I want to help this mod

[JosEPh_II]

Sounds good! I think having to deal with only one type of pollution early makes it also a bit easier for newer players. And Water Pollution wasn't really an issue at all throughout the game, to be honest. I still think the per pop water pollution should be increased...

Water pollution is not a huge problem till Industrial Era (there is some spiking in the Medieval Era). After that it can skyrocket. I have blunted it's affects though after StrategyOnly's save game from 2 months ago showed a massive break down in the AI from being overwhelmed by both pollutions and crime at the same time occurred. Even his cities were affected as well. Because once your city hit the 2000 level for Either pollution is was a population death spiral after that. And the AI in particular could not get out of it because they did not know how to. T-brd worked on the AI and I worked on the pollution, crime and the Bad events that come from excessive levels from all 3. I increased the Range of pollution and When the levels triggered the bad events. This was also from T-brd's urging as well.

So to say Water or Air pollution is a non factor is not entirely correct. Neglected house keeping in this area will Kill you and the AI.

And I have to say I disagree with raising the per pop level as well.

 

[xampp]

For water pollution id like it to ideally be a real concern starting in the late Classical/early Medieval Era with no real means to counteract it at first (Medieval cities were after all pretty unsanitary and their rivers suffered a lot pollution wise). Mostly this would come from an increased pollution per pop imo. Between the 17th and the 18th century "newer" Cities (basically all that were not huge already during the Roman times) started to get more in terms of a sewage system, so if possible id like to combine a new sewer building (dunno if it should be an upgrade to the old one or if that would mess up too much with all those buildings depending on it) with either ordnaces or with an additional effect in the education autobuilding ( i think we get a new one around that time period but i may be mistaken here), with the sewer giving a flat -poll/turn and the other one scaling with pop as well (if that is doable codewise? other stuff scaling with pop would suggest that this should work). I would also shuffle around the pollution autobuildings a bit so that we'd have something like the first 2 River ones before the first ground water before the first coastal one. Id like decent size cities to reach ~800 until you get the first means to slow down the effects a bit, with big cities going up to ~1000-1100. The effects of the autobuildings most likely will have to be balanced a bit as well so that these levels do feel like something that needs to be adressed without plunging a whole civ into a deathspiral. If all works as planned by the onset of industrialism cities should be relatively stable water pollutionwise at those high levels. Water pollution from factories should then be a real concern (mainly getting groundwater effects this time up to 1400-1500 maybe) until we get a first water treatment facility (this started to happen by ~1900 in RL) that bascially would counteract the ~1000 gained mainly from pop (so again scaling with pop if doable, making pop be closer to neutral, with the later modern treatment plant making pop nearly completly neutral which would be in line with our facilities nowadays). Later there would be ordinances for water filters or something along those lines to reduce the water pollution from factories. Id also like to give a pretty big water pollution to agricultural stuff esp the animal farms but i think that would require a modern version of those to not be overwhelming early on (animal farms are the main contributor to groundwater pollution at least where i am from).

 

[Faustmouse]

That sounds about right to me! Air Pollution is certainly not a non-issue, but water pollution...

Xampo, you could add / substract pollution with tech. So it is possible to have farms +2 Water Pollution, then +5 Water Pollution with Industrialism and -5 Water Pollution with Ecology (for example).

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

And yet we get conformation of dating of Greenland ice cores from pollution caused in Spain in the early bronze age. Apparently you can tell where the (air) pollution comes from by what it contains.

 

[xampp]

Air pollution will be harder to balance than water imo. The first attempt to reduce it was in the 13th century as far as i know (Edward I. putting penalties on burning coal), so i would put that as the target date for the first 1 or to 2 effects to show up but other than that i have not given air as much thought as water yet.

 

[Thunderbrd]

For water pollution id like it to ideally be a real concern starting in the late Classical/early Medieval Era with no real means to counteract it at first (Medieval cities were after all pretty unsanitary and their rivers suffered a lot pollution wise). Mostly this would come from an increased pollution per pop imo. Between the 17th and the 18th century "newer" Cities (basically all that were not huge already during the Roman times) started to get more in terms of a sewage system, so if possible id like to combine a new sewer building (dunno if it should be an upgrade to the old one or if that would mess up too much with all those buildings depending on it) with either ordnaces or with an additional effect in the education autobuilding ( i think we get a new one around that time period but i may be mistaken here), with the sewer giving a flat -poll/turn and the other one scaling with pop as well (if that is doable codewise? other stuff scaling with pop would suggest that this should work). I would also shuffle around the pollution autobuildings a bit so that we'd have something like the first 2 River ones before the first ground water before the first coastal one. Id like decent size cities to reach ~800 until you get the first means to slow down the effects a bit, with big cities going up to ~1000-1100. The effects of the autobuildings most likely will have to be balanced a bit as well so that these levels do feel like something that needs to be adressed without plunging a whole civ into a deathspiral. If all works as planned by the onset of industrialism cities should be relatively stable water pollutionwise at those high levels. Water pollution from factories should then be a real concern (mainly getting groundwater effects this time up to 1400-1500 maybe) until we get a first water treatment facility (this started to happen by ~1900 in RL) that bascially would counteract the ~1000 gained mainly from pop (so again scaling with pop if doable, making pop be closer to neutral, with the later modern treatment plant making pop nearly completly neutral which would be in line with our facilities nowadays). Later there would be ordinances for water filters or something along those lines to reduce the water pollution from factories. Id also like to give a pretty big water pollution to agricultural stuff esp the animal farms but i think that would require a modern version of those to not be overwhelming early on (animal farms are the main contributor to groundwater pollution at least where i am from).

