Caveman 2 Cosmos

[Thunderbrd]

Those who work with buildings should chime in on this and it should probably be its own thread in which we evaluate the actual building modifiers and discuss commerce vs gold on each. I actually do agree to a limited extent with what y'all are saying just not patently across the board because I think it should take some deep thought and discussion to resolve the issue properly.

@Sparth: Your first screen shot is interesting. Apparently there's no research modifier from civics but there IS a -60% total gold modifier on civics from turn one. Where the 1 research comes from I'm not sure... maybe a minimum research value perhaps? A +1 research doesn't factor in when the slider is at 100% so I suspect if not in anarchy a minimum of 1 is established. But the gold is due to a modifier to gold itself and it looks like it comes from the starting civics. Civics is where a lot of fundamental wierdstuff is taking place.

Anyhow, it shows that it's not a matter of a slider ratio issue but rather a civic settings issue - at least during this era.

We DO need a very smart new civics guy to review things there. I've always hoped Joe might step up into that role

Sidenote: I'd LOVE to redesign the financial adviser screen extensively but I'd need a lot of python help to do it. One thing I don't like here is that the commerce totals next to the % adjusters don't show the commerce conversion purely but rather the FINAL totals - I'd prefer it only show the conversion itself and THEN go into breaking down each commerce VERY clearly.

@Yudishtira: You're basically arguing that it makes no sense for there to be a difference between commerce and gold except for what's in the treasury (committed to gold) vs what's already been spent on research, espionage and culture. This might be more reasonable overall but we need to then think well... whatever we have in our treasury should thus reasonably be able to be spent directly on espionage, research or culture all in one round at any time right?

It's admittedly a brain teaser to get a handle on what gold vs commerce really is - AIAndy has pointed out some disturbing incapability for the game as a whole to accurately represent economics and we may be touching on some of those inconsistencies where we must gamingly fill in the gaps for a fundamentally irrational oversimplified system in the first place. HIS observations suggest that production itself should be a 'commerce' as well rather than a yield but we'd need to have a truly volumetric resources system to make that work. Something to consider for the 'next game' I think.

 

[Yudishtira]

@Yudishtira: You're basically arguing that it makes no sense for there to be a difference between commerce and gold except for what's in the treasury (committed to gold) vs what's already been spent on research, espionage and culture. This might be more reasonable overall but we need to then think well... whatever we have in our treasury should thus reasonably be able to be spent directly on espionage, research or culture all in one round at any time right?

Yes I guess I am, and it doesn't. Note however that if the slider(s) were the only way to get gold, this would automatically be achieved.

If otoh there are sources of gold that cannot be replaced by commerce (I don't think there are), we can (and must imho) at least keep these to a minimum.

 

[Sparth]

Anyhow, it shows that it's not a matter of a slider ratio issue but rather a civic settings issue - at least during this era.

Ok i see it now

The problem I have with this whole current mechanism is that it's kinda hard to tell what one means over the other in design terms. What gold can't a nation spend on other things?

I like idea to make Gold more useful. In real life gold is blood of our civilization. It creates oportunites and it creates problems.

There is many ways that nations and rulers can spend money:
- Healthcare is modern problem and need a lot money in all countries
- Military from the begining of the civilization eats tons of money
- Education and science very expensive now, in past even more expensive or almost dont exist
- Culture mostly "cheap" but there was times when culture events take serious part of money
- Administration and Bureaucracy can be very expensive. Especialy with huge level of corruption
- Civil infrastructure like roads, parks, aqueducts

Dont know if its possible but every of these points should be controled by sliders. Sliders which are not linked. This mean if you have plenty of cash you can run all of these sliders at 100%.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Many of the buildings for those things already take a lot of money. For example if a building produces 5 science then it costs 5 gold in the city to maintain it. Or maybe it was changed back to 3 because of all the complaints.

Corruption is much higher when there is no Administration or Bureaucracy. Both help limit the corruption to those areas of business rather than having everyone involved in the corruption. Very anti democratic I know but it does mean that things get done.

 

[Sparth]

Many of the buildings for those things already take a lot of money. For example if a building produces 5 science then it costs 5 gold in the city to maintain it. Or maybe it was changed back to 3 because of all the complaints.

I presume people says that negative effect (- 5 ) of these buildings was higher then of they possitive effect, yes?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yes I guess I am, and it doesn't. Note however that if the slider(s) were the only way to get gold, this would automatically be achieved.

