Improvement adjustments

[Imuratep]

As I see it some improvements have suffered a lot by increasing the food per citizen value from 2 to 3. Especially a cottage economy is now strictly worse than a specialist economy as on grasland you lose 1 if you use a cottage (as it's only 2 for the tile against 3 for the citizen). Before the cottage at least had enough food to feed the used citizen. Specialists on the other hand can be used infinitely very early (code of law) and you have a lot of ways to make farms better (agrarianism+2food per farm). Also Yggdrasil that was a powerhouse before is now strictly worse than a normal farm. Before it was at least a good starting boost, but now? I think Yggdrasil should be +4 on the tile per level and cottages should have +1 to put CE on par with SE.

 

[Opera]

Good call, Imuratep.

I also think we should tone down either Aristocracy or Caste System or even both. 2 free specialists seems too many for me.

 

[ricolikesrice]

definitly agree with the OP, cottages/villages/towns are completely useless in orbis right now. its ALWAYS a better idea to run a specialist economy with as many farms as possible vs cottages. most other non-resource improvments feel equally worthless compared to farms.

two easy fixes that i could think off:

1.) change the "agrarianism" civic to provide 1 for farms and 1 for plantations (i.e. the opposite of what it does now). that way the civic is still a viable choice but not as overpowered/mandatory as before.

2.) cottages need +1 so that they at least feed one citizen.

but even with those 2 fixes in place i think there needs to be some further finetuning. keep in mind cottages need time to grow and also that there s a very common event making farms provide another +1 or +1 while other improvements dont have something like that.

 

[Opera]

What about giving cottages +1 AND +1? May seem like a lot though.

And I'm pretty sure we need to get rid of those +1 Free specialist civics. I'm inclined to move them to religious civics so it involves more than just a civic switch to get some free specialist.

 

[Falc]

After playing a game as Illians, I think there's also a real need to re-evaluate their food production. Ice gives only 1 food, if you have a landlocked city you need to fill it with farms to get anywhere...

 

[Opera]

We would need some playtesting. Would somebody be willing to tweak the cottages value and check if it's better that way? With enough informations, I could put this in patch G

 

[Caradoc]

At one time in some mod somewhere, the cottage progression had been altered to provide an extra food at Cottage, and extra hammer at Hamlet, and another extra food at Village. That worked pretty well and I found myself building a lot of cottages.

There was also a mod that added another tier to the cottage and mine progressions -- metropolises and deep mines. It would be cool to have improvements like this made available with suitable techs.

 

[Opera]

Hmmm. Deep Mines could be a nice idea

 

[sputnik323]

Ivory defiantly needs a buff, its a rare resource and only gives crappy benefits (except happiness). Its worse than cows and horses... and elephants accomplished great things in actual cultures that used them.

 

[PawelS]

Maybe it's rare at the beginning of the game, but if you capture some elephants and release them in your lands, you can have lots of ivory resources. And you can do it in forests, so the yields from them are not that bad.

 

[ricolikesrice]

lets not forget this thread just as a reminder:

farms are +3 +1 (with taxation & sanitation)

basically ignoring population growth for the moment a farm allows you to feed one specialist, so lets take the "worst case":

we use the 3 to feed a merchant specialist which basically turns the farm into
+4 (and Merchant GPP). Eventually a cottage will mature into a village and then town and beat this bonus with +5 but only slightly. even in this "worst case" scenario i think the farm with its instant +4 and GPP is preferable to the town that needs a lot of time till it can provide slightly 1 more .

so, that was the worst case, here s the best case:

we run vassalage, agrarianism, guilds and scholarship. we also have the great library.

a farm now provides +4 + 2 (vassalage +1 and agrarianism +1 )

we use the 3 to feed a sage specialist which basically turns the farm into
+3 , sage GPP and +7 . and we still have 1 left.

see why cottages/villages/towns are completely pointless right now ? farms slightly beat them even in the worst case but there so many synergies among civics & wonders with specialists and thus farms providing the food for them ... thats its almost impossible to be in said worst case scenario.

in the end it boils down to farms being about double or triple (depending on what civics or wonders you use/have) as efficient as fully matured towns .... from the start .... and without providing your enemies with lots of gold should they come pillaging your lands.

and since you cant just look at those mechanics on their own, the whole issue also makes certain civics a lot more / a lot less usefull.

....

i have one idea regarding cottages/villages/towns: how about making them work somewhat similar to fishing villages ? what i mean is that one could change it so that cottages can no longer be built on any tile that is neighbouring either another cottage/village/town or a city (i.e. building a cottage on the first ring of a city wouldnt be possible at all).

i think the average city should have a good mix of improvements surrounding it, i never liked the whole "lets have the entire city be surrounded by towns" nor do i like the current "lets have the entire city be surrounded by farms".

so cottages/villages/towns would be not "spammable" but in tradeoff give probably some of the highest gains (when fully matured of course) - drawback being that they also give the highest gains to someone who pillages them.

 

[Opera]

Interesting idea. But remember that and are different. 1 isn't 1.

 

[Imuratep]

i have one idea regarding cottages/villages/towns: how about making them work somewhat similar to fishing villages ? what i mean is that one could change it so that cottages can no longer be built on any tile that is neighbouring either another cottage/village/town or a city (i.e. building a cottage on the first ring of a city wouldnt be possible at all).

i think the average city should have a good mix of improvements surrounding it, i never liked the whole "lets have the entire city be surrounded by towns" nor do i like the current "lets have the entire city be surrounded by farms".

so cottages/villages/towns would be not "spammable" but in tradeoff give probably some of the highest gains (when fully matured of course) - drawback being that they also give the highest gains to someone who pillages them.