This is exactly the sort of manner in which we should be approaching things, looking at historical factors and modern scientific knowledge of real sources and impact and how it all works to reflect as honest effects in the game as we can.

I would strongly urge you to, if you have Excell, take a look at the spreadsheet I uploaded in the first post of the Building recosting thread and see if it could be something that can help you to track new water pollution assignments to buildings by helping you focus on categories of existing buildings. Even if we could establish some guidelines for certain types of buildings and why they help or harm would be tremendously beneficial for future contributions to follow in line with as well. You can use that base document to add new collumns to track current water pollution values and how you'd adjust them so you can plan it out thoroughly (and share the plan) before even implementing. Then when testing you can see more easily how and why the game might feel as if it's on or off from your vision of play effects and give you greater oversight on where you might want to make further adjustments.

Yes, we can have a building add or subtract water pollution by population, but consider whether that pollution will be present one way or another when you consider this. Does a sewer help or harm? It shuffles what would exist anyhow to another place, but is the alternative somehow worse? I would think it should be in some manner. Just something to consider.

Anyhow, buildings aren't everything of course but they do form a solid core of things to work on for balancing water pollution.

And yet we get conformation of dating of Greenland ice cores from pollution caused in Spain in the early bronze age. Apparently you can tell where the (air) pollution comes from by what it contains.

Air pollution at that time certainly existed and it should show... but I'd think it would not yet be causing much effect until much later with the HUGE amounts we've been pouring into the atmosphere. Even today we have yet to see anywhere near the full impact of this damage. Nice news about the largest iceberg in history breaking off Antarctica earlier this month though huh?

 

[xampp]

I would strongly urge you to, if you have Excell, take a look at the spreadsheet I uploaded in the first post of the Building recosting thread and see if it could be something that can help you to track new water pollution assignments to buildings by helping you focus on categories of existing buildings. Even if we could establish some guidelines for certain types of buildings and why they help or harm would be tremendously beneficial for future contributions to follow in line with as well. You can use that base document to add new collumns to track current water pollution values and how you'd adjust them so you can plan it out thoroughly (and share the plan) before even implementing. Then when testing you can see more easily how and why the game might feel as if it's on or off from your vision of play effects and give you greater oversight on where you might want to make further adjustments.

The spreadsheet certainly looks like a good idea to get a good overview, ill see if i can work with it.

Yes, we can have a building add or subtract water pollution by population, but consider whether that pollution will be present one way or another when you consider this. Does a sewer help or harm? It shuffles what would exist anyhow to another place, but is the alternative somehow worse? I would think it should be in some manner. Just something to consider.

I actually did consider this. Until around the 17th most sewages were just a form of waste collection (open channels on the sites of the roads most of the time) that did only have very limited impact on the pollution since it still fed in to the local water supply, just not directly in the city. I picked the 17th/18th since "sewage farms" and nightsoil collection ( to produce saltpeter) became popular by then (some of those are actually still used today). So the new sewage building would reflect that.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The spreadsheet certainly looks like a good idea to get a good overview, ill see if i can work with it.

It doesn't have every building in it yet but it does have a very good start.

I actually did consider this. Until around the 17th most sewages were just a form of waste collection (open channels on the sites of the roads most of the time) that did only have very limited impact on the pollution since it still fed in to the local water supply, just not directly in the city. I picked the 17th/18th since "sewage farms" and nightsoil collection ( to produce saltpeter) became popular by then (some of those are actually still used today). So the new sewage building would reflect that.

I'd love to have someone thinking about this stuff to this depth on such a project! Awesome

 

[Sakura Matou]

I know German, French, Japanese and English ((obviously lol)) but I don't know how much time I would have to dedicate to translations ((AKA would be very slow)). I can however donate Money as a thank you to the team for giving us this great mod and the most excellent support when it comes to bugs etc.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@B.I.B :Amazing teamwork, my friend! I know you got drawn away there at the end but your efforts were a huge help with the building recosting and initial spreadsheeting projects!

