Improvement adjustments

[[to_xp]Gekko]

actually, I think capturing kurio cities and keeping their nice enclaves is fair game. I mean you did go through the effort so you might as well rip the benefits

Orchards sound like a nice idea, you could block farms in forests and add a new orchard improvement. then the forester's lodge should probably be changed a bit so that they're not the same, I think it should be a crossover between lumbermill and orchards i.e. give a balanced amount of food hammers and coins.

illians building farms on ice... well, it does look weird, very weird. since most things in Orbis make sense, I think it would be nice to not allow farms on snow, and add in yarangas from FF+

I don't know about GoN being too useful for the elves... I mean, isn't it supposed to be that way? it's good with lots of forests and elves get lots of forests, so it synergizes extremely well. I do agree though that it makes any other religion a crappy choice when you play elves, which I don't like. yeah, all considered I do agree with this point. having pretty much no options when it comes to religion as the elves is not cool. I had suggested a cap on the amount of happy/healthy it can give a while ago, and I still think it could be a good idea, leaving it as good as it is for everyone but not letting the elves get outrageous benefits from it. still very good and great synergy, but no longer a no-brainer.

 

[Pazyryk]

What I think elves should be, and by extension any FoL follower: rare, hard to find or see, impossible to map territory (see Hidden Country idea in my other thread), highly advanced, individual units frighteningly experienced (due to long life or innate wisdom/ability) but perhaps hard to replace. Current civ, race, religion and civic don't do much of any of this, or in some cases (civic) do the exact contrary.

I know Kael says that flavor should follow mechanism (not the other way) but I never understood this particular point. Or maybe I'm misstating it.

 

[ricolikesrice]

i checked and wrote down all the stats for the non-resource improvements last evening and i noticed that maybe the reason why farms feel so superior to other improvemets is that apparently when designing improvements ….. 1 food was assumed to be equal to 1 hammer or 1 commerce.

One should however note that this, especially in orbis, is simply not the case.

Simple examples:

3 food means feeding one specialist.

that specialists could in the “worst” case be an engineer who provides 2 hammers and GPP.

in that worst case 3 food translates into 2 hammers and GPP. imho a fair tradeoff.
I mean its you choice whether to build a farm that “feeds” 2 hammers and GPP
or build an improvement that provides 3 hammers , i.e. the later would offer more benefit in the short term and the former might make up in the long run.

however, as soon as you look at the “best” case it becomes quickly apparent that food beats hammers or commerce

that’s because specialists benefit from wonders (great library for sages, guild of endeavours for engineers, altar of the luonnatar for priests) and in orbis also from civics (+1 gold +1 science from running “guilds” for example.

if you want good research for example its much better having 3 food than having
3 commerce because with a great library, with scholarship and guilds ….. those 3 food translate into 7 science AND you get GPP. so basically to beat the 3 food feeding that super-sage boosted by wonder & civics …. you d need something like 8-9 commerce

so obviously a farm providing 3 food (now with patch H you need agrarianism to achieve that ) is a lot more usefull than a fully-grown town providing merely 5 commerce (and now 1 hammer ), don’t you think ? especially when farms still get +1 commerce from taxation and further +1 commerce when running vassalage. so it boils down to towns 3 commerce more versus the farm fed sage providing 7 science and GPP.

the nerf to farms means smaller cities (I repeat: I really support this intention ) but it doesn’t mean building towns is worth it now – it still isn’t as proven by above example. even if you miss out on the great library. specialist economy still stomps anything else, there s no tradeoff, no choice.

Agrarianism is still the best civic in its branch.

I ll repeat: the intention of keeping cities smaller, avoiding super cities and making food rare is a VERY good one. this isn’t the problem. the problem is that too many specialist boosts from civics and wonders make a lot more usefull (and flexible) both in short AND especially long-term … meanwhile it looks like improvements are balanced out with the idea that 1 is the equal of 1 or 1 when in reality 1 depending on civic choices and wonders can be the equal of 2-3 or 2-3





Suggestions to change this:

-remove the +1 and +1 from the “guilds” civic
-running “guilds” civic could give +1 for watermills and +1 for windmills
-remove the +1 from the “scholarship” civic, maybe make the % bonus to research slightly bigger instead.
-nerf the great library bonus for sages from 2 to 1.
-taxation should NOT affect farms, only cottages/hamlets/villages/towns
-bring back the +1 to normal farms but remove the +1 from agrarianism and
replace it with +1 for farms. (production malus back to -10%)
-remove the +1 for farms from vassalage
-give city states +1 for cottages/hamlets/villages/towns


the end result should be that (and therefore a farm) is no longer the unquestionable king because specialists are brought back in line.

