happiness as the gods of this time had not always a good mood. (no from temples until a medieval tech like theology.. but maybe some a commerce or gold for the gods for a chance to rise their anger?). however cities should not have much more happiness than to grow over size 15 without unrests.

3) medieval: slavery does not cause any unhappiness as it has changed it's name into feudalism and religions say that this misery of the peasants is by the will of god. the god(s) turned to be saviours now.. at least in the afterlife. so no unhappiness problems here - no form mines, querries. but the plague strikes and the cities grow without any advancements in health care. cities hygienic is a big problem as waste is just thrown into the streets... cottage-town produce now additionally to farmland. plagues strike (waiting for Hydro here). max size should be 20 here... though plagues shout make it difficult to have such towns.

4) renaissance: first advances in medicine since ages occur here. human bodies are opened for studies, and first works on anatomy are produced. humanism made it possible to get control over the but has the disadvantage of weakening religion thus unhappiness becomes an issue again (temples... somewhat obsolete (with new civics at least)). and the additional education for the richer citizen (merchants) causes discontent with the social structure (feudal) that doesn't give this new rising social class the possibility to advance (no citizen could become noble... no matter how rich he was). towns stop producing with some tech but they increase instead. towns grow maximal to size 25

5) industrial: with the french revolution and the end of feudalism social struggles come to rest. (so civics kill lots of the unhappiness and remove form towns). but the new production buildings produce lots of pollution and strike the lands. city size limit here should be about 35 - which means here that you get enough food to let your cities grow 5 above balance from new techs in agriculture.

6) late undustrial and modern: the counter techs agains the pollution come slowly. however unhappiness become a problem with the poor conditions of the working class. ideas of communism and socialism fuel the anger of the exploited workers while labour unions fight for workers rights. techs increasing productivity generate form improvements (mines, industry) and production plants pollute the land less (because of the use of electrical power instead of steam heated up by coal) but their higher efficiency in production comes at the price of workers.

7) future: i don't know the history of the future yet so i'm not sure about it. form the system should come next again. maybe give civ a happy ending showing that all problems will vanish in the end?

 

[Sonereal]

1) ancience: city size should be bound by . i can't imagine a size 10 stone age city (like it is frequent in my games) having no health issues... as to improvements: farmland might generate quite some to prevent city growth.

I think it largely depends on your speed. On Eternity, Noble, the highest I've gotten before hitting slavery was a size 5 city. Even then, it seemed like the long time it takes to grow a city combined with the constant threat of slave revolts leads to my cities stuck around a population of 4 or 5 until I hit coinage.

But yes, size 10 cities just shouldn't exist in the prehistoric part of the game.

 

[Killtech]

I think it largely depends on your speed. On Eternity, Noble, the highest I've gotten before hitting slavery was a size 5 city. Even then, it seemed like the long time it takes to grow a city combined with the constant threat of slave revolts leads to my cities stuck around a population of 4 or 5 until I hit coinage.

But yes, size 10 cities just shouldn't exist in the prehistoric part of the game.

in my last testing game on snail my capital hit size 11 in the ancience (on deity btw) when i switched to slavery. as i reached classic it was size 14 and my second largest city was size 9. both cities were happy and healthy. resources played again an important part in this growth...

 

[Killtech]

@Afforess:

have you decided on the improvement changes yet?

if not what do you think about my proposal to remove all improvement yield gains roads and replace it with yield boni form neighboring cottages?
e.g. +1 for mines next to a hamlet, +2 near villages and +3 for a town.
yield bonus does not stack with multiple cottage type improvements; just best available is taken.

btw. my suggestion on yield changes for improvement is not far form the old RoM standard (e.g. nearly old cottage-town stats, old remove forest prerequisite for most improvements, farms remain the same except for civic changes, ...). biggest difference if just the industry that i suggest to be a mix of production and commerce improvement as such improvement is missing right now.
my other post contained only balancing concepts for the future since you threw in the idea of unhealthiness form improvements. anyway not so relevant now.

 

[Afforess]

Updated.

