Feedback: Improvements

Azoth

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I was sure that Xyth had already created a Feedback: Improvements thread. I guess I was wrong.
I thought about posting my ideas in the Feedback: Maps and Terrain thread but I thought that would confuse the issue.
My proposals deal specifically with the improvement system in History Rewritten. So here we are.

This the post that prompted me to start this thread:

Spoiler :
I've played my first game of 1.17 to 500AD. It's going well.
However, I have identified several (of what I perceive to be) balance issues with the early game:

  1. Between Monarchy (+50%:hammers: in capital) and Agrarianism (+1:hammers: for Farms, Pastures, Plantations, and Wineries) civics, production is very easy to come by. This leads to a number of problems, including:
  2. Settlers are relatively cheap compared to BtS. Thus, all players expand very rapidly. It's not unusual for an empire to have ten cities by 1 AD.
  3. Ancient Era units are relatively cheap compared to BtS. Thus, all players can defend themselves fairly easily. Early offensive warfare is comparatively difficult.
  4. Also, barbarians are rather tame compared to BtS. This is because the AI (and therefore the barbarians) do not start with Archery and take some time to reach Bronze Working. By the time the barbarians can spawn Axemen, the wilderness is mostly gone.
  5. As a consequence, commerce appears to be scarcer in the early game. I say "appears" because HR offers more commerce in absolute terms, between Cemeteries (:gold: from priests and settled Great Prophets), Kilns, Monarchy (+50%:commerce: in capital) and Redistribution (+1:commerce: for Mines and Camps) civics. Unfortunately, players are compelled to overexpand: Settlers are cheap, war is expensive, and they need to secure their share of the land.
  6. In the end, many cities are stuck building Wealth. This is not because buildings are poorly designed; they provide a better return in the long run. However, many players find that they need gold right away to avoid insolvency caused by overexpansion - and Wealth is their only option.
  7. Separately, many buildings are now tied to resources. This can be severely imbalancing. In my current game, I have access to Peat, Horses, and Elephants; so all my cities enjoy +30%:hammers: from Kilns and Stables, unlike my rivals. By contrast, I have no precious metals or stones, so Markets are worthless.
  8. Furthermore, my cities enjoy an overabundance of health and happiness from buildings and resources. I always have more than I need.
  9. Finally, the landscape around my cities is fairly uninteresting. All the resources are connected; every flatland tile has a Farm; every feature tile has a Camp; hills are bare, awaiting Windmills, since +1:yuck: from Mines is counterproductive; and my workers are slowly converting everything to Cottages. It's as predictable as an algorithm.

These issues may seem intractable.
But after thinking them through, I think I've hit upon a simple and elegant solution.
It only requires a revision of the improvement system and a slight tweaking of Agrarianism civic.
Best of all, it should be fairly straightforward to code.
Meet me in the Feedback: Improvements thread for more details.

 
There are 21 different improvements in Civilization IV.
Unfortunately, many of them are only used to connect resources and most of them cannot be used to discover new resources.
That's plain boring.

History Rewritten offers more choices: Camps can be built on tiles without resources and new resources can be discovered on Farms.
That's a step in the right direction but I think we can go even farther.
Now that we have such a diversity of terrain types we can pair them each with an appropriate improvement to create a truly dynamic landscape.
Best of all, we can fix some balance issues along the way.

Here's what I propose:
All resources can be connected with the appropriate improvement regardless of terrain type. Beyond that:


Primary Improvements
These improvements are available early, can only be built on specific terrain, and offer a chance to discover resources when worked.

CAMP: may only be built on Forest and Tundra (both flatland and hillside)
+1:food:, +1:commerce: with Gunpowder, +1:commerce: from Redistribution
small chance to discover Elephant, Bison, Deer, and Fur

FARM: may only be build on Grassland and Flood Plains (flatland only)
+1:food:, +1:food: with Fertilizer, +1:commerce: from Agrarianism
small chance to discover Corn, Potato, Rice, and Wheat

MINE: may only be build on hills without terrain features
+2:hammers:, +1:hammers: with Railroad, +1:commerce: from Redistribution, no health penalty
small chance to discover Salt, Jade, Gems, Gold, Silver, Copper, Aluminum, Iron, Coal, and Uranium

PASTURE: may only be build on Plains and Savannah (flatland only)
+1:food:, +1:hammers: with Biology, +1:commerce: from Agrarianism
small chance to discover Cattle, Pig, Sheep, and Horse

PLANTATION: may only be build on Jungle and Desert (both flatland and hillside)
+2:commerce:, +1:commerce: with Crop Rotation, +1:commerce: from Slavery
small chance to discover Sugar, Banana, Olives, Spices, Cocoa, Coffee, Tea, Incense, Tobacco, Dye, Cotton, Flax, Silk, and Rubber

QUARRY: may only be build on Wetlands
+1:hammers:, +1:hammers: with Railroad, +1:commerce: from Slavery, no health penalty
small chance to discover Marble, Stone, and Peat
 
Secondary Improvements
These improvements are available later, can be built on many types of terrain, and offer higher yields but no chance to discover resources.

COTTAGE: +1:commerce:, +1:yuck:
HAMLET: +2:commerce:, +1:yuck:
VILLAGE: +3:commerce:, +1:commerce: from Democracy, +1:commerce: and +1:hammers: from Social Welfare, +1:yuck:, No bonus from Highway
TOWN: +4:commerce:, +1:commerce: with Highway, +1:commerce: from Democracy, +1:commerce: and +1:hammers: from Social Welfare, +1:yuck:
[may be built on all terrain without features]

LUMBERMILL: +1:hammers:, +1:commerce: from river, +1:hammers: with Railroad, +1:commerce: from Printing, +1:commerce: and +1:hammers: from Bureaucracy
[may be built on any Forest or Jungle]

WORKSHOP: +1:hammers:, +1:hammers: with Machine Tools, +1:commerce: with Highway, +1:hammers: from Caste System, +2:commerce: from Professionalism, No bonus from Machinery
[may be built on any flatland terrain without features]

No changes to Fishing Boats, Forts, Harvest Boats, Marine Reserves, Nature Reserves, Windmills, Wineries, or Watermills are suggested.
However, one civic change is proposed:

Agrarianism, Medium Upkeep
+1:health: in all cities
+1:commerce: from Farms and Pastures
 
Why is this system better?