(and a side bonus should be that vassalage and agrarianism are finallycivic CHOICES again, not the best fit for almost every situation, making the alternatives almost useless )

now a farm fed sage would at most provide 4 and therefore be offer less direct benefits than a town. the farm would still not be useless however, because in the end you still get GPP so at some point you ll get a great sage.

and with the changes that each population needs 3 but a town merely providing 2 on grassland we can be also pretty sure that there wont be huge cities entirely surrounded by towns.


BTW: i really support the +1 instead of +1 change for ancient forests

 

[ExMachina]

i checked and wrote down all the stats for the non-resource improvements last evening and i noticed that maybe the reason why farms feel so superior to other improvemets is that apparently when designing improvements ….. 1 food was assumed to be equal to 1 hammer or 1 commerce.

Except it's not balanced that way. In the current version of Orbis, farms can get higher yields than other improvements (4 2 with all relevant techs and civics). If food, hammers, and commerce were balanced out between improvements, things would probably be fine (though the numerous bonuses to specialists should probably be toned down as well).

 

[Opera]

I like ricolikesrice suggestions.

Also, am I the only one or are yurts a lot less useful than other improvements?

 

[ricolikesrice]

Except it's not balanced that way. In the current version of Orbis, farms can get higher yields than other improvements (4 2 with all relevant techs and civics). If food, hammers, and commerce were balanced out between improvements, things would probably be fine (though the numerous bonuses to specialists should probably be toned down as well).

well when a farm was still 4 and 2 (before patch H) a town was 5 and 1 , so both offered +6 of something. and i just did the math in my post why +6 of this aint balanced vs +6 of that. err wait, actually i did the math for why +5 of this is still better than +6 of that since i already took in the farm nerf of patch H in my example.

 

[readercolin]

Yurts (unless you're the hippus) are practically useless. As in, you avoid plains if you can because they are so useless. With the hippus however, they become so powerful that you don't build ANYTHING else - you even put yurts on plains hilltops. On the subject of yurts, since for the Malakim, they upgrade to (whatever it is they upgrade to), they are "supposed" to be a primary improvement, much like the yurts are for the hippus. Because of the lack of food however, they end up being mostly avoided (and on top of that, make the malakim compete with the hippus for plains instead of preferring deserts like their lore states they should).

Now, on to that whole farm issue... No offense, I understand the whole "food is important, we don't want big cities" issue... but come on. A farm feeding just itself? Even playing the Calibam and farming the heck out of everything, I MIGHT manage to get a size 30ish city. In regular FFH, I can get size 40 cities without running sacrifice the weak, size 50 (I think I hit size 60 once) if I run sacrifice the weak, prevent hell terrain from spreading through my empire, and maximize food and health. Yeah, there is alot of unhappy there, but with the calibam - who cares?

A size 30 city in the lategame while playing as the lanuan (my largest ever was about size 45 playing as the kurotaes, but they will always have bigger cities) isn't really a problem imo. It is still significantly smaller than what I would ever be able to achieve in regular FFH, and I really DON'T think that we need to look at a size 30 city and say it supports the same population as a size 30 city in regular civ 4. The problem isn't the city size - its the specialists, or more specifically, the inability of the cottage economy to keep up with the specialist economy (biggest problem is actually that ENCLAVES can't keep up with the specialist economy).

Nerfing the early game WON'T help. It will frustrate players, stifle their empire if the end up in a poor starting spot, drastically alter how the game plays when comparing someone with a poor starting spot to a good starting spot, and in the end, drive many players away from orbis. The problem isn't the farm. The problem is the specialist, and the guilds. A specialist (as has been shown above) has FAR more power than a cottage, and on top of that, late game 1 farm can support 1 specialist.

An assumption that seems to have been made here is that a cottage is ONLY people living together like they would in an american suburb - go to the market to get food, etc. etc. However, instead of viewing cottages like that, view them instead as miniature cities - villages if you will. The difference between a farm and a cottage is that the farm produces lots of excess food to send to the cities. The cottage has farms as well, but those farms exist to feed that village. That village then produces trade goods, supports the locals with alcohol, a smith, a miller, etc. Instead of the city going and taking food to support itself from the village, like it does with the farm, it instead taxes the village or trades with the village to get basic materials made, etc.

-Colin

 

[Brand]

I'd like to bring up a late point about elves and farms from a flavor perspective. A farm doesn't have to be someone digging in the ground, planting seeds, and needed alot of room for their crop to grow. It could represetn cultures of fungus growing on/around trees. It could be an orchard producing alot of fruit. There are many ways you could justify elves having farms in forests and I thnk having the -1food represents that fairly well.

As far as the mechanics of it go, I'll leave that to those interested in creating formulas to prove their point. I just saw someone bring in a flavor reason against elven farms and figured I'd provide a rebuttal.