If otoh there are sources of gold that cannot be replaced by commerce (I don't think there are), we can (and must imho) at least keep these to a minimum.

Ok, so here's the thing then. Let's take a Bank as an example (such as from vanilla). It got a +50% modifier to GOLD (not commerce). Reason being that if you give it a +50% modifier to COMMERCE then you're by default giving it a +50% modifier to SCIENCE if your slider is at 100% research. For game balance's sake there IS a difference - it's just very difficult to define what exactly that difference IS. Gold is investable and manipulable as currency is investable and manipulable while Commerce is just raw (as of yet unconverted) potential. Commerce is never stored. Gold is. It's like... gold is physical manifestation of currency while commerce is the ENERGY and activity of the nation to produce.

Gold can't straight purchase research because the 100% slider is the limit to how much commerce can be invested into research and actually still have a positive effect - not everyone in the nation is capable of providing added meaningful efforts to research projects. The same consideration is made for the rest of the commerce types.

Looking at it from this perspective you may be able to see why we are making so many buildings modify GOLD as opposed to COMMERCE. The buildings are manipulating the actual currency holdings (gold) rather than the energetic potential (commerce) of the city.

Take jewels for example - they are physical representations of wealth - not achievements. They are only worth what they are worth in trade thus they add to gold rather than the energetic potential achievements of the civilization itself (commerce).

As I said though, perhaps the BEST way to address this issue would be to have ways that the player can access to convert gold BACK into pure Commerce itself. For this mod that would be particularly useful.

Ok i see it now




I like idea to make Gold more useful. In real life gold is blood of our civilization. It creates oportunites and it creates problems.

There is many ways that nations and rulers can spend money:
- Healthcare is modern problem and need a lot money in all countries
- Military from the begining of the civilization eats tons of money
- Education and science very expensive now, in past even more expensive or almost dont exist
- Culture mostly "cheap" but there was times when culture events take serious part of money
- Administration and Bureaucracy can be very expensive. Especialy with huge level of corruption
- Civil infrastructure like roads, parks, aqueducts

Dont know if its possible but every of these points should be controled by sliders. Sliders which are not linked. This mean if you have plenty of cash you can run all of these sliders at 100%.

We've often thought of expanding sliders, particularly to interactions with property change values. There's interesting ways to make sliders work that don't necessarily convert the Commerce costs represented on the slider to a given Commerce type that have been explored by some other mods. One had an infrastructure slider concept I found very interesting that dealt with a concept of re-investing into the infrastructure of the nation and would grow the power of farms and upgrading improvements and buildings etc... There are certainly some interesting things we could consider doing there but it really would be cracking open a pandora's box of new complexities that would be just as difficult to balance overall. I'd suggest we balance the system we have to improved satisfaction first, then carefully add one slider type at a time... I'd have to figure out HOW to add a slider but since I have the source code on that other mod I was talking about I have a good example waiting my review.

I just have a lot of projects already to consider so it's something that may be good to REALLY in detail plan out before messing with.

The concept of all sliders being at 100% is exactly what is contradictory to the concept OF commerce itself - the raw incoming potential of the nation to produce commerce types.

Another way to represent government spending on projects is represented in the negative gold costs we give to various public buildings like roads, bridges, defensive buildings etc... This is WHY we have those expenses on such buildings - to directly represent their support costs draining the treasury. And units already have intricate cost interactions.

Healthcare costs are associated with the civic upkeep costs of differing healthcare civics and any potential negative gold costs on healthcare based buildings.

Education and Science is represented not only by slider spending but also on the buildings themselves as DH pointed out.

Culture - same as science - represented on the upkeep costs on the buildings and by the slider which limits the amount the nation CAN spend on those things.

Admin buildings do have considerable upkeep costs and civic upkeep is intended to represent these expenses further basing it on the complexity and workload to manage the civic itself.

I think I've addressed all of the issues you just mentioned and perhaps with greater understanding of the current structure you may find more specific adjustments and tweaks that should take place to help us with overall gold balance.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I presume people says that negative effect (- 5 ) of these buildings was higher then of they possitive effect, yes?

No... it's that since the slider is on a 1:1 ratio itself it's ridiculous to put value on a building that just extends the slider and becomes a proxy slider that enforces the slide. These buildings SHOULD have a more positive transfer ratio than 1:1.