  • Variety is fun. Under this system, the landscape surrounding your cities will be genuinely diverse. No more endless rows of Farms or Cottages! Steppe civilizations will favour pastures, tropical civilizations will favour plantations, arctic civilizations will favour camps.
  • This system solves the problem of uneven resource distribution. Don't have Peat to power your Kilns? Build Quarries in your Wetlands; with luck, you'll find a source. To those who argue that Horses can't be "discovered" in empty pastures, I say 'Use your imagination!' North America had no Horses, Pigs, Cattle, or Sheep for most of its history. After first contact, European colonists and Native Americans opened their lands for pasture and imported the livestock they needed. How do you think the US "discovered" Wheat in the American heartland?
  • That said, the rarer resources (Plantation and Quarry) are linked to less desirable terrain (Jungle, Desert, and Wetlands). If you want Marble, you'll have to work less than "optimal" tiles.
  • Cottages produce pollution! This is a brilliant idea I borrowed from another mod. It makes sense on so many levels. In real life: (1) Mines and quarries don't produce nearly as much waste as a full fledged suburb. (2) Most cities are surrounded by farms and pastures. Only the largest, most developed cities are surrounded by dense suburbs. In game terms: (1) Cottages represent population centres; it makes sense that they produce the same :yuck: as city population. (2) Towns are the strongest single improvement. Unlike Mines and Quarries, they can handle a penalty. Players will build them more carefully, but they will build them.
  • The hammer bonus from Agrarianism was too strong; it led to a number of problems. The commerce bonus and the flat health bonus create a nice contrast with Slavery, while Mines and Workshops are once again the most important source of hammers.
  • As for the other changes: considering how long it takes for Villages to mature into Towns, they deserve to be better by +2:commerce:. Finally, I felt +4:hammers:/+3:commerce: Workshops were too strong compared to other improvements. Something had to go.

Topics for Discussion:
  1. How high should we set the chance to discover new resources? I feel that 1 new resource discovered per 2-3 cities over the course of a game sounds about right. I don't know how to translate that statement into a per turn probability.
  2. Should Pastures without resources require irrigation? I think they should, just like Farms. After all Pastures are the new 'Farm' for plains tiles.
  3. I'm not sure that Wine deserves its own improvement. At a later date, we might considering recasting Wineries as Orchards or Gardens; replacing Wine with Grapes; and retooling some Plantation resources to fit, especially Olives. Thoughts?
 
An interesting idea. I'm not sure I like the way it would effect the 'niche' aspect of the different civic categories, though. Currently, all of the Labour civics are tied to methods of generating production in some way, while all the Economic civics are primarily concerned with various ways of generating commerce.

With the change you propose, Agrarianism would no longer really fit in the Labour category, but would more resemble something from the Economic category.
 
CAMP: may only be built on Forest and Tundra (both flatland and hillside)
+1, +1 with Gunpowder, +1 from Redistribution
small chance to discover Elephant, Bison, Deer, and Fur

FARM: may only be build on Grassland and Flood Plains (flatland only)
+1, +1 with Fertilizer, +1 from Agrarianism
small chance to discover Corn, Potato, Rice, and Wheat

MINE: may only be build on hills without terrain features
+2, +1 with Railroad, +1 from Redistribution, no health penalty
small chance to discover Salt, Jade, Gems, Gold, Silver, Copper, Aluminum, Iron, Coal, and Uranium

PASTURE: may only be build on Plains and Savannah (flatland only)
+1, +1 with Biology, +1 from Agrarianism
small chance to discover Cattle, Pig, Sheep, and Horse

PLANTATION: may only be build on Jungle and Desert (both flatland and hillside)
+2, +1 with Crop Rotation, +1 from Slavery
small chance to discover Sugar, Banana, Olives, Spices, Cocoa, Coffee, Tea, Incense, Tobacco, Dye, Cotton, Flax, Silk, and Rubber

QUARRY: may only be build on Wetlands
+1, +1 with Railroad, +1 from Slavery, no health penalty
small chance to discover Marble, Stone, and Peat
Interesting idea. Knowing how small that "small percentage" is, I like this idea. The problem is it means if a civ has plenty of iron (which they would typically just use to trade for horses) their is incentive to just spam pastures until they discover horses on one of them, then build plantations/ quarries/mine/farms until they get the other resources they need, and thus undermine what is already (I think) an iffy trading system as well as the idea of resource scarcity.
Is their someway to make the precentage dependent on whether or not you have that resource? if you are importing horses you can breed them, increasing the chance they appear?
 
An interesting idea. I'm not sure I like the way it would effect the 'niche' aspect of the different civic categories, though. Currently, all of the Labour civics are tied to methods of generating production in some way, while all the Economic civics are primarily concerned with various ways of generating commerce.

With the change you propose, Agrarianism would no longer really fit in the Labour category, but would more resemble something from the Economic category.

True. But I'm afraid it's necessary.
There is simply far too much production available in the early game.

In my last game, my first three cities had finished constructing all available buildings, and had trained more units than I could support for free, all by 1000 BC. There was nothing left to do but build Wealth, and train the occasional Settler. At the same time, I was founding new cities for which I could not pay maintenance, all because I knew that I could put up a few Farms, build Wealth, and thereby avoid insolvency. As I outlined in my first post, this causes a number of balance problems. If players are simply going to use the hammers from Agrarianism to build Wealth, you might as well give them the commerce up front.

That said, you can still make the case that Agrarianism fits the mold of a Labour civic. By making Farms and Pastures stronger, Agrarianism gives your cities the food necessary to support Mines, Quarries, Workshops, forests, priests, and engineers. Those should be your main source of hammers in the early game anyway. As it is, I almost never build Mines or Workshops; with Agrarianism, production is plentiful and I need all the commerce I can get, which means cottages, scientists, and merchants all the way. Not to mention, the raw hammers from Agrarianism are far superior to population sacrifice under Slavery or stronger Workshops under Caste System.