@pepper2000 & @Faustmouse I know you guys said you didn't want me to do your recostings. That's fine, but when you DO your buildings, can you make sure to include them with the updated info on this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...fOEOyeI0xDjvv-J75c/edit?copiedFromTrash#gid=0 Furthermore, please highlight the rows your buildings are in with a color of your choosing that represents your stuff. This is so after you've updated there, I can update the second building tracking document I work on to help with more detailed tag evaluations.

I'm patient with all this getting done... I just ask, respectfully, that you do this so that we can have the tools to balance the mod in full as has been intended.

@All: From here on out when you add a building, I need express notification so I can adjust my localized tag evaluation document. At some point I'm going to make it a cloud based solution but it's too big for google docs to handle gracefully so I'm keeping it local for now. Perhaps we can share it on the SVN instead but that kind of effort has proven to fail with the units to keep things updated properly.

 

[pepper2000]

@pepper2000 & @Faustmouse I know you guys said you didn't want me to do your recostings. That's fine, but when you DO your buildings, can you make sure to include them with the updated info on this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...fOEOyeI0xDjvv-J75c/edit?copiedFromTrash#gid=0 Furthermore, please highlight the rows your buildings are in with a color of your choosing that represents your stuff. This is so after you've updated there, I can update the second building tracking document I work on to help with more detailed tag evaluations.

Thanks for the reminder that I need to update the costs. Also, I have a couple more new buildings coming in soon, so I will update the spreadsheet, which BTW looks very good.

 

[Faustmouse]

@TB:
I didn't add any terrestial buildings, everything is located on the moon. Here the cost increasment is not based on techs but rather on infrastructure.
Last time I checked (which was when you recosting was ~90% done), they all had reasonable building times (about twice as long as the recosted earth buildings), which is fine since there are fewer. IMO, their costing is very well placed as it is. BUT if you want to have it forced into a formula, that is a different story.

 

[pepper2000]

Point of clarification, are only Earth buildings meant to go in the spreadsheet? I see mostly Earth in there but a few non-Earth as well.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you wish to differ the formulas for otherworld buildings, that does make sense, though I hope the formulas can be explained and won't seem too wildly conflicting with the 'Earth' formulas. However, it might then be wise to add a new page for each other 'map type' and put those buildings in their own designated page on the document. To be clear, as an example, wonder types are currently differentiated by pages in the document as well.

 

[pepper2000]

OK, I'll make some fixes to the spreadsheet soon. One fundamental reason off-planet buildings need to have their own formulas is that their costs should go rapidly from when the colonization zone opens up. For example, if most Mars buildings had the same costs as Earth buildings in the same column, then there would be limited need for production boosters early on. I still have more tweaking to do. I'm thinking a good principle is that a building on Mars should have the same cost as a building on Earth from X columns earlier, where the right value of X is determined through modeling and experimentation.

 

[Thunderbrd]

There are also more cost considerations coming in future edit waves. Size of the building, complexity, things like that will eventually modify these base values we're getting from the x-grid. Maybe for off planet stuff we need 'establishment' phases defined and that can create an established % modifier to the end cost for those buildings on offworlds?

 

[pepper2000]

There are also more cost considerations coming in future edit waves. Size of the building, complexity, things like that will eventually modify these base values we're getting from the x-grid. Maybe for off planet stuff we need 'establishment' phases defined and that can create an established % modifier to the end cost for those buildings on offworlds?

That would work. So e.g. the first few columns would have a multiplier of 0.25, representing the establishment phase, and the next few columns would be 0.50, representing the early growth phase, and then most multipliers settle around 1.0 for mature colonies. Or something like that. That would better allow reuse of buildings between different zones, an idea I'm not too thrilled about on a very large scale but others have advocated.

 

[Thunderbrd]

That would work. So e.g. the first few columns would have a multiplier of 0.25, representing the establishment phase, and the next few columns would be 0.50, representing the early growth phase, and then most multipliers settle around 1.0 for mature colonies. Or something like that. That would better allow reuse of buildings between different zones, an idea I'm not too thrilled about on a very large scale but others have advocated.

Yeah, it could be an agile solution that opens other doors but wouldn't demand such use.

 

[Faustmouse]

Pepper feel free to adjust the lunar buildings to fit in this specific formula.

 

[Gazing Rabbit]

There are many buildings whose ROI (return on investment) is terrible. As in, it would take over 50 turns for the building to stop repaying for itself and to start generating value.
For example, let's look at 'Wig Shop'. It costs 235 production to build and yields a single gold per turn. Even with a conversion rate for production to gold of 2 to 1, the ROI of the building is ~115 turns. The further you go in the tech tree the terrible buildings become more common, and their ROI drops.
Buildings such as these take up space in the UI, until their cost becomes negligible and I build them just to reduce clatter.
I'm more than willing to take it upon myself to go over the building list and suggest rebalances to the more egregious offenders. To do that, all I need is the building data in a workable form (excel or even CSV). I can probably generate such a table from the XML, but I decided it would be faster to just ask here and hope someone has it on hand.

tl;dr: Can someone please send me a spreadsheet with the building data?