Better RoM: Improvement Balancing

[Killtech]

it's not exactly my concept but it makes sense. i think i can agree on most but some details:

• i think industry should still grow, at least as industry comes from private corporations and settles & expands themselves. next is that guilds belong into cities only and should not be improvement at all.
• too much food from vertical farms and modern farms. and what exactly do you understand under a modern farm? is it just the farm with all tech upgrades? because i do not see the necessaries for upgrading farms.
• as for the orchards and all other origanic resources... there is a interesing concept in developement that allows placing these resources directly like improvements if you have access to them. it will of course require massive changes to resource yields to balance them with farms. same goes for buildings that give special boni for resources. just look here.

and i like your building concepts. wanted to make something like the town hall myself to represent the specialisation of people with the rise of cities.
i think all buildings are currently realizable with AND via simple xml.

good thing that in your chart i see little commerce yield from tiles. that is good as it seems there is quite some overproduction of that in later ages that lets the game progress too fast.

 

[0100010]

it's not exactly my concept but it makes sense. i think i can agree on most but some details:

• i think industry should still grow, at least as industry comes from private corporations and settles & expands themselves. next is that guilds belong into cities only and should not be improvement at all.
• too much food from vertical farms and modern farms. and what exactly do you understand under a modern farm? is it just the farm with all tech upgrades? because i do not see the necessaries for upgrading farms.

Industry, etc can still grow as Aff, wanted if the upgrade is locked out until the actual tech for the next step up is researched.

Guilds is just the name I chose to represent the medieval tier of the industry chain of improvements. Whatever comes after workshop. If you can think of a more appropriate name, then it can be called something else.

The amount of food gained from vertical farms + route and tech is 10 which is the same amount currently obtainable in AND with Vertical farms + route and tech. Each step up any chain category includes all tech bonus gains the preceding improvement obtained, plus some additional quantity to make it desirable to upgrade. Only a couple chains (forest/jungle and wind/watermill) deviate slightly from this trend.

 

[0100010]

I've added proposed Civic improvement bonus changes to the worksheet

 

[NBAfan]

Industry, etc can still grow as Aff, wanted if the upgrade is locked out until the actual tech for the next step up is researched.

I like you ideas if this is added too.

 

[Afforess]

Just a notice to those who were interested in progress. I've finished making all the changes from the OP, and am testing games to find out how balanced it is in practice. It should be interesting.

 

[Killtech]

did you add all the buildings too? just ask because i've added the wind farm in to my working edition of my upgrade chains mod already.

 

[Afforess]

No, none of the buildings yet. Also, I didn't add the Hydro Dam improvement, because I couldn't find suitable graphics. I did add the guild improvement though.

 

[Killtech]

No, none of the buildings yet. Also, I didn't add the Hydro Dam improvement, because I couldn't find suitable graphics. I did add the guild improvement though.

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 improvement he had in mind is already there. though it doesn't look like a damn it's in concept exactly one (can't imagine what a modern water mill should be other then that). however i didn't want to modify the hydro plant without asking if most people agree to such a change. just added the wind farm to get familiar with this concept.

by chance, did you have time to check on my problem with the blank 'building upgrades' page on civipeda? or any suggestion what modification to the building infos could cause this behavior? the error seems to be occur a bit randomly and i can't pin what's causing it (commented different parts of the xml out and sometimes it works sometimes not. there is no specific building info that causes it).

 

[Afforess]

Oh, I forgot. It's probably a python error due to sloppy coding on my part. Turn on python error logging (Zap's posts tell how to) and upload your PythonErr.log file somewhere.

 

[Killtech]

ok, thx. i'll do that when i'm back on my computer. ...it somehow makes your day when you spent hours on a problem and couldn't determine its source and then a saviour comes and gives you a weapon to fight it.

 

[Afforess]

ok, thx. i'll do that when i'm back on my computer. ...it somehow makes your day when you spent hours on a problem and couldn't determine its source and then a saviour comes and gives you a weapon to fight it.

Quick Modding Hint: All bugs that have to do with the interface disappearing or not working properly are a result of python errors. That will make debugging much easier.