You know... one thing that COULD be done here... is to generate a building tag that enables a particular slider type to be set higher than 100% so that it's extending how much spending CAN be made towards a given commerce type other than gold (which would then rationally be meaning you'd be putting gold commerce production into the negative.)

 

[Faustmouse]

The Offices and may Computer Networks should generate instead of since they are the "potential" or "energy" you talked about.

And a new line of buildings that take a lot of and produce would be really awesome!

 

[Thunderbrd]

The Offices and may Computer Networks should generate instead of since they are the "potential" or "energy" you talked about.

And a new line of buildings that take a lot of and produce would be really awesome!

Initially, I like your first suggestion there.

I just had another idea as to how we can address this patently: Civics.

We could create a few new civic categories to express this concept of enabling additional spending of the treasury towards particular commerce types. It may seem like a proxy slider and in some ways that's exactly what it would be. But it wouldn't be a proxy slider at a 1:1 ratio because we're 'squeezing' to get the desired results. The benefit would be that we're actually enabling more spending on other-than-gold commerces (and we could even use this kind of concept to spend on say, more production or more food output as well.)

The way it would work would be something like this:
New Category: Progressive Propaganda
Default - no effect
1st stage: -10% gold, +5% research
2nd stage: -20% gold, +10% research
3rd stage: -30% gold, +15% research
4th stage: -40% gold, +20% research
5th stage: -50% gold, +25% research
then we get into better techs unlocking improved approaches
6th stage: -10% gold, +7% research
7th stage: -20% gold, +15% research
8th stage: -30% gold, +20% research
9th stage: -40% gold, +35% research
10th stage: -50% gold, +50% research

We could add some interesting minor 'side effects' into this picture as well perhaps.

Then create a similar category for all conversions from gold into other yields and commerces. Though yields would convert from gold at a lower rate or with greater penalty so like:
Civic Category: Labor Propaganda
Default - no adjustment
1st stage: -10% gold, +4% Production, +1 Unhappy in all cities
2nd stage: -20% gold, +8% Production, +2 Unhappy in all cities
3rd stage: -30% gold, +12% Production, +3 Unhappy in all cities
4th stage: -40% gold, +16% Production, +4 Unhappy in all cities
5th stage: -50% gold, +20% Production, +5 Unhappy in all cities
and then better techs really begin to unlock a better conversion layer
6th stage: -10% gold, +5% Production
7th stage: -20% gold, +10% Production, +1 Unhappy in all cities
8th stage: -30% gold, +15% Production, +1 Unhappy in all cities
9th stage: -40% gold, +20% Production, +2 Unhappy in all cities
10th stage: -50% gold, +25% Production, +2 Unhappy in all cities


This might be easier (and safer) than messing with the way sliders and Commerce compilations are programmed. We'd want none of these categories to mean any anarchy time since it's really just adjustments of basic policy.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Faustmouse

is heavily avoid when it comes to buildings. Things got way too messed up when we had so much . So if we wanted to represent wealth we use instead. If it needed or or too then we would add them directly rather than indirectly though .

@TB
If I recall correctly we had some sort of Tax civic much like you describe. We eventually removed it though since it was so bad.

 

[Thunderbrd]

GST (Goods and Services Tax - the civic category you're talking about there) was removed because it was not only a proxy slider but it was very straightforward and didn't really add to the game because what we needed as players was not the ability to generate more gold so much as the ability to use gold in new ways.

With the system I'm proposing it might actually become a useful civic category. I don't think it would be horrible to have civics representing proxy sliders at different, less giving conversion rates so as to enable us to spend (albeit with greater cost) beyond the standard 100% limit of a slider. This was not the purpose of the GST civic category.

 

[Yudishtira]

Ok, so here's the thing then. Let's take a Bank as an example (such as from vanilla). It got a +50% modifier to GOLD (not commerce). Reason being that if you give it a +50% modifier to COMMERCE then you're by default giving it a +50% modifier to SCIENCE if your slider is at 100% research. For game balance's sake there IS a difference - it's just very difficult to define what exactly that difference IS. Gold is investable and manipulable as currency is investable and manipulable while Commerce is just raw (as of yet unconverted) potential. Commerce is never stored. Gold is. It's like... gold is physical manifestation of currency while commerce is the ENERGY and activity of the nation to produce.