 

[ExMachina]

well when a farm was still 4 and 2 (before patch H) a town was 5 and 1 , so both offered +6 of something. and i just did the math in my post why +6 of this aint balanced vs +6 of that. err wait, actually i did the math for why +5 of this is still better than +6 of that since i already took in the farm nerf of patch H in my example.

Yeah, but I don't think the other improvements can get above +4 or +5 yield. At least, last I checked workshops maxed out at +4 . Towns are supposed to be above that since they take time to grow, but farms should be weaker since they get their benefit instantaneously.

And I agree that bonuses to specialists should be nerfed a bit. Ideally, I think the yields should be relatively equal food: = = ), but towns should still be a little above average since they require investment. Also, I think each improvement should have no more than one civic that boosts it, if any (so possibly remove the farm bonus from vassalage).

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

readercolin and ricolikesrice have written great posts. a minor point, I definitely agree that taxation should benefit just cottage types and not farms. I agree with everything else they wrote of course, but this one did stand out

 

[AgentTBC]

I ll repeat: the intention of keeping cities smaller, avoiding super cities and making food rare is a VERY good one. this isn’t the problem. the problem is that too many specialist boosts from civics and wonders make a lot more usefull (and flexible) both in short AND especially long-term

This is absolutely true and has been a problem for a long time. There are a ton of bonuses to specialists and such from various civics and wonders. Each of them make sense individually. My guess is that they were also evaluated individually. But the problem is that once you stack them up it becomes fairly absurd.

A real hard look needs to be taken at the way civics, wonders, and guilds stack up with buildings and specialists.

 

[Valkrionn]

illians building farms on ice... well, it does look weird, very weird. since most things in Orbis make sense, I think it would be nice to not allow farms on snow, and add in yarangas from FF+

For those who don't know, the Yaranga is an improvement I added while working on Doviello+. It is buildable in Tundra/Ice, does not remove forest, has low yields but can discover several resources. Actually, I'll just post the writeup from the ImprovementTweak mod... All listed resources have a discover value of 2500, but they're being moved to the new system Opera coded when I merge it in. They'll only pop if you already have one... Spread the resources, not breed new animals entirely.

Yaranga

• Yields
  • Base Yield -
    • 1 1
  • Tech Yield -
    • Animal Handling -
      • 1
  • Bonus Yields -
    • Bison
      • 2
    • Arctic Deer
      • 1 1
    • Ivory
      • 2
    • Fur
      • 2
• Requirements
  • Terrain -
    • Ice, Tundra
• Special Features
  • Does not remove Forest.

 

[Ahwaric]

Ok, I have read everything and have to say - I strongly disagree.

First, you can't take into account the best possible scenario for specialists, compare it with towns and say towns are worthless. You simply can't, because:
- there is only one great library in game (or guild of endeavours or any other wonder)
- it is a wonder, costs a lot of hammers and need to provide nice bonus
- it is just for sages, while you can direct from town to any commerce type
It is almost like comparing normal town with farm on wheat. Of course it is better, it should be.
You should compare normal situations, town with tech & civic bonuses to farm with tech & civic bonuses. Also, I think religion civic should be kept out of it.
I am ok if something provides bonuses but has some drawbacks. And religious civics of course have - you need the specific religion...
You need to look at the whole picture, not just compare yields. By choosing things to compare you can prove anything you want, just need to choose rigth data.

Second, new improvements. Brand has got it well - I do not care what different civs actually farm and how they do it. Farm is a land improvement to grow food. I assume they grow plants or something simmilar, but it does not really matter. So both elves and illians will keep farms for simplicity sake, but I may change the visual.
Yurts are not good - ok, but there are places you can't build anything else. And can discover resources. But I may consider adding littles something to auls, as these are the final upgrade.

Third, in big city you are forced to take specialists anyway as there is nothing to farm/cottage. I prefer smaller cities.

Fourth, you can arguue that not only town/village can be considered to include some farmland but also that farms include some houses (hamlet?). But farms are farms and villages are villages. End of story.

Regarding elves, what Pazyryk said.

Nerfing the early game WON'T help. It will frustrate players, stifle their empire if the end up in a poor starting spot, drastically alter how the game plays when comparing someone with a poor starting spot to a good starting spot, and in the end, drive many players away from orbis.

You can say that regarding any change, especially nerfing. Does it play different? Yes. Is it frustrating and uplayable? No.
Also, I may not play FfH now, but do not think I have empovered specialist economy that much compared to it. So if anyone really likes cottage economy, you can run it.

So, to sum up, I am not going to change it. If anyone has real gameplay experience showing me that it is stupid behaviour, I will repent my sins. Or not
But abstract calculations prove nothing. Unless you compare the comparable.

Also, sorry if this post sounds harsh, it was not my intention. And my english makes things worse

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I'm curious to know if you consider cottage economy uber in base FFH

 

[Ahwaric]

I'm curious to know if you consider cottage economy uber in base FFH

In FfH - not sure.
But it is in base civ, right?