Interesting idea. Knowing how small that "small percentage" is, I like this idea. The problem is it means if a civ has plenty of iron (which they would typically just use to trade for horses) their is incentive to just spam pastures until they discover horses on one of them, then build plantations/ quarries/mine/farms until they get the other resources they need, and thus undermine what is already (I think) an iffy trading system as well as the idea of resource scarcity.
Is their someway to make the precentage dependent on whether or not you have that resource? if you are importing horses you can breed them, increasing the chance they appear?

Well, the system wouldn't be that easy to manipulate. If you need Horses, you can build all the pastures you want, but you might only end up with more Sheep!

Before you know it, the Renaissance Era will arrive, bringing with it Corporations. I really think the new corporations Xyth is planning to roll out in 1.18 will breathe new life in the trading system. The new corporations will make use of almost all the new resources, making every excess resource, of any type, suddenly valuable. The new improvements will fit right in: you can tailor your improvements to match the resources you need for your corporations; or you can target those that your neighbours need, and trade. Balancing the corporations will also become easier; General Mills will not automatically be the strongest because all resources, not only grains, can be discovered.
 
If players are simply going to use the hammers from Agrarianism to build Wealth, you might as well give them the commerce up front.

My understanding is that Xyth is changing the way the 'convert production to commerce' builds work (assuming my memory isn't playing tricks on me, as I can't seem to find the relevant thread now). Under the new system, most or all of the various types (not just wealth) will be available fairly early, but at greatly reduced efficiency. So, for example, Property will let you build wealth at a rate of 3 hammers per 1 gold, with Currency improving the ratio to 2 for 1, and Economics 1 for 1. (Again, this is all based on my quite fallible memory, so take it with a large grain of salt.)
 
Overall I like concept, will work well alongside the corporation changes. Several changes are things I was considering myself. Out the door at the moment, I'll try respond in more detail in a few hours.
 
Will Quarries, Pastures, et cetera still be buildable on other terrain types if the relevant resources are found there? For example, Sheep are often found on Hill squares, and Salt and Stone are both found in deserts a lot. Can we build Pastures on a grassland-hill square, or a Quarry in the desert, if we do things this way?
 
CAMP: may only be built on Forest and Tundra (both flatland and hillside)
+1:food:, +1:commerce: with Gunpowder, +1:commerce: from Redistribution
small chance to discover Elephant, Bison, Deer, and Fur

One thing to note is that I cannot restrict discovery by terrain type. So we could end up with Forest Bison and Tundra Elephants. Camps do seem like a good idea for Tundra though.

FARM: may only be build on Grassland and Flood Plains (flatland only)
+1:food:, +1:food: with Fertilizer, +1:commerce: from Agrarianism
small chance to discover Corn, Potato, Rice, and Wheat

PASTURE: may only be build on Plains and Savannah (flatland only)
+1:food:, +1:hammers: with Biology, +1:commerce: from Agrarianism
small chance to discover Cattle, Pig, Sheep, and Horse

I wonder if the terrains are the wrong way around here? To me, 'Grasslands' implies good land for grazing, 'Plains' implies wide flatlands perfect for growing grain. Probably just a semantics thing.

It does make me wonder if we need to be quite as restrictive on the terrain though. Could the scheme still work with some crossover? No plains farms or savannah plantations or jungle camps, etc, feels like we could be limiting player choice a bit too much.

PLANTATION: may only be build on Jungle and Desert (both flatland and hillside)
+2:commerce:, +1:commerce: with Crop Rotation, +1:commerce: from Slavery
small chance to discover Sugar, Banana, Olives, Spices, Cocoa, Coffee, Tea, Incense, Tobacco, Dye, Cotton, Flax, Silk, and Rubber

I would like to split the Plantation into Plantations and Orchards at some point.

MINE: may only be build on hills without terrain features
+2:hammers:, +1:hammers: with Railroad, +1:commerce: from Redistribution, no health penalty
small chance to discover Salt, Jade, Gems, Gold, Silver, Copper, Aluminum, Iron, Coal, and Uranium

With that many resources it would be good to split the Mine too but nothing sensible comes to mind. I would prefer to retain the health penalty on mines.

QUARRY: may only be build on Wetlands
+1:hammers:, +1:hammers: with Railroad, +1:commerce: from Slavery, no health penalty
small chance to discover Marble, Stone, and Peat

I quite liked Wetlands being a mostly unusable terrain for much of the game, seem a shame to lose that aspect. We would need the ability to discover Peat though.

LUMBERMILL: +1:hammers:, +1:commerce: from river, +1:hammers: with Railroad, +1:commerce: from Printing, +1:commerce: and +1:hammers: from Bureaucracy
[may be built on any Forest or Jungle]

Note that the Lumbermill will be needed to access Prime Timber in 1.18.

Variety is fun. Under this system, the landscape surrounding your cities will be genuinely diverse. No more endless rows of Farms or Cottages! Steppe civilizations will favour pastures, tropical civilizations will favour plantations, arctic civilizations will favour camps.

Agreed, but with terrain restrictions that are too tight we would still have a fair amount of predictability, at least with the primary improvements. I think we could allow a couple of options for some of the more common terrain types.

That said, the rarer resources (Plantation and Quarry) are linked to less desirable terrain (Jungle, Desert, and Wetlands). If you want Marble, you'll have to work less than "optimal" tiles.

Stone or Marble from Wetlands feels odd. We'd definitely have to allow the Quarry on another terrain type as well.

Cottages produce pollution! This is a brilliant idea I borrowed from another mod. It makes sense on so many levels. In real life: (1) Mines and quarries don't produce nearly as much waste as a full fledged suburb. (2) Most cities are surrounded by farms and pastures. Only the largest, most developed cities are surrounded by dense suburbs. In game terms: (1) Cottages represent population centres; it makes sense that they produce the same :yuck: as city population. (2) Towns are the strongest single improvement. Unlike Mines and Quarries, they can handle a penalty. Players will build them more carefully, but they will build them.

Unhealthiness from Cottages was something I was considering. I think it makes sense. I'm less happy with removing pollution from Mines and Quarries, I'd prefer to see that stay.

The hammer bonus from Agrarianism was too strong; it led to a number of problems. The commerce bonus and the flat health bonus create a nice contrast with Slavery, while Mines and Workshops are once again the most important source of hammers.