 

[Killtech]

very good thought with the forest burning. makes cottages incompatibility with forests a good and applicable concept for the early times.
i concur with the flood plains changes too though i think this will need some testing.

 

[Arakhor]

I don't know about the flood plains, but I completely support the burning of forests and jungles early on

 

[Sonereal]

I personally liked having a lot of forests around on the map but I can't say I disagree with the ideas here except the trading post one because it seems to me you should be able to set up a trading post inside a forest.

Also, will burning down a forest be quicker than cutting it down?

 

[Killtech]

I personally liked having a lot of forests around on the map but I can't say I disagree with the ideas here except the trading post one because it seems to me you should be able to set up a trading post inside a forest.

the problem with trading posts forests is the additional hammer you. you could of course say that with a trading post in forest bandits reduce the commerce rate of it... but it's just easier to say that you need to cut the forest down to build it - for better game play reasons.

EDIT: ok, trading posts could give - to eliminate all production from the tile... still, i think it's better to let them require cutting down the forest.


@Afforess:

and what about forests and mines? i dislike to see the additional bonus hammer for them - especially because it's only me who waits for woods to expand on hills before building a mine on them. anyway mines are good enough without the additional from a forest - no need to boost production further. anyone with a different opinion?

 

[Sonereal]

in my last testing game on snail my capital hit size 11 in the ancience (on deity btw) when i switched to slavery. as i reached classic it was size 14 and my second largest city was size 9. both cities were happy and healthy. resources played again an important part in this growth...

I must be really doing something wrong.

the problem with trading posts forests is the additional hammer you. you could of course say that with a trading post in forest bandits reduce the commerce rate of it... but it's just easier to say that you need to cut the forest down to build it - for better game play reasons.

EDIT: ok, trading posts could give - to eliminate all production from the tile... still, i think it's better to let them require cutting down the forest.

That does sound easier when stated that way.

 

[vincentz]

Suggestion for Cottage-Town & Tradeposts:

Tradeposts can build outside borders and on plantation resources.

Spoiler :

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Cottage-Town :
they may look small, but With all the tech/civic boni they are ok all in 1.

Spoiler :

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[Mazzini]

Some general thoughts having played a few full games of AND:

Production is king because production in RoM adds to your food and commerce through the many buildings. A lot of different improvements boost production, but they seem poorly balanced.

Consider the balance between the main production oriented improvements on flatlands: Workshops, Lumbermills, and Industry.

At almost any point in the game, Lumbermills are the best, especially if you use the civics that add to their productivity. You get the forest health bonus, have no worries about running out of minerals, and are much less affected by suboptimal civics than you'd be with workshops... and lumbermills generate more hammers than ANY other improvement! That's right: A riverside grass lumbermill in the latest AND gets +9 hammers, +5 commerce with Proletariat and Green civics. Compare this to:

Workshop: +7 hammers, +5 commerce with Regulated and Proletariat civics
Dense Industry: -1 food, +8 hammers, +4 commerce, huge health/happy penalties

Lumbermills are better than their competitors in every way already, and them outputting more base hammers makes it no contest. It's incredibly unrealistic for lumbermills to be more productive than heavy industry at making tanks, planes, jet fighters, whatever. It also makes improvement choices pretty much a no brainer: Watermill/lumbermill on riverside forests, lumbermill on all other forest, mine forested hills, windmill unforested hills, cottage unforested riverside.

Improvements that can't be on a forest are at a pretty big disadvantage: 1 less hammer, and no health bonus. Improvements that take time to grow are also at a pretty big disadvantage. Such improvements should have a good payoff to warrant all the investment and care. The cottage is a good example: I love the change in the latest patch, taking away the food boost and adding a penalty to commerce in barter. The cottage gives decent yields when fully leveraged, and the Single-Issue Party, giving a free specialist per town, really reward the player for the effort of investing in them.

