Improvement Balancing

Winery needs just a couple of bonuses to balance it against other improvements. Winery runs almost in lockstep with a Spices Plantation in both regular BTS and current AND. In AND, Winery and Spices-Plantation start out at +1F/+2C, adding +1C at Agricultural Engineering and +1F at Artificial Evolution. Winery gets an additional +1F at Agricultural Engineering, while Plantation gets +2C at Gene Manipulation and +1C at Vertical Farming.

I have no problems with Winery upgrading to Dome Farm. This will cut off the bonus that Winery gets at Artificial Evolution. These are the bonuses that Winery needs to add.
  • +1 food with Agricultural Tools
  • +2 commerce with Globalization
  • +1 commerce with Gene Manipulation

This +1F/+3C balances against the +2F/+1C given to Plantation. Plantation gets +1F at Crop Rotation, +1C at Agricultural Engineering, and +1F at Biomaterials, in addition to the bonuses it already had (not counting the Transhuman Era bonuses that are no longer meaningful).

When Winery upgrades to Dome Farm, it is providing +3F/+6C, identical to a Spices Plantation. Therefore, to keep a Wine-Dome Farm producing an equal amount of commerce, Wine provides a Dome Farm with +4C, equal to Spices.
 
This might be a silly question, but when the Winery upgrades to Dome Farm, does the Dome Farm still 'produce' a Wine resource?
 
aggri1 said:
This might be a silly question, but when the Winery upgrades to Dome Farm, does the Dome Farm still 'produce' a Wine resource?
Click to expand...

They all will. Any improvement can produce any resource if the XML is written for it. All it takes is a <BonusTypeStruct> for the given resource and a <bBonusTrade> set to 1. As a counter-example, Jungle Camp has <BonusTypeStruct> for several resources with <bBonusTrade> set to 0. You get additional yields for Jungle Camps built on particular resources, but they don't provide any copies of the resources.
 
I was thinking about Submerged Towns, and I think it would be better to leave them as an improvement. As it was pointed out, improvements can be pillaged.

However, I do think we don't need a separate unit to build them. I think it would be better to make Submerged Town a mission for the Constructor Ship, available with Biomimetics. Biomimetics is a tech that could use a little bit of assistance. Right now, the Submerged Town is available in the Modern Era (Aquaculture + Nanotechnology) and I don't think this is right. I think it would be best to leave the Submerged Town improvement for the Transhuman Era. Constructor Ships will take a few turns to build Submerged Towns, but it won't kill the ship.

Does anyone see any problems with this?
 
Constructor Ships will take a few turns to build Submerged Towns, but it won't kill the ship.
Click to expand...
Maybe it should. We're used to that kind of behavior: all water improvements kill the ship.
I mean: it's not a game breaking thing, just the trend.
 
Well, certain improvements don't dismantle the Factory Ship in the new NMaster of Orion. I don't see a problem that this also doesn't happen to a Transhuman worker unit.
 
I have the numbers done for balancing Well. Well starts off less than other bonus improvements when it comes available. I think that the offsetting factors of Oil providing -1 health and Oil being necessary for strategic purposes cancel out. As long as some strategic resources can be tapped by Mines and we don't give a penalty for Mines, we shouldn't penalize other resource-tapping improvements.

These are the current bonuses for Well.
  • Base: +2 production/+1 commerce (net yield +2.5)
  • Modern Era: +1 production/+1 commerce with Modern Seismology (net yield +4)
  • Transhuman Era: +1 production/+1 commerce with Nanomining (net yield +5.5)

This is where Well needs to be to balance against another bonus improvement at the same place.
  • Base: +3 production/+3 commerce (net yield +4.5)
  • Modern Era: +1 production/+2 commerce with Modern Seismology (net yield +6.5)
  • Transhuman Era: +2 production/+1 commerce with Nanomining (net yield +9)
Oil Wells will be even more valuable to build now.
 
Sogroon said:
Maybe it should. We're used to that kind of behavior: all water improvements kill the ship.
I mean: it's not a game breaking thing, just the trend.
Click to expand...

For me, the Transhuman Era is where you get to break the rules. Things are very different then. Also, I want to avoid having swarms of too many constructor units on the map at once. This might help.
 
I have some ideas about adjusting the resource requirements for the various routes we have in AND. Unlike improvements, with routes you are allowed to set resource requirements. You can have one mandatory requirement and one requirement with a choice. If you only offer one choice, the second requirement becomes a de facto mandatory. An example is Railroad; it has Iron as its mandatory requirement and Coal OR Oil OR Oil Products as its choice requirement. I thought it was better to allow a choice of fuel requirements rather than require Coal and allow using Iron or Steel.