This is something else I was considering. It would certainly go a long way towards addressing the production/commerce imbalance in the early game. I share Nightstar's concerns about breaking the 'niche' of the civic categories though, will have to think on it.

We also need to consider that Agrarianism was set up as an alternative to Slavery, and how that civic affects things as well.

How high should we set the chance to discover new resources? I feel that 1 new resource discovered per 2-3 cities over the course of a game sounds about right. I don't know how to translate that statement into a per turn probability.

At the moment Mines are set at 10000, and Farms are set at 5000, meaning they'll discover a resource twice as often (on average) as Mines. We'll have to extrapolate suitable values from those. I may need to lower the amount of resources placed during map generation slightly for this all to balance.

Should Pastures without resources require irrigation? I think they should, just like Farms. After all Pastures are the new 'Farm' for plains tiles.

Yes, and I think Plantations should as well, being in the Desert and all.

I'm not sure that Wine deserves its own improvement. At a later date, we might considering recasting Wineries as Orchards or Gardens; replacing Wine with Grapes; and retooling some Plantation resources to fit, especially Olives. Thoughts?

I'd definitely like to replace Wineries with Orchards, to shift some of the resources away from the Plantation. I'd need to find or adapt some art though.

Is their someway to make the precentage dependent on whether or not you have that resource? if you are importing horses you can breed them, increasing the chance they appear?

Not via the discovery mechanic, no. Possibly if I coded an entirely new system but that's not on the cards atm.

Before you know it, the Renaissance Era will arrive, bringing with it Corporations. I really think the new corporations Xyth is planning to roll out in 1.18 will breathe new life in the trading system. The new corporations will make use of almost all the new resources, making every excess resource, of any type, suddenly valuable. The new improvements will fit right in: you can tailor your improvements to match the resources you need for your corporations; or you can target those that your neighbours need, and trade. Balancing the corporations will also become easier; General Mills will not automatically be the strongest because all resources, not only grains, can be discovered.

Yes, this has potential to integrate with Corporations really well.

My understanding is that Xyth is changing the way the 'convert production to commerce' builds work (assuming my memory isn't playing tricks on me, as I can't seem to find the relevant thread now). Under the new system, most or all of the various types (not just wealth) will be available fairly early, but at greatly reduced efficiency. So, for example, Property will let you build wealth at a rate of 3 hammers per 1 gold, with Currency improving the ratio to 2 for 1, and Economics 1 for 1. (Again, this is all based on my quite fallible memory, so take it with a large grain of salt.)

Yes, this is coming in 1.18. For Wealth it's 3 for 1 at Property, 2 for 1 at Guilds, and 1 for 1 at Corporation. The other commerces are similar.

Will Quarries, Pastures, et cetera still be buildable on other terrain types if the relevant resources are found there? For example, Sheep are often found on Hill squares, and Salt and Stone are both found in deserts a lot. Can we build Pastures on a grassland-hill square, or a Quarry in the desert, if we do things this way?

Yep. A relevant resource will still enable the appropriate improvement, regardless of terrain.
 
One thing to note is that I cannot restrict discovery by terrain type.

Are you sure? Couldn't you create multiple improvements with the same official name and graphics, to cover all possible terrain types; such that a player would see Camps on Forest, Jungle, and Tundra tiles as identical; but in the code, they would be identified as CampA, CampB, and CampC, and linked to different resources? It might not be worth the effort, I grant you. Personally, I would accept Elephants on Tundra as simply a variety of mammoth. But is it technically possible?

So we could end up with Forest Bison and Tundra Elephants.

Maybe Bison should be discovered in Pastures; the idea being that the bison would be bred in captivity and when their population reached a critical mass, they could be hunted commercially in camps. By the same token, Elephants and Fur could be discovered in Nature Preserves, while Fish, Shellfish, Crab, Seal, and Whale would be discovered in Marine Preserves. Once discovered, the original improvements could be replaced with Camps, Fishing Boats, or Harvest Boats.

I wonder if the terrains are the wrong way around here? To me, 'Grasslands' implies good land for grazing, 'Plains' implies wide flatlands perfect for growing grain. Probably just a semantics thing.

I was going by the random map generator. Three Pasture resources (Cattle, Sheep, and Horse) but only two Farm resources (Wheat and Potato) normally appear on Plains. I'm not too fussed about it, either way.

It does make me wonder if we need to be quite as restrictive on the terrain though. Could the scheme still work with some crossover? No plains farms or savannah plantations or jungle camps, etc, feels like we could be limiting player choice a bit too much.

There is certainly room for more crossover, yes. My only worry is that, with too many options, some options will become redundant. Now, I can see the case for allowing at least three different improvements on every terrain type, each emphasizing either food, hammers, or commerce. (Of course, some would argue that even this much variety could get boring: the base terrain around a city won't matter much if it can be improved in any direction.) The food/hammers/commerce options for Grassland would be Farm/Workshop/Cottage; for Jungle, they would be Camp/Lumbermill/Plantation. Beyond that, more crossover might not create more options; Farms and Pastures have identical yields for most of the game, after all.

That said, there are certain possibilities. Watermills are an interesting hammers-commerce hybrid only available along rivers. I envision Orchards as a food-commerce hybrid also available only along rivers. Not to mention: Farms, Pastures, Plantations, and Orchards might all require irrigation; but only Farms would spread it! Tell me: is there any way you could design an improvement to affect the yield of an adjacent improvement? For example, would it be possible for Mines to increase the yields of all adjacent Workshops by 1:hammers:, or Windmills to increase the yields of all adjacent Farms by 1:food:?

With that many resources it would be good to split the Mine too but nothing sensible comes to mind.

Again, the only thing I can suggest is that you code separate Mine improvements based on terrain type behind the scenes, such that Jade can only be discovered in Grassland Hills, Silver in Tundra Hills, and Gold in Desert Hills, etc.

I quite liked Wetlands being a mostly unusable terrain for much of the game, seem a shame to lose that aspect. We would need the ability to discover Peat though.

So long as resource-less Quarries have a low yield, Wetlands will remain mostly unusable. After all, once you have one source of Peat, you don't need any more Wetland Quarries; the health penalty alone is a headache.