Your idea is very cool. It's quite illogical to have gigantic towns everywhere. I also think all improvements should be useful. Monocultures are really boring. I think a good way to differentiate the way the different religions play would be to increase the income of different improvements. Right now almost every religious civic enhances specialists (arete, slumbering coven, enlightenment and guardian of nature too as you profit most of it if you gain a lot of food)

Arete could instead improve all industry improvements (that is windmills, watermills, quarries, lumbermills and of course mines). That way improvements you don't use a lot otherwise finally are going to be used - but not by everyone in every situation.

Enlightenment is cool civic and finally a reason to play Empyrion (apart from Chalid). Specialists fit the religion very well. But instead of improving the quantity of specialists I think improving the quality of specialists would fit better. Thus improve all specialists (like for the sidar), but tone down the total bonus on specialists (to +25%).

Slumbering Coven makes me rejoice. My favorite religion finally really has found a way into the game beyond very strong miliitary units. But I think the civic still could be tweaked by making prophets a lot better as those flavorwise should be the centre of the whole religion. Also evil civs don't have a possible to improve them other than switching to a good or neutral religion and then switching back. This change would eliminate that oddity. Thus Altar improves the Prophets slowly but surely creating happiness - Slumbering Coven fast but at the cost of your sanity...

Guardian of Nature always seemed odd to me. It was the reason that the elves - actually a race that flavorwise isn't know for gigantic cities - have the biggest cities in the game. I always imagine them more as a small elite that supercedes the others by their intellect. So instead of happiness for forests and ancient forests ancient forests IMHO should get more something like +1 for forests and +2 for ancient forests. Would still make the civic very good for the elves but would prevent them from having the biggest cities in the whole land.

 

[ExMachina]

What exactly is the point/goal of having each population consume 3 food instead of 2?

 

[Brand]

I think having hammers in towns is justified. Maybe even keep the food as is and just give it a 1-2 hammer bonus to reflect the manufactory capabilities a town would have.

 

[Fluesterwitz]

I think having hammers in towns is justified. Maybe even keep the food as is and just give it a 1-2 hammer bonus to reflect the manufactory capabilities a town would have.

Sounds about right to me.

Scarcity of food is the rule for most people most everywehere and everywhen. There are numerous real life civs who managed to grow themselves to extinction. Until early modern times, up to 90% of all human activity concerned producing enough food surplus to enable the other 10% to trade, invent, write poetry, carouse, wage war, pray and all the other fun activities. Game relevance? Farms should be a main feature.

 

[PawelS]

What about adding a building that gives one free specialist per town? I also like the idea of reducing the number of cottages in a similar way that it's done with fishing villages.

 

[Hansebenger]

I agree that farms are op. Very op. But I do not think cottages should be boosted, I think farms should be nerfed. Why ? I think tech speed in Orbis is too fast in the late game when farms give their full potential.
€: Since food consumption has changed to 3F, 1F for cottages would be ok. But they would still be very inferior to farms.

 

[AgentTBC]

Farms definitely need nerfing. I would suggest the following:

1) +1 food for a cottage
2) nerf the late game farm boosts.

 

[ExMachina]

What exactly is the point/goal of having each population consume 3 food instead of 2?

Since no one has an answer yet, I'll quote myself and clarify:

The base FfH mechanics regarding population, improvements, terrain yields, etc. are presumably balanced, so tweaking these mechanics certainly forces more work to get things back to being balanced. I don't think anyone would change stuff just to make it harder on themselves to balance things, so I'm curious what was the inspiration for this change (I can't find anything in the Orbis or Rise of Mankind [Opera told me the idea was taken from there] forums regarding this 3 thing, and I'm kinda new to Orbis).

From what I've seen so far, improvements seem much more important in Orbis compared to base FfH. As an example, farms can get up to 4 2 yield in Orbis with all the relevant techs and civics, while base grassland gives only 2 . In base FfH, farms can get up to 2 2 -1 with all relevant techs and civics, and grasslands still provide 2 . Or to put it another way: in base FfH, a city can sustain a population with nothing but 2 grasslands, as long as it doesn't break into unhealthiness; in Orbis, an unimproved 2 grassland is not enough to sustain a citizen. I don't know if this is the design intent, since this mechanic doesn't seem to be explained anywhere.

Now, onto business. If the improvements in Orbis are unbalanced (which myself and others would agree upon), there are several ways this could be resolved.

1. Go back to the way base FfH does things. If there isn't any specific intent for why citizens eat 3 food instead of 2, going back to the previously balanced way would be the simplest solution.
2. Adjust the improvement yields. Possibly nerf some of the bonuses farms can get, or buff the other improvements. This would maintain the status quo of unimproved terrain being unable to maintain a population.
3. Change base terrain to have a yield of 3 instead of 2. So grasslands would have 3 , plains would have 2 1 , and so on. The first effect this would have is there would not be as big of a gap between grasslands and the other terrains, and unimproved terrain would be capable of maintaining a population. Several different things could also be done with the improvements:
   • Nerf improvements back to base FfH levels. So altogether, improvements would be proportionally worth slightly less than in base FfH, since a larger proportion of yield came from the base terrain itself. I like this best, since FfH yields already seemed slightly too high to me.
   • Have improvements contribute about 1.5 times as much yield as in base FfH. So, the "proportional importance" of improvements would be the same as in base FfH, but you could also have a bit more wiggle room in designing the improvements (for example, cottages that also provide a bit of food, instead of just commerce). But, you might make it too easy for cities to crank out units in 1 turn at the later stages of the game, and so forth.

I know that was a lot, but the design philosophy regarding yields, improvements, and so forth would really affect what approach is taken to balancing these things.

TL;DR: What's the point of citizens eating 3 food instead of 2, anyway?