This is why it's so puzzling to look at Industry, and realize that it's like the bizarro cottage. It sucks in every way and arguably gets WORSE as it's upgraded. Why would anyone ever build industry, ever? This is a serious question. I like the change of mines running out of resources, but this would never induce anyone to build industry. All mines should be on forest hills anyway, so just put a lumbermill, the all purpose always awesome improvement with no downside. I certainly won't have left much good riverside flatlands undeveloped, like floodplains and such, by the time i can build industry. Why would I tear down my just-finished towns to start a new improvement chain?

This all might be excusable if the yields were worth it, but the yields are bloody awful, and never beat other improvements without industry's huge downsides at any point in the game! Seriously, you'd have to probably straight up DOUBLE the hammer yields of each stage of industry before players would want to use this...

Dense industry compared to lumbermill: -1 food, same or -1 hammers, -1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health
dense industry compared to forest workshop: -1 food, -1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health
dense industry compared to forest watermill: -2 food, +2 hammers, -1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health
dense industry compared to forest modern mine: -1 food, -1 hammers, +1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health

Or how about dense industry compared to town: -3 food, +3 hammers, -4 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health, -1 free specialists...

If industry were this useless in real life, and lumbermills this great, the world would still be covered in forests and we'd still be in the renaissance. I never chop a forest in AND unless I REALLY need those emergency hammers... am I alone in this?

Also I second what killtech said about forests... lumbermills should be weaker than workshops/industry since they let you keep the forest. I don't think mines and workshops should let you keep the forest, and probably not pastures either. Treefarm/hybrid forest being uber are fine since that's the future, but right now the deforestation that has accompanied civilization throughout its whole history is utterly absent from AND.

 

[Killtech]

At almost any point in the game, Lumbermills are the best, especially if you use the civics that add to their productivity. You get the forest health bonus, have no worries about running out of minerals, and are much less affected by suboptimal civics than you'd be with workshops... and lumbermills generate more hammers than ANY other improvement! That's right: A riverside grass lumbermill in the latest AND gets +9 hammers, +5 commerce with Proletariat and Green civics. Compare this to:

Workshop: +7 hammers, +5 commerce with Regulated and Proletariat civics
Dense Industry: -1 food, +8 hammers, +4 commerce, huge health/happy penalties

Lumbermills are better than their competitors in every way already, and them outputting more base hammers makes it no contest. It's incredibly unrealistic for lumbermills to be more productive than heavy industry at making tanks, planes, jet fighters, whatever. It also makes improvement choices pretty much a no brainer: Watermill/lumbermill on riverside forests, lumbermill on all other forest, mine forested hills, windmill unforested hills, cottage unforested riverside.

good catch. i didn't notice how powerful lumber mils become as i mostly stick with mines, farmland and some cottages (i don't use depletion and play on rocky maps). guess the lumber mills aren't the most intuitive über-production facilities and that's why most players neglect them - thus this has been unnoticed so far.

Improvements that can't be on a forest are at a pretty big disadvantage: 1 less hammer, and no health bonus. Improvements that take time to grow are also at a pretty big disadvantage. [...]

exactly my thinking. that is why i so vehemently oppose the compatibility of improvements and mines.

[...] The cottage gives decent yields when fully leveraged, and the Single-Issue Party, giving a free specialist per town, really reward the player for the effort of investing in them.

wait, what? Single-Issue Party giving free specialist per town? sounds very cool, but what is that? tech? civic? can't find it. i don't play much in the industrial times and later as my games usually end earlier. so could anyone enlighten me?

hmm... with a free specialist per town the cottage becomes the (second) best improvement (after the lumbermill) if one calculates the specialist to the cottage yield. so as it is cottage+farm+lumbermill are best combo?

This all might be excusable if the yields were worth it, but the yields are bloody awful, and never beat other improvements without industry's huge downsides at any point in the game! Seriously, you'd have to probably straight up DOUBLE the hammer yields of each stage of industry before players would want to use this...

Dense industry compared to lumbermill: -1 food, same or -1 hammers, -1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health
dense industry compared to forest workshop: -1 food, -1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health
dense industry compared to forest watermill: -2 food, +2 hammers, -1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health
dense industry compared to forest modern mine: -1 food, -1 hammers, +1 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health

Or how about dense industry compared to town: -3 food, +3 hammers, -4 commerce, -1 happy, -3.25 health, -1 free specialists...