Stone or Marble from Wetlands feels odd. We'd definitely have to allow the Quarry on another terrain type as well.

We could allow Quarries on hills or Desert. The problem is that no one would work Desert Quarries if they produced only 1:hammers:. Is it possible to adjust yields by terrain type, such that Quarries produce +1:hammers:, and an additional +1:hammers: on Desert?

Unhealthiness from Cottages was something I was considering. I think it makes sense. I'm less happy with removing pollution from Mines and Quarries, I'd prefer to see that stay.

I'm glad you approve of a health penalty for Cottages. In principle, I have no objection to retaining a health penalty for Mines and Quarries; I simply think their yields should reflect it. For balance purposes, 1:yuck: is equivalent to -1:food:. With that in mind, -1:food:/+2:hammers: Mines with +1:hammers: at Railroad compare very unfavourably with Workshops that can reach +4:hammers:/+3:commerce:. Might I suggest a health penalty for Workshops instead?

This is something else I was considering. It would certainly go a long way towards addressing the production/commerce imbalance in the early game. I share Nightstar's concerns about breaking the 'niche' of the civic categories though, will have to think on it.

Depending on how Orchards are implemented, this civic might change. How does +1:hammers: for Orchards and Windmills strike you?

We also need to consider that Agrarianism was set up as an alternative to Slavery, and how that civic affects things as well.

I think the same basic relationship will hold. Agrarianism is better for inland empires that need many Farms and Pastures to support their Mines and Quarries. Slavery is better for coastal empires that cannot devote as many tiles for hammers, and prefer to convert food directly to production via sacrifice.

At the moment Mines are set at 10000, and Farms are set at 5000, meaning they'll discover a resource twice as often (on average) as Mines. We'll have to extrapolate suitable values from those. I may need to lower the amount of resources placed during map generation slightly for this all to balance.

Hmm. On the whole, I would prefer slightly fewer resources placed during map generation and a slightly higher chances of resource discovery. Good thinking.

I'd definitely like to replace Wineries with Orchards, to shift some of the resources away from the Plantation. I'd need to find or adapt some art though.

What resources would you link to Orchards? Grapes and Olives, presumably. What else? Bananas, renamed simply Fruit? Spices? Incense? You could also make a case for moving Flax and Tobacco over to Farms. Also, is the current Winery graphic unsuitable? I have no idea what it looks like without the Wine resource underneath. Well, I don't think new art will be hard to find. I seem to remember The Ancient Mediterranean (TAM) mod had an Orchard improvement. It's available for Mac. Maybe you could trace the art back to its source?

Yes, this is coming in 1.18. For Wealth it's 3 for 1 at Property, 2 for 1 at Guilds, and 1 for 1 at Corporation. The other commerces are similar.

I should mention: I fully support this change. I think it will help solve the problem of overexpansion, though I think a change to Agrarianism is still necessary to address overproduction. (Otherwise, mature cities will still run out of things to build and be left producing Wealth, even if less efficiently.)

Yep. A relevant resource will still enable the appropriate improvement, regardless of terrain.

Yep. That was the plan all along.
 
With that many resources it would be good to split the Mine too but nothing sensible comes to mind. I would prefer to retain the health penalty on mines.
Why?

The fundamental issue seems to be how immensely efficient towns are compared to mines- if it makes economic sense to tile virtually every available bit of flat ground with cottages, you're doing it wrong.

Mines that provide something like 4
hammer.gif
at the cost of 1
yuck.gif
plus the 2
food.gif
it takes to keep the miners alive are giving you a good return on investment even with the pollution penalty. But something like a town giving half a dozen commerce, some hammers, and paying for itself in terms of supplying enough food to keep the worker in the town fed... that's a lot more, and arguably should come with corresponding costs.

On the other hand, there's a catch. While a village or town can probably support having a
yuck.gif
penalty, a cottage or hamlet can't. Maybe the
yuck.gif
penalty should only be associated with the larger, 'final-stage' improvements in the cottage line?

Stone or Marble from Wetlands feels odd. We'd definitely have to allow the Quarry on another terrain type as well.
I agree. Swamps are actually a terrible place to build a quarry under normal conditions- a swamp is almost by definition a place where the water table is right next to the surface. If you dig a big open hole in the ground, all you'll get out of it is mud, and it'll flood full of water very quickly.

It makes almost no sense for Stone and Marble to be found in swamps. Peat is a special case because of the nature of peat bogs specifically. Keeping Wetland squares as 'dead terrain' until the late game is better- although there should be serious ecological consequences for clearing Wetlands; there are such consequences in real life, chronic flooding being one of the big ones.

I'd think it makes more sense for Quarries to be buildable on hills, as an alternative to mines (say, one that provides 1
commerce.gif
1
hammer.gif
instead of 2
hammer.gif
). Hills are more associated with the kind of rock outcroppings that lend themselves to quarrying, and you're more likely to find good building stone there than you are in some place where there's twenty meters of mud between you and bedrock.

My advice is to make Peat non-discoverable, but common enough that it doesn't matter- it's the only resource that appears on Wetland tiles, so you won't lose much by that in my opinion.

Unhealthiness from Cottages was something I was considering. I think it makes sense. I'm less happy with removing pollution from Mines and Quarries, I'd prefer to see that stay.
Why?

Not via the discovery mechanic, no. Possibly if I coded an entirely new system but that's not on the cards atm.
Could you use the event mechanics without making a mess of it? I don't know what event triggers exist.

That said, there are certain possibilities. Watermills are an interesting hammers-commerce hybrid only available along rivers. I envision Orchards as a food-commerce hybrid also available only along rivers. Not to mention: Farms, Pastures, Plantations, and Orchards might all require irrigation; but only Farms would spread it! Tell me: is there any way you could design an improvement to affect the yield of an adjacent improvement? For example, would it be possible for Mines to increase the yields of all adjacent Workshops by 1:hammers:, or Windmills to increase the yields of all adjacent Farms by 1:food:?
I bet Firaxis didn't bother to code that- even though they did have that code, once upon a time, for Alpha Centauri. Remember the Echelon Mirror?
 
Some good general ideas, and some good specific ideas, but I not sure of all of the specifics.