In fact, I am not playing to maximize yields. Try to have balanced improvements.
But we agree that towns are worth the effort, right? Just sometimes worse than farms?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

in base civ cottage economy is the default, specialist economy is for advanced players basically.

base ffh, cottage economy used to be the alpha and the omega, until aristocracy got -40% distance penalty and cottage growth rate got halved. now it's so not a contest it's not even funny.

so here is where the problem lies with towns, even in Orbis: they are a long-term investement, they start out crappy and stay that way for a while, and we all know how critical the early game is. furthermore, they are juicy targets for pillaging and yield lots of gold to the pillager. with all this taken into account, towns definitely have to be a hell of a lot better than any other improvement, that's all

 

[Imuratep]

I like these changes. Definitely have to try them out.

 

[Hansebenger]

First, you can't take into account the best possible scenario for specialists, compare it with towns and say towns are worthless. You simply can't, because:
- there is only one great library in game (or guild of endeavours or any other wonder)
- it is a wonder, costs a lot of hammers and need to provide nice bonus
- it is just for sages, while you can direct from town to any commerce type

Even if you do not care about wonders, farm/specialists win. That you can direct town to all types of commerce has no significant advantage, has it ?

You should compare normal situations, town with tech & civic bonuses to farm with tech & civic bonuses.

If you play a builder-like game you will pick scholarship anyway because of the +10%
You will also pick guilds because of the +20%
And you will pick vassalage because of the distance modifier/XP/Farm commerce.
You will pick these civics regardless if you are running SE oder CE. But with SE you have much more benefits.

You need to look at the whole picture, not just compare yields. By choosing things to compare you can prove anything you want, just need to choose rigth data.

This was my look at the whole picture (We're talking about late game with all these civics/cottages which grew to towns)

You can say that regarding any change, especially nerfing. Does it play different? Yes. Is it frustrating and uplayable? No.
Also, I may not play FfH now, but do not think I have empovered specialist economy that much compared to it. So if anyone really likes cottage economy, you can run it.

I neither think it's frustating and unplayable. You have made a good job with taking away specialist only economy from the early game mainly by making caste system a late game civic. I find myself building many cottages even with agricultural leaders. Cottage economy is good now in early game.

But when it comes to late game (guilds+magocrazy are avaliable) farms become the commerce king again. You can calculate this. I agree, you cannot calculate the variance of cottage/farm throughout the whole game. But you can compare the late game results. Now you can say "the game is decided when you have researched guilds and magocrazy". Until this point it is decided mainly by cottages. But if the game goes on we have our op farm economy, and I personally like these games that aren't decided after 200 turns

But abstract calculations prove nothing. Unless you compare the comparable.

I agree that some of the calculations were very abstract. But calculations can approximate reality very good, especially in computer games.

Also, sorry if this post sounds harsh, it was not my intention. And my english makes things worse

Mine isn't better either. And remember: we're talking about a game.

So here comes the calculation:
Talking about late game. Towns and all civics avaliable.
I explained the reason why I would have the same civics with both towns and farms above. I made a similarly calculation in post #33. My civics are: guilds, vassalage, scholarship, agrarism. I have markets in every town. I do not regard how the citizens working the farm/town are fed.

I have a town with 5 and 1
5 x 1 + 10% by market + 20% by guilds =5x1.3=6.5
I have this on 3 plots: 3x6.5=19.5

In order that a farm can compete -wise I compare the 3 plots of towns with 2 plots of farms and 1 plot of workshop.
Farms: 2x3 and 2x2
workshop: 3 1
I have: 6 5
With market(+10% !)/guilds bonus I have 6.6 6.5 .
Because the farms make the city very big let's say all sages need 4 yuck.
sages provide 3 :sience: + 1 :sience: by scholarship + 1 :sience: by guilds + 1 by guilds, so they provide 6 output.
Two farms can feed 6.6/4=1.65 sages.
So the 6.6 turn into 1.65x6=9.9
If the sages were not ill it would be 13.2 .
So my 2 farms/ 1 workshop complex provides 16.4-19.7
My 3 towns provide 19.5 .

You see, the farms are slightly worse than the towns, but:
1) towns need time to grow (cottages with republic need 35 turns)
2) farms do not give high pillage yields

I won't build any cottage when I have reached magocrazy/guilds in tech tree

What will you build ?

 

[Opera]

Well, what about a civic boosting villages+ yields? The cottage & hamlets would still be "weak" but then you would get some good bonuses. Currently, they aren't touched at all by non-religious civics... Free Trade (same category as Agrarianism) could give +1 and +1 to Villages/Towns/Enclaves... Maybe even just +1 to hamlets? Or maybe something to raise food instead of hammers?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

a lategame civic and/or tech that greatly boosts the growth rate of cottage types would be useful methinks.