From vanilla? If the research slider is at 100% in vanilla/BtS, you are haemorrhaging gold at a rate that is only sustainable for short periods - and then usually only by reducing the slider to zero for a recovery period.

If you give the Bank (and similar buildings) a modifier to commerce instead, then the problem of the research slider being at 100% goes away! You still have the option of moving the slider down, until you have lost the (commerce's effect on) research and recouped the commerce as gold.

Commerce can make gold. Gold is very limited in what it can make. Irl gold is entirely unlimited in what it can be used for. That's why commerce should be the source of all gold.

Gold can't straight purchase research because the 100% slider is the limit to how much commerce can be invested into research and actually still have a positive effect - not everyone in the nation is capable of providing added meaningful efforts to research projects. The same consideration is made for the rest of the commerce types.

Gold can't purchase research at all! That's precisely why it should be commerce instead. Politicians clutch at any credible pretext to justify their low spending on science, but I can't recall ever hearing one say "there would be no benefit from spending more", can you? I'm sure they would use the argument if they thought anyone would believe it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

From vanilla? If the research slider is at 100% in vanilla/BtS, you are haemorrhaging gold at a rate that is only sustainable for short periods - and then usually only by reducing the slider to zero for a recovery period.

If you give the Bank (and similar buildings) a modifier to commerce instead, then the problem of the research slider being at 100% goes away! You still have the option of moving the slider down, until you have lost the (commerce's effect on) research and recouped the commerce as gold.

Commerce can make gold. Gold is very limited in what it can make. Irl gold is entirely unlimited in what it can be used for. That's why commerce should be the source of all gold.



Gold can't purchase research at all! That's precisely why it should be commerce instead. Politicians clutch at any credible pretext to justify their low spending on science, but I can't recall ever hearing one say "there would be no benefit from spending more", can you? I'm sure they would use the argument if they thought anyone would believe it.

Yes... all the time. Politicians and their critics will often point out that throwing money at a project is not always going to be what is most needed to ensure its success by any means. All day long my customers at work explain how their businesses operate and more money is not always the answer to their hangups. At all. Most of the time manpower is a bigger problem if they are actually growing. Finding qualified people to do the job is tough for any specialized industry. This is where there's a limit for science - there's only so many that can actually make a reasonable contribution to research - most others, whether paid to try or not, will fail to come up with any meaningful progress.

 

[0100010]

I remember way back when, in the early to mid days of RoM, pointing out how commerce bonuses needed to be used infrequently and very carefully, because they were too powerful. IIRC this was done because of the fact that they were compounding on excessive and unbalanced science % from various building and wonders that was causing rampant teching too quickly. I had, at the time recommend, a massive nerfing on a lot of things. This wasn't too popular, and although some things were marginally reduced, it mostly ended up with swapping a lot of + commerce bonuses to + gold bonuses. It seems to have thoroughly snowballed from there.

I had made the same argument when the mod became AnD, and now, here we are again.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I remember way back when, in the early to mid days of RoM, pointing out how commerce bonuses needed to be used infrequently and very carefully, because they were too powerful. IIRC this was done because of the fact that they were compounding on excessive and unbalanced science % from various building and wonders that was causing rampant teching too quickly. I had, at the time recommend, a massive nerfing on a lot of things. This wasn't too popular, and although some things were marginally reduced, it mostly ended up with swapping a lot of + commerce bonuses to + gold bonuses. It seems to have thoroughly snowballed from there.

I had made the same argument when the mod became AnD, and now, here we are again.

Well put and valid observation I think. I recall feeling frustrated with this when I started playing AND. I've gotten so used to it I've almost forgotten what it felt like at first. You may be right that we've gone a bit 'off track'. It's a very debatable subject of course. But I did like how the slider in vanilla had more pertinence than it does here.

 

[Yudishtira]

Yes... all the time. Politicians and their critics will often point out that throwing money at a project is not always going to be what is most needed to ensure its success by any means. All day long my customers at work explain how their businesses operate and more money is not always the answer to their hangups. At all. Most of the time manpower is a bigger problem if they are actually growing. Finding qualified people to do the job is tough for any specialized industry. This is where there's a limit for science - there's only so many that can actually make a reasonable contribution to research - most others, whether paid to try or not, will fail to come up with any meaningful progress.