One thought is that one can have for example different "camps".
Same name and maybe even art, so the player does not have to deal with a difference, but the computer treats them as different.
For example, Camp1 can be built in Tundra, and may generate Fur.
Camp2 can be built on Forest and may generate Deer.

Some of the proposal seems to make what you build early depend a lot on the terrain you have, which is currently true as well. Not sure this is really much more variety rather than different variety.

Slavery is strong, available early, and a competitor to Agrarianism.
So if changes are made you need to keep Agrarianism competitive.
 
Are you sure? Couldn't you create multiple improvements with the same official name and graphics, to cover all possible terrain types; such that a player would see Camps on Forest, Jungle, and Tundra tiles as identical; but in the code, they would be identified as CampA, CampB, and CampC, and linked to different resources? It might not be worth the effort, I grant you. Personally, I would accept Elephants on Tundra as simply a variety of mammoth. But is it technically possible?

Could you use the event mechanics without making a mess of it? I don't know what event triggers exist.

Actually it might be possible via the event system, though it would probably still require some custom trigger and selection code as well. Not a bad thing, as it would allow us much more scope for fine tuning, but it would take a lot longer to implement.

The biggest nuisance of using the event system is that it always pops up a dialog for the player to click (as far as I can tell), even if there is only one option. This could get annoying.

There is certainly room for more crossover, yes. My only worry is that, with too many options, some options will become redundant. Now, I can see the case for allowing at least three different improvements on every terrain type, each emphasizing either food, hammers, or commerce. (Of course, some would argue that even this much variety could get boring: the base terrain around a city won't matter much if it can be improved in any direction.) The food/hammers/commerce options for Grassland would be Farm/Workshop/Cottage; for Jungle, they would be Camp/Lumbermill/Plantation. Beyond that, more crossover might not create more options; Farms and Pastures have identical yields for most of the game, after all.

Yeah I don't think we need to go as far as ensuring balanced possibilities for terrain types, defeats the purpose. I'm thinking more in terms of what makes logical sense to a player and allowing a little flexibility. I'm experimenting a bit to see what feels right.

One aspect that I've noticed so far: there's only one Plantation resource (Incense) that ever appears in Desert; every other Desert resource is mined or quarried. How useless do we want Deserts to be? This scheme has the potential to increase their yield by quite an amount.

Not to mention: Farms, Pastures, Plantations, and Orchards might all require irrigation; but only Farms would spread it!

If we went for something like that, Farms would probably need to be compatible with terrains.

Tell me: is there any way you could design an improvement to affect the yield of an adjacent improvement? For example, would it be possible for Mines to increase the yields of all adjacent Workshops by 1:hammers:, or Windmills to increase the yields of all adjacent Farms by 1:food:?

Not in a way that the AI could understand it.

I'm glad you approve of a health penalty for Cottages. In principle, I have no objection to retaining a health penalty for Mines and Quarries; I simply think their yields should reflect it. For balance purposes, 1:yuck: is equivalent to -1:food:. With that in mind, -1:food:/+2:hammers: Mines with +1:hammers: at Railroad compare very unfavourably with Workshops that can reach +4:hammers:/+3:commerce:. Might I suggest a health penalty for Workshops instead?

I've often wondered if Workshops could become the production equivalent of the Cottage; upgrading to different levels over time, replacing the Workshop's tech tree bonuses. Would need to come up with names and art obviously. Worth considering? Either way, I think 1:yuck: is reasonable.

I think the same basic relationship will hold. Agrarianism is better for inland empires that need many Farms and Pastures to support their Mines and Quarries. Slavery is better for coastal empires that cannot devote as many tiles for hammers, and prefer to convert food directly to production via sacrifice.

I should mention: I fully support this change. I think it will help solve the problem of overexpansion, though I think a change to Agrarianism is still necessary to address overproduction. (Otherwise, mature cities will still run out of things to build and be left producing Wealth, even if less efficiently.)

Slavery is strong, available early, and a competitor to Agrarianism.
So if changes are made you need to keep Agrarianism competitive.

Well, if Agrarianism creates an imbalance between early game production and commerce, then is Slavery doing it as well? Or is Agrarianism just that overpowered? I'm wondering if we might need to look deeper into why there's too much production in the early game.

Hmm. On the whole, I would prefer slightly fewer resources placed during map generation and a slightly higher chances of resource discovery. Good thinking.

So long as we don't tip it too far in that direction. The AI isn't capable of planning for resource discovery like the human player can.

What resources would you link to Orchards? Grapes and Olives, presumably. What else? Bananas, renamed simply Fruit? Spices? Incense? You could also make a case for moving Flax and Tobacco over to Farms.

Renaming Bananas as Fruit makes good sense but I feel Wine should remain Wine. So, Fruit, Olives, and Wine for sure. Spice and Incense not really. A while back I was planning to add one or two more such resources for the Grocer, but with all the changes that have happened recently I probably won't now.

Also, is the current Winery graphic unsuitable? I have no idea what it looks like without the Wine resource underneath. Well, I don't think new art will be hard to find. I seem to remember The Ancient Mediterranean (TAM) mod had an Orchard improvement. It's available for Mac. Maybe you could trace the art back to its source?

I'll check both out.

We could allow Quarries on hills or Desert. The problem is that no one would work Desert Quarries if they produced only 1:hammers:. Is it possible to adjust yields by terrain type, such that Quarries produce +1:hammers:, and an additional +1:hammers: on Desert?

Not in a way the AI would understand.

The fundamental issue seems to be how immensely efficient towns are compared to mines- if it makes economic sense to tile virtually every available bit of flat ground with cottages, you're doing it wrong.

Mines that provide something like 4
hammer.gif
at the cost of 1
yuck.gif
plus the 2
food.gif
it takes to keep the miners alive are giving you a good return on investment even with the pollution penalty. But something like a town giving half a dozen commerce, some hammers, and paying for itself in terms of supplying enough food to keep the worker in the town fed... that's a lot more, and arguably should come with corresponding costs.

On the other hand, there's a catch. While a village or town can probably support having a
yuck.gif
penalty, a cottage or hamlet can't. Maybe the
yuck.gif
penalty should only be associated with the larger, 'final-stage' improvements in the cottage line?