Here is a table of the current resource requirements for each route and the changes I am going to make. Changes are marked in blue.
Old Requirements New Requirements
Path None None
Road None None
Paved Road Stone Stone OR Cement
Railroad Iron + Coal OR Oil OR Oil Products Iron + Coal OR Oil OR Oil Products
Highway Oil Products Oil Products OR Cement
Electric Railroad Steel + Copper Steel + Copper
Maglev Copper Copper OR Aluminum
Jumplane None Microchips

I think it should be fair to use Cement to build Paved Roads in the Industrial Era. If you've managed to get this far without Stone, you should be able to use Industrial Era techniques to build quality roads; Cement Mill has no resource requirements at all. Highways should only require one resource requirement and should be available as a fallback if you can't build Railroads. I almost never build Highways as I build Railroads as soon as they are available.

Maglev should be buildable with Aluminum to represent high-tech metalwork. I don't really like mandatory Copper requirements as the only way to get something. For Jumplane, I think it should have a resource requirement just to have it fit with the rest. I think Microchips are the best fit.
 
These all sound reasonable.

About Highways: I think it's pointless to have it if you virtually never need it. But if there were some occasions when it is better than Railroad... For example having +1:commerce: with Village line improvements on Highway?
 
I think it would be better if Highways were faster than Railroads. Right now, Railroads are faster for units below speed , although Highways get bonuses at Manufacturing and Skyroads.

Highways have an <iMovement> of 30 and an <iFlatMovement> of 30. Railroads have an <iMovement> of 30 and an <iFlatMovement> of 12. I did some testing, and Highways consumed 1/4 movement point per tile. A Warrior got 4 tiles of movement, a Chariot 8 turns, and a Camel Archer 12. On a Railroad, a Warrior and a Chariot each got 10 tiles of movement, while a Camel Archer got 12. I don't know if there is a rounding issue at work. I thought the idea of flat movement was that units moved the same number of tiles regardless of speed.

I am not sure what the numbers should be at the moment.
 
I've been doing some number-crunching on Mines. Here are several things that I have noticed regarding various Mine + Resource combinations.

Gold/Silver/Gems
I think Silver is a bit worse and Gold and Gems are a bit better than they should be right now.

My starting point is that Farm and Mine are balanced. Farm starts out a little better than Mine, then Mine gets better with Roads and Iron Working, and stays better until Dome Farm catches up to Modern Mine once you nearly complete the tech tree.

Farms get +1 food and +1 health from grain resources. I'm considering the +1 health as worth 1/2 yield, as it is redundant if you already have the resource or have excess health in all your cities, while it is worth a point of yield if you have no other copies of the resource and cities in unhealthy status, or can trade the resource for another health resource.

Copper and Iron give Mines +1 production, +2 to Modern Mines. Since a Copper Mine or Iron Mine is ahead of the Grain Farm curve and Copper and Iron are necessary for strategic purposes rather than just health, there is no need to improve them any further.

Silver is roughly balanced against Copper and Iron. Mines on Silver get +4 commerce and -1 production. This evens out to +1 yield; +2 commerce is worth +1 of food/production, so +2 yield - 1 yield from production equals +1. Modern Mines increase this to +5 commerce/-2 production. This is actually a drop-off.

So, Modern Mines on Silver should get only -1 production and +6 commerce.

Gems and Gold get bonuses on top of what Silver provides. Gems provide an additional +1 commerce and +1 Happiness (equal to +1 yield), while Gold provides +2 commerce. I'd like to lower these by 2, so Gold is equal to Silver with +4 commerce and -1 production, and Gems provide +3 commerce/+1 Happiness/-1 production. I'm not sure why Gold and Silver don't provide base happiness in AND, but I can live with it. All of these should get the same +2 commerce when they upgrade to a Modern Mine.

Lead
I think Lead doesn't give enough to be a true bonus. Mines on Lead get only +1 production, the same as Copper and Iron, but provide a -2 health penalty. Yes, lead is toxic, but I don't think it needs to be this bad. It feels like you are getting penalized a little bit too strongly for mining it, especially since that unhealth carries over to other cities. Most unhealthy resources come along later, and Tobacco offers offsetting happiness and unhealth.

I think Lead should be lowered to -1 health. I also think to give Lead just a little more usefulness, it should play with Universal Soldiers. Universal Soldiers currently only uses Steel and Vulcanized Rubber.

Bauxite/Uranium
I think for the sake of clarity and keeping things compact, the basic Mine does not have to interact with Bauxite or Uranium at all. Both resources are not revealed until after the Mine is replaced by Shaft Mine.