If industry were this useless in real life, and lumbermills this great, the world would still be covered in forests and we'd still be in the renaissance. I never chop a forest in AND unless I REALLY need those emergency hammers... am I alone in this?

that's why i think industry should be the ONLY available improvement with a hammer yield on grassland/plains. if you don't have any alternative you will take it - though the unhealthiness should somewhat depend on technology i.e. reduce with time. additionally industry should differ from mines thus i think it's ok if the production output smaller then mines but little commerce is added as compensation.

thx for the good evaluation with all the values btw.

 

[0100010]

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArGEV8QiVgM6dFFNMndKMEtnbGZWNWZGalZfT2VtckE&hl=en

see above link for spreadsheet of new improvement yeild values

The goal here overall was to categorize all the improvements into a few distinct categories:
Food Chain
Commerce Chain
Industry Chain
Forest/Jungle Chain
Mine Chain
Town Chain
Watermill Chain
Windmill Chain

The Food, Commerce, and Industry Chain specialize in the three yeild types. These must be built on flat lands and don't let you keep forests.

The Forest/Jungle and (low tech) Wind/Watermill improvements provide alternative when your surrounded by forests and want to keep them. Their yields won't be as good as the specialty improvements.

The Mine chain is an alternative to the Industry chain when you have more hills than flat land and/or have resources that require mines. Their Late game production yeild will not be as good as the industry chain yields

The late game water/windmill improvements are designed to allow the building of specialized clean power plants in your cities. And move away from traditional (low tech) minor food bonus to commerce bonus. However these will will not provide yields as good as the specialty improvements.

The Town chains purpose is to get them to grow up to a town, at which point in time, you can gain a free specialist, with certain specific building. The Town chain provides weak yeild gains compared to the specialty improvements.

Additional Things of note:

New and changed buildings:
Town Hall: Requires City Planning
Grants 1 Free specialist per town in city vicinity

Hydro Plant: Requires Civil Engineering and Electricity
Requires Hydro Dam in city vicinity, provides power

Wind Farm: Requires Ecology
Requires Wind Turbine in city vicinity, provides power

Three Gorges Dam: Requires X Hydro Plants
Requires Hydro Dam in city vicinity, provides power, +1 Commerce, +1 Production for all Hydro Dams

Other changes
Orchards can be built without a resource
Apple Orchard and Olive Orchard are combined into single Orchard Improvement
Lemons get moved to Orchard improvement instead of Plantation
% Chance of discovering Olive, Apple, Lemon on an Orchard much like finding a farm resource.

Wind Turbine & Hydro Dam are new improvements. Wind Turbine (Graphic-wise) is the Desert windmill. Desert Windmill and Wind Trap are removed.

Some of the intermediary Industrial improvements are removed.

Improvements which only exists for specific resources are not altered (Plantations, Silk Farm, etc.)

The only improvements that "Grow" over time are once again the Cottage->Town chain. Mines and Trade centers etc. no longer "grow" into the next improvement up their chain. Instead The player and AI are required to replace the old improvement by building the new, better improvement on top of it, once the tech is to build it is unlocked.

The chart provides details for improvement yeilds and bonuses gained from techs and routes. I do not address Civic bonuses here.

Civic bonuses should give minor bonus to various improvements according to the flavor of the civic. However a civic bonus should NEVER tip the balance and make any improvement's food/commerce/hammer yield production better than the improvement which specializes in that yeild type.

 

[Afforess]

Wow. Just wow.

The only improvements that "Grow" over time are once again the Cottage->Town chain. Mines and Trade centers etc. no longer "grow" into the next improvement up their chain. Instead The player and AI are required to replace the old improvement by building the new, better improvement on top of it, once the tech is to build it is unlocked.

This is the only thing I think I dislike. What if they could only grow once you got the right tech? I hate micro-management, so that's my complaint.

 

[0100010]

If they can grow only when you get the right tech that would be fine. (Then you could also apply that to the town chain as well)