Remember that :yuck: from improvements was introduced to offset :health: from buildings and resources. So the more health you have in a city, the more :yuck: causing improvements you can afford to build. Having the :yuck: from cottages straight away doesn't hurt because you know it'll pay off in time. The AI will cope better with it this way too.

As for Mines I want to retain their :yuck: because it's realistic and because we can still afford to up the amount of :yuck: in game. Mines can only be built on hills so the only improvement they compete with in most situations is the Windmill. You can't build cottages in hills so that comparison is mostly irrelevant. Mines enable (and can discover) some of the most useful resources in game, so that's one big advantage they have over Windmills already. Possibly enough to offset the :yuck: by itself?

I'm less concerned with :yuck: from Quarries.

I'd think it makes more sense for Quarries to be buildable on hills, as an alternative to mines (say, one that provides 1
commerce.gif
1
hammer.gif
instead of 2
hammer.gif
). Hills are more associated with the kind of rock outcroppings that lend themselves to quarrying, and you're more likely to find good building stone there than you are in some place where there's twenty meters of mud between you and bedrock.

Quarries as a Mine alternative in hills makes sense.

I agree. Swamps are actually a terrible place to build a quarry under normal conditions- a swamp is almost by definition a place where the water table is right next to the surface. If you dig a big open hole in the ground, all you'll get out of it is mud, and it'll flood full of water very quickly.

It makes almost no sense for Stone and Marble to be found in swamps. Peat is a special case because of the nature of peat bogs specifically. Keeping Wetland squares as 'dead terrain' until the late game is better- although there should be serious ecological consequences for clearing Wetlands; there are such consequences in real life, chronic flooding being one of the big ones.

Yeah, Quarries in non-Peat wetlands just doesn't work. But we could have a Quarry discover Peat but also a Wetland (i.e the feature gets added at the same time as the resource). This would require Quarries on at least one flatland terrain though, preferably near a river or lake. Makes no sense on hill quarries.

Some good general ideas, and some good specific ideas, but I not sure of all of the specifics.

Some of the proposal seems to make what you build early depend a lot on the terrain you have, which is currently true as well. Not sure this is really much more variety rather than different variety.

Yep, still some refining and discussing to do but I think we'll work all the knots out :)
 
The biggest nuisance of using the event system is that it always pops up a dialog for the player to click (as far as I can tell), even if there is only one option. This could get annoying.
What I mean is that you could have a randomly triggered "resource discovered at one of your mines/farms/pastures/whatever!" event. You'd only have to click anything on the (rare) occasions when a resource really was randomly discovered, which will only happen, what, once every twenty turns? Forty? Fifty? In HR it feels like it's about 100 turns between random discoveries, if that.

One aspect that I've noticed so far: there's only one Plantation resource (Incense) that ever appears in Desert; every other Desert resource is mined or quarried. How useless do we want Deserts to be? This scheme has the potential to increase their yield by quite an amount.
There are a number of historical civilizations which lived and thrived in or near areas we now call "desert," and for whom the idea of the desert plays a major role in their culture- it's their 'traditional' terrain in the same sense that the traditional terrain of the Mesopotamian city-states was the flood plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Just off the top of my head- the Arabs, the Anasazi, the Berber, arguably the Egyptians and Mali, some of the central Asian peoples like the Turkic, Kushan, and Mongol civilizations... all lived in areas where water was scarce and precious, and developed thriving cultures despite that. None of them ever really matched the huge populations of fertile territory, except by conquering that territory- and yet we choose to represent them in HR, and rightly so.

So making it feasible for a civilization to live and thrive despite having lots of desert around... that might be a good thing.

I've often wondered if Workshops could become the production equivalent of the Cottage; upgrading to different levels over time, replacing the Workshop's tech tree bonuses. Would need to come up with names and art obviously. Worth considering? Either way, I think 1:yuck: is reasonable.
Names that come to mind:

-Smithy
-Workshop
-Plant (as in "manufacturing plant," this term is often applied to isolated factories in the middle of nowhere)
-Complex (as in "industrial complex")

Can we cap the growth of this improvement type until certain technologies become available? Or not? If not that's all right; I intentionally chose terms that are sort of ambiguous about whether or not they take place after the industrial revolution.

My advice is that the growth rate should be pretty slow (so that we don't get massive +4 hammer "complexes" springing up 250 turns into the game while everyone's still in the Middle Ages), but gets accelerated dramatically after the Industrial Revolution, creating more incentive to build workshop-analogues. The Industrialism civic should definitely speed up workshop growth rates, one or two other civics might do the same, and... can techs accelerate workshop growth? Would that work?

The idea being that anything much bigger than a Workshop is very rare until the Renaissance/Early Industrial period, at which point it becomes relatively easy to 'seed' smithies and have them grow quickly.

Well, if Agrarianism creates an imbalance between early game production and commerce, then is Slavery doing it as well? Or is Agrarianism just that overpowered? I'm wondering if we might need to look deeper into why there's too much production in the early game.
A couple of reasons, I think. Agrarianism is a big one.

Another big reason is that with camps, you can basically put your entire population to work in production-rich forest tiles. In vanilla BtS, for every citizen working a forest-plains and producing two hammers you need someone growing three food. Indeed, I can't think of any terrain that doesn't have either special resources or improvements with high technology that gives you two hammers without also giving you a food shortage.

Build a camp on a forest-plains square, and suddenly your citizen is feeding himself and making two hammers a turn.

As for Mines I want to retain their :yuck: because it's realistic and because we can still afford to up the amount of :yuck: in game. Mines can only be built on hills so the only improvement they compete with in most situations is the Windmill. You can't build cottages in hills so that comparison is mostly irrelevant. Mines enable (and can discover) some of the most useful resources in game, so that's one big advantage they have over Windmills already. Possibly enough to offset the :yuck: by itself?
That's fair. Plus nowadays we have such huge pollution problems from mine tailings and mountaintop removal that it's reasonable to reflect consciousness of this. In ancient times the mines were less polluting... but they were also more deadly. There's a reason we have a stereotypical image of forced labor and slaves being "sent to the mines." The mines always needed more labor, because a miner could work himself to death in a matter of years. So today the :yuck: represents pollution; back in ancient times it would represent the mine acting as a population sink, much as the Inquisition causes :yuck: because it's killing people with witch hunts or whatever.