Bauxite also does not need to provide +1 commerce. +1 production is sufficient, and increasing to +2 with Modern Mine like the other mines.

Uranium, on the other hand, does need to step up to +5 commerce rather than +4 with Modern Mine. I've established that +2 commerce = +1 production.
 
95% agree, though I think Gold should be a bit better than Silver in terms of :commerce: yield.
 
Quarries need just a bit of improvement; they are pretty close to good right now.

First of all, there is a consolidation that I wish to do. Quarry has +1 production innately, and additional bonuses based on what kind of resource it is built on. However, you can only build Quarries on resources. You build Mines on tiles with no bonuses. So, to reduce the number of bullet points you look at, I am going to consolidate the +1 production with the resource bonuses. Instead of seeing +1 production and +2 from Stone, you will see no innate production and +3 from Stone.

The yield benchmarks for a Farm with a bonus are:
Ancient 2.5
Classical 2.5
Medieval 3.5
Renaissance 3.5
Industrial 4.5
Modern 6
Transhuman 9

A Stone Quarry is +3 production to start. It then stays flat until the Industrial Era, where it gains +1 production when a Railroad or better is built on it, +1 production from Explosives, and +1 commerce from Civil Engineering. Then it gains one more bonus, which is +2 production from Androids.

So the current curve looks like this:
Ancient 3
Classical 3
Medieval 3
Renaissance 3
Industrial 5.5
Modern 5.5
Transhuman 7.5
A touch high in the Ancient and Classical Eras, lower than it should be everywhere else. So we make a few adjustments.

First, move the +1 commerce at Civil Engineering to Architecture (in the Medieval Era). Civil Engineering is a black hole of tricks. It doesn't need this alongside everything else. It smooths out the curve a bit and makes a Stone Quarry equal to a boosted Farm in terms of total yield.
Second, add +1 production at Modern Seismology. This raises the Modern Era yield to +6.5 which is just a bit better than a boosted Farm.
Third, add +1 commerce at Androids. This raises the final Transhuman yield to +9, equal to a boosted Dome Farm.

The other resources need a bit of balancing as well.
With the consolidation applied, Marble would be +2 production/+2 commerce. This is equal to Stone.
Obsidian would be +1 production/+2 commerce. I think it should get an additional +1 production. This bonus continues to apply even after reaching Metallurgy and Obsidian going obsolete. Obsidian simply no longer appears in your cities' bonus lists.
Salt would currently weigh in at +2 production/+4 commerce/+1 health. I think this is too much and it would be better lowered to +1 production/+3 commerce/+1 health. That would balance it against the rest of the Quarries.
 
Dig Sites also need some bonuses. Dig Site starts out fine but needs a little bit of improvement.

Currently Dig Site starts with +5 commerce (on either Ancient Relics or Fossils) and gets +1 commerce with a Road or better and +1 production with a Railroad or better. +6 commerce to begin with is worth +3 yield. This is almost equal to a Farm+bonus when the Dig Site comes available at the end of the Renaissance Era. Instead of adding more commerce, I am going to add +1 happiness to the Dig Site. Think of it as a tourist attraction.

With the +1 happiness, the Dig Site is fine throughout the Industrial Era with +4.5 yield (+1 production, +6 commerce that is halved to +3, and +1 happiness that is also halved to +0.5).

Dig Site then needs some bonuses to beef it up later on. For the Modern Era, add +3 commerce from Tourism. This brings it up to the benchmark of +6.

For the Transhuman Era, add +2 commerce from Artificial Evolution and +1 production/+2 commerce from Nanomining. This combination adds up to the +9 that I have made the benchmark for the end of the tech tree.
 
I'm actually looking at Camps and Pastures now. They are about the last improvements that need balancing.

One thing I noted: Geothermal Energy gives Geothermal Factory a gigantic boost. I'm trying to keep the bonus tiles in line with each other. I think Geothermal Factory would be fine without the commerce bonus and getting only a flat +2 production from Geothermal Energy.

Compared to a Mine, a Geothermal Factory on the same tile has a slight yield edge. A fully-boosted Modern Mine generates +7 production, +1 commerce, and -1 health, for a net of 7. A Geothermal Factory generates +6 production and +3 commerce with no unhealth, netting 7.5. An Industrial Complex would have -1 food, +9 production, +1 commerce, and -2 health, also netting 7.5. So as long as Geothermal Energy gives some kind of bonus, it would still be better overall than any other improvement on the same tile. +2 production would net 9.5, better than any other improvement. Watermill has the best overall yield at 8.5 (+1 food, +6 production, +3 commerce).
 
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