Improvements

[westamastaflash]

What if farms, and even workshops acted like cottages in that they became more potent after being utilized for a number of turns.

This is from the civic feedback thread, but I thought it was a really cool idea.

What if you required certain techs before the upgrade becomes available? Instead of techs giving bonuses, have it "allow X improvement to be upgraded".

Perhaps something like:
Grassland Farm Base (req. Agriculture)
3

Upgraded Farm (req Sanitation and Iron Working)
4 1

Final Upgrade of Farm (req Machinery OR Commune With Nature?)
5 2

Plains Workshop Base (req. Bronze Working - i moved this back from smelting)
2

Upgraded Workshop (req. Metal Casting and Engineering)
3 1

Final Upgrade of Workshop (req. Machinery OR Arcane Lore - your workshops work a lot faster when powered by magic)

4 2

You could do the same thing with windmills and watermills.

I'd like this because then you can't just quickly switch improvements in your city with your pile of workers (and you'll worry about pillagers that much more because of upgrade times).

Any thoughts?

 

[westamastaflash]

2 for the 2nd upgrade might break this for financial leaders, perhaps just leave the 1

 

[xienwolf]

Actually I'd love to see it set so your upgrades are different based on the ORDER of tech you get.

So if you research down the "Nature" line (scouts and whatnot) then your farms gain more food (maybe at Tracking?). But if you research down the "Commerce" line, then your farms can gain more gold (Taxation?). While down the Mining line you will gain some productivity (I suppose Bronze Working. Like it doesn't do enough for you already...)


And of course, once you trigger one of the upgrades, you block out the others. Then, each Civilization is "flavored" based on how they grew up, and don't all wind up being the same thing if the game drags on into everyone racing to be the first one to research Future Tech 27.


It does mildly make sense too. If you improve your method for doing something in a certain manner, you are less likely to look twice at a minor improvement in another direction, but rather be focusing on the next step in the path you already started down. Hence Japan wound up with Rice Fields that were knee deep water/muck, while Britain wound up with orderly rows of barely moistened soil.. Both are still Farms, but the results are quite different.

 

[Thonnas]

well, for one thing, I kind of doubt that you could stop the improvement from upgrading based on techs, but you could kind of make it so that each upgrade is essentially the same, except for its classification, and then have techs give bonuses to the higher classifications, but this is wouldn't exactly stop the overall transformation of it.

secondly, one of the intents of having the improving upgrades is to allow different civics to grant bonuses for the different levels. giving significant bonuses based solely on techs would kind of defeat that.

back to the first point, though, if you had something like
- farm1 +1f
- farm2 +2f
- farm3 +2f (but then gave a +1f to farm3 with sanitation)
that might do.

 

[Randolph]

It's a cool idea, but I think I prefer improvments simply getting bonuses from technologies and civics they as they currently do. THis is definitely an interesting idea for some mod.

 

[Demus]

the idea looks good, but i'm afraid it'll get overpowered too much, to the point where building a farm on a tile would be better than a pasture (even without agriculture). Right now the numbers used for yield and growth are rather small (with 10 being the absolute maximum you can reach in 1 direction (food/hammer/commerce). If this was to be impleted, basically all the numbers would have to be doubled or tripled (base yields, food consumption, production and science costs etc.), so the upgrades of individual farm levels could be kept in check.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, I think he is proposing that EVERYTHING scales up like a cottage, so that would include Pastures.


And that it is slow enough that it takes at least 1/10 of the total game time to get up to top level (meaning your capitol and maybe first 2 cities MIGHT have a chance to get all tiles improved and fully developed by the end of the game. If you don't change your mind on which improvements you want in which location)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

What I think would be more interesting is if researching a technology could make you unable to research another tech. Then, you could add techs that improve improvements in different ways,, but are mutually exclusive.

 

[Chip56]

What about events?
for example:
sanitation as requriment to trigger
very high chance to trigger
only once per player
allows to choice either +1food per farm or +1gold.

 

[westamastaflash]

the idea looks good, but i'm afraid it'll get overpowered too much, to the point where building a farm on a tile would be better than a pasture (even without agriculture). Right now the numbers used for yield and growth are rather small (with 10 being the absolute maximum you can reach in 1 direction (food/hammer/commerce). If this was to be impleted, basically all the numbers would have to be doubled or tripled (base yields, food consumption, production and science costs etc.), so the upgrades of individual farm levels could be kept in check.

This already occurs with cottages / aristocratic farms and some plantation resources. Perhaps plantations should scale up with farms? You don't get any additional benefit from hooking up an extra cotton, so I usually just hook up one out of a city radius with a fort and farm over the rest (or cottage over, depending on my strategy).

Perhaps this would work well as a mod mod. I wonder if its even possible.

 

[Demus]

This already occurs with cottages / aristocratic farms and some plantation resources. Perhaps plantations should scale up with farms? You don't get any additional benefit from hooking up an extra cotton, so I usually just hook up one out of a city radius with a fort and farm over the rest (or cottage over, depending on my strategy).

Perhaps this would work well as a mod mod. I wonder if its even possible.

I know cottages scale up, but there's a difference between a max of +5 commerce, and a max of +3 food +1 commerce. Imho, 3 food is worth WAY more than 5 commerce (not even mentioning sacrifice the weak)

 

[westamastaflash]

I know cottages scale up, but there's a difference between a max of +5 commerce, and a max of +3 food +1 commerce. Imho, 3 food is worth WAY more than 5 commerce (not even mentioning sacrifice the weak)

Sacrifice the weak is so powerful that it's almost broken, imho, with the CURRENT farm system (agriculture + sanitation yields farms that give +3 food). All I'm suggesting is that farms take time to get to the level of "good", whereas now they are instant.