Hm. If Slavery is too weak a civic compared to Agrarianism, one option is to extend the commerce bonus to mines- which, again, are a place slaves were often forced to work in.

Yeah, Quarries in non-Peat wetlands just doesn't work. But we could have a Quarry discover Peat but also a Wetland (i.e the feature gets added at the same time as the resource). This would require Quarries on at least one flatland terrain though, preferably near a river or lake. Makes no sense on hill quarries.
This sounds like more trouble than it's worth, plus being damn inconvenient if you start building quarries on flat land for the production bonus and then have the place turn into a swamp.
 
I think that in the modern era it should be possible to build railroads in mountain tiles.
I am thinking of a combination of railroad tunnel, bridges over gorges, and the use of passes.

(Think of the Alps or Rocky Mountains.
There are certainly mountains such as parts of the Himalayas where this is not feasible.)

Maybe available with the tech explosives (which is really high explosives.)
Would take much longer to build in mountains than on other terrain
and cost much more coins as well.

There are not many map locations where this would matter much, but there are a few where it would make a difference.

Maybe the same idea should apply to Highways.
 
There are a number of historical civilizations which lived and thrived in or near areas we now call "desert," and for whom the idea of the desert plays a major role in their culture- it's their 'traditional' terrain in the same sense that the traditional terrain of the Mesopotamian city-states was the flood plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Just off the top of my head- the Arabs, the Anasazi, the Berber, arguably the Egyptians and Mali, some of the central Asian peoples like the Turkic, Kushan, and Mongol civilizations... all lived in areas where water was scarce and precious, and developed thriving cultures despite that. None of them ever really matched the huge populations of fertile territory, except by conquering that territory- and yet we choose to represent them in HR, and rightly so.

So making it feasible for a civilization to live and thrive despite having lots of desert around... that might be a good thing.

Yep, I'm definitely not opposed to the idea, just wanted to raise it in case anyone could see any problems.

Can we cap the growth of this improvement type until certain technologies become available? Or not? If not that's all right; I intentionally chose terms that are sort of ambiguous about whether or not they take place after the industrial revolution.

My advice is that the growth rate should be pretty slow (so that we don't get massive +4 hammer "complexes" springing up 250 turns into the game while everyone's still in the Middle Ages), but gets accelerated dramatically after the Industrial Revolution, creating more incentive to build workshop-analogues. The Industrialism civic should definitely speed up workshop growth rates, one or two other civics might do the same, and... can techs accelerate workshop growth? Would that work?

The idea being that anything much bigger than a Workshop is very rare until the Renaissance/Early Industrial period, at which point it becomes relatively easy to 'seed' smithies and have them grow quickly.

Hmm. The easiest way to achieve most of that is to simply have them improve via technology, much as they do now. Lacks the time element but I guess there's little point doing the ton of extra coding to try and integrate the mechanic realistically.

A couple of reasons, I think. Agrarianism is a big one.

Another big reason is that with camps, you can basically put your entire population to work in production-rich forest tiles. In vanilla BtS, for every citizen working a forest-plains and producing two hammers you need someone growing three food. Indeed, I can't think of any terrain that doesn't have either special resources or improvements with high technology that gives you two hammers without also giving you a food shortage.

Build a camp on a forest-plains square, and suddenly your citizen is feeding himself and making two hammers a turn.

Random not-yet-thought-through idea: What if Plains gave +1:commerce: instead of +1:hammers:? I could even set it so that flatland Plains gave 1:food:/0:hammers:/1:commerce:, while hilled plains (gah!) still give 1:food:/1:hammers:/0:commerce:.

That's fair. Plus nowadays we have such huge pollution problems from mine tailings and mountaintop removal that it's reasonable to reflect consciousness of this. In ancient times the mines were less polluting... but they were also more deadly. There's a reason we have a stereotypical image of forced labor and slaves being "sent to the mines." The mines always needed more labor, because a miner could work himself to death in a matter of years. So today the :yuck: represents pollution; back in ancient times it would represent the mine acting as a population sink, much as the Inquisition causes :yuck: because it's killing people with witch hunts or whatever.

That's how I see it as well.

Hm. If Slavery is too weak a civic compared to Agrarianism, one option is to extend the commerce bonus to mines- which, again, are a place slaves were often forced to work in.

That continues the theme of adding commerce to the Labour civic category, which isn't ideal. I guess another aspect of the issue is having two Labour civics available early, with the first Economic civic not available till a bit later.

This sounds like more trouble than it's worth, plus being damn inconvenient if you start building quarries on flat land for the production bonus and then have the place turn into a swamp.

Yeah I think we'll leave Wetlands and Peat out of the scheme for the time-being.

I think that in the modern era it should be possible to build railroads in mountain tiles.
I am thinking of a combination of railroad tunnel, bridges over gorges, and the use of passes.

(Think of the Alps or Rocky Mountains.
There are certainly mountains such as parts of the Himalayas where this is not feasible.)

Maybe available with the tech explosives (which is really high explosives.)
Would take much longer to build in mountains than on other terrain
and cost much more coins as well.

There are not many map locations where this would matter much, but there are a few where it would make a difference.

Maybe the same idea should apply to Highways.

Unfortunately, coding that would be a nightmare, if it's even possible at all. When it comes to path finding and determining where units can and cannot move, Python is very inefficient. Like, 'slow down AI decision making by a factor of 10 or worse' inefficient. Furthermore, Mountains are handled a bit different from other terrain types, being mostly handled by the DLL.

That said, it's plausible something like this could be achieved via terrain replacement, though that doesn't solve the issue of Labourers being unable to move into Mountain tiles, and thus the AI's ability to place them sensibly.

But yeah, if I could I would.
 
Random not-yet-thought-through idea: What if Plains gave +1:commerce: instead of +1:hammers:? I could even set it so that flatland Plains gave 1:food:/0:hammers:/1:commerce:, while hilled plains (gah!) still give 1:food:/1:hammers:/0:commerce:.

What effects would Savannah have then?
 
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