 

[Killtech]

i just rechecked 1011101 improvements stats. while i agree on the basic yields i have quite some problem with the gains form techs. as we face the general problem of overproduction of all yields, especially commerce and production i wonder if it wouldn't make some sense to cut most of the commerce from techs. same applies to hammers but but not at the same scale.

what i mean is that we should aim the game to have a stable game speed in every age. concerning production this means for every age a default city with default buildings for the age should produce a default unit of that age in about 5 turns at marathon speed. a similar concept of stable turns should apply to tech discoveries. right now turns needed for production or research decrease strongly form age to age.

i've already decreased the overall production modifiers you can get from buildigs. but its still not sufficient to prevent unit construction in one turn on snail speed around industrial age considering the high base yield from improvements.

 

[Lord Brooks]

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.

This is key for me, right from the start there is very little point building a farm when a cottage offers more.

For realism though up until the 1300's most communities, at least in Europe, where built on agriculture and farming and the vast majority of the cleared land was famland.

The prolific growth of three centuries that ended around 1300 AD was followed by a century of collapse. The great famine of 1315-22 and the plague of 1348-50 (known as the black death) decimated the population and altered the face of agriculture. Both events affected the whole of Northern Europe and had a profound impact on both social structure and the countryside.

By 1600 AD the economy remained essentially agrarian with the majority of the population still engaged in subsistence agriculture, however recent population growth had created pressure in the countryside with food shortages and a migration to the towns had occurred. As agriculture now occupied nearly all utilisable land, efforts were directed to improving yields through enclosure and enhanced fertility.

This is an excellent source of information. Pay close attention to the population category for a break down in the percetage of the population that lived in towns.

How about this; the production/commerce/food output of cottages increases tied to tech, just like workshops? In the late medieval period, maybe Education or Architecture give a bonus +1 and +1 and/or +1

Later on they get another bonus with maybe economics?

This would make cottages/towns more valuable late game and make for more realistic use of farmland early game, with the advent of crop rotation/agricultural engineering farms could become more specialised and still useful but towns would start to 'crop up' more!

 

[Killtech]

i'm a bit hesitant about adding any additional bonus yields to improvements. instead i pledge to restrict cottage growth to the lower development stages until some tech or maybe their max growth could depend on the city size in their vicinity or restrict the number of buildable cottages around a city by the city size - i.e. a size 10 city can build one cottage in vicinity, 15 sized cities 2 and so on...

 

[Afforess]

i'm a bit hesitant about adding any additional bonus yields to improvements. instead i pledge to restrict cottage growth to the lower development stages until some tech or maybe their max growth could depend on the city size in their vicinity or restrict the number of buildable cottages around a city by the city size - i.e. a size 10 city can build one cottage in vicinity, 15 sized cities 2 and so on...

Arbitrary Restrictions will just confuse new players and AI. I'd rather make players NEED farms than restrict other improvements.

Anyway, I suggest we actually playtest the current changes before further discussion.

 

[0100010]

restrict the number of buildable cottages around a city by the city size -

There is built in restrictions on the number of buildable cottages already, because they can only be built on flatland by freshwater, and can't be built on marsh or snow/ice terrain. (At least that's what I put on my sheet if anyone paid attention to that column)

 

[Afforess]

There is built in restrictions on the number of buildable cottages already, because they can only be built on flatland by freshwater, and can't be built on marsh or snow/ice terrain. (At least that's what I put on my sheet if anyone paid attention to that column)

I did!

 

[Killtech]

There is built in restrictions on the number of buildable cottages already, because they can only be built on flatland by freshwater, and can't be built on marsh or snow/ice terrain. (At least that's what I put on my sheet if anyone paid attention to that column)

sorry i don't have much time to read and there are just soo many post. that's actually a very good restriction and much more easy to implement.

as for buffing farms: maybe they should be always buildable on grass land even without irrigation. the +1 from roads could be moved to the basic farm so the farms actually are much more usable without any additional yields buffs.

 

[sukha]

Ooooh.... these changes are shiny, I want I want!!!

 

[Lord Brooks]

Arbitrary Restrictions will just confuse new players and AI. I'd rather make players NEED farms than restrict other improvements.

Anyway, I suggest we actually playtest the current changes before further discussion.

Agreed, where can I playtest the new changes?

Ooooh.... these changes are shiny, I want I want!!!

Yeah sounds like some excellent changes!