Sure if a politician wants to spend money somewhere, his opponent will say it could be better spent elsewhere. Firstly, that is different from "we've already spent all we usefully can". Secondly, that is a intrinsically spurious argument made when one side of politics decides to oppose everything their opponents do - with no regard to the facts of the matter.

If you can't find qualified people to do the job, you are not offering enough money. These days - and indeed for most of the "scientific era" - there is a global manpower pool of scientists, and many of them will travel to the other side of the world...if the "price is right". My friend found it necessary to go to work in Germany when he got his PhD, as research in his field was not funded here.

Before that, it was the states that patronized (which of course means funded) science/research where all the breakthroughs happened. In game terms, "having a science focus" equates to building science buildings and channelling commerce into science (in addition to the Scientific trait obviously).

I remember way back when, in the early to mid days of RoM, pointing out how commerce bonuses needed to be used infrequently and very carefully, because they were too powerful. IIRC this was done because of the fact that they were compounding on excessive and unbalanced science % from various building and wonders that was causing rampant teching too quickly. I had, at the time recommend, a massive nerfing on a lot of things. This wasn't too popular, and although some things were marginally reduced, it mostly ended up with swapping a lot of + commerce bonuses to + gold bonuses. It seems to have thoroughly snowballed from there.

Fair enough I think there is too much research in the mod currently. There is definitely too much gold. If there is excessive and unbalanced beakers coming from some buildings and wonders, then we should fix them. Changing commerce into gold is not the answer to that, since the problem is too much of both. If there was too much research and a shortage of gold, then I agree it would be a game-mechanics reason to give gold bonuses rather than commerce. (Personally I prefer not doing things for game-mechanics reasons, but when it makes sense I'll go along with it). But that is not the case at present.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Since we can always adjust the tech costs, there should never be a point where we say we have too much research in the game should there? In some ways I'm thinking that the RoM move away from commerce may have been a fundamental mistake in the first place as it would've been better addressed by reworking the span of tech costs instead.

 

[Yudishtira]

In some ways I'm thinking that the RoM move away from commerce may have been a fundamental mistake in the first place as it would've been better addressed by reworking the span of tech costs instead.

I wholeheartedly agree!

Since we can always adjust the tech costs, there should never be a point where we say we have too much research in the game should there?

Well, until the tech cost adjustments are done, yes we can say there is too much research in the game. Hopefully I'm wrong, but a wholesale review of tech costs sounds like a somewhat daunting task. That could be why it hasn't been done. Iirc some players - and modders - disagree that it needs doing.

In my "current" game (if I continue it), I got to Sed Life just after 8000BC, on Deity from the start, with Ruthless & Aggressive AI & Raging Barbs (Snail speed). Despite losing two of my three cities in the 11th or 12th millennium. Ie. under the worst possible conditions for research (no I don't have a Sci leader). And I wasn't particularly beelining it. Btw, I think I dropped my slider to 95% for one turn, once.

That's too early...

 

[Faustmouse]

I had a overflow once, no idea if this was fixed by now...

But I think that science buildings later in the tech tree cost way too few ! Big projects like Hubble, the Apollo Programm and even normal Labs costs A LOT of money. I think if we'd increase the costs for and buildings slightly over the eras, this will solve all our problems:

- You have to make a choice if you really can afford the new // building or not. (This can include and later as well)
- We don't need from buildings.
- Since you can't affort every single building in every city, this will cut your output as well.
- It is "more realstic", espeicially if we increase costs for healthcare and traffic as well.

I think we are just "too shy" to apply greater costs for late game buildings because we think then a lot of people won't build them. But... they don't have a choice

 

[Hydromancerx]

Fair enough I think there is too much research in the mod currently. There is definitely too much gold. If there is excessive and unbalanced beakers coming from some buildings and wonders, then we should fix them. Changing commerce into gold is not the answer to that, since the problem is too much of both. If there was too much research and a shortage of gold, then I agree it would be a game-mechanics reason to give gold bonuses rather than commerce. (Personally I prefer not doing things for game-mechanics reasons, but when it makes sense I'll go along with it). But that is not the case at present.

Is there though? I have had some games were I cannot seem to make any money and I end up at 0% research and have to put cities on gold production just to function.

While in other games I have money out the wazoo! I am not sure what is causing this. Is it traits? Is it the resources I gain access too? Is it the rate I am founding cities?

Or is it just because the mod in in constant flux with new content which pushing it back and forth between too much gold and too little gold?