Industrial and later Building/Unit Costs

[Sgtslick]

You must also remember there are that many more buildings to build in those eras. Thus if your a builder like me, you also want to try to build more buildings. If the later buildings are too expensive compared to earlier one then people just will not build them. Thus later buildings have to give bigger benefits to warrant more cost.

Force the player to make choices plz, its far too easy to be be able to literally build every building.. in every city.

Also keep in mind that with 'bigger benefits' comes more imbalance IMO. Too much happiness/gold/health should be avoided like the plague so that the player does not switch off into auto-pilot mode and think to himself.. this is boring.. alt-q

 

[AIAndy]

But would it always be true? For instance lets say you have 2 factories. One that requires at tech X and another that requires tech X AND Y. Tech Y is farther down the tree than tech X. However both factories have the same stats. Should the first building cost less than the second building?

As it is now both buildings typically cost the same unless said factory is very advanced.

You might build the first building first but if the gain is good, then you might build the second building as well, even if it has higher cost. The player can't build more than one of the first building in the city after all. And it will likely obsolete earlier.
But in the end those are always rules of thumb and it is boring to have the same cost and gain for everything.

So consider that each building has a base budget and a base cost depending on where its latest unlocking tech is. Then vary that. If a building uses a rare resource, increase the budget or decrease the cost. If it is supposed to be a secondary building or a building you build in specific situations only, then decrease the budget / increase the cost. Then there can be cheap buildings with lower budget and cost for new cities and expensive buildings with high budget and cost for advanced cities.
Anything that gives a percent modifier should increase far less with higher techs than flat gains.

 

[ls612]

But would it always be true? For instance lets say you have 2 factories. One that requires at tech X and another that requires tech X AND Y. Tech Y is farther down the tree than tech X. However both factories have the same stats. Should the first building cost less than the second building?

As it is now both buildings typically cost the same unless said factory is very advanced.

As DH said, it should use whatever tech comes 'later' for that building. Also, there would be some latitude for 'basic' buildings to be cheaper (ie, what you start your new cities with), as well as for more advanced buildings to be more expensive. Also, here are the multipliers I have for NWs, WWs, Projects, and Units.

• National Wonders: 3 times the cost of a normal building for that tech.
• World Wonders: 8 times the cost for a normal building of that tech
• Projects: 12 times the cost of a normal building for that tech (these will actually mean something to construct now!)
• Units: 4/5ths the cost as a building of that tech. The difference between the Building and Unit gamespeed modifiers should be able to make up the rest of the difference.
• Semi-National buildings (cathedrals for one): should be a bit more expensive than a normal building, the exact cost can be flexible but 1.5 times would be my guideline.

Remember that this would start around X30 (Code of Laws), and buildings before that would be untouched, as I think we can agree that the costs are OK for those parts of the game.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'd suggest walls and such could be a bit more expensive by right of actual effort required in RL to create.

 

[Koshling]

But would it always be true? For instance lets say you have 2 factories. One that requires at tech X and another that requires tech X AND Y. Tech Y is farther down the tree than tech X. However both factories have the same stats. Should the first building cost less than the second building?

As it is now both buildings typically cost the same unless said factory is very advanced.

There are always exceptions - I think ls612 is more providing a system that sets the default/guideline price. Any particular building should be tweakable away from that when there is good reason.

 

[ls612]

There are always exceptions - I think ls612 is more providing a system that sets the default/guideline price. Any particular building should be tweakable away from that when there is good reason.

Exactly. I would like to first just set everything to the guideline price, then make changes from there during the Long Freeze. But I don't think that those costs are set in stone, just a good benchmark.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Well when we get to doing this I still would like us to go over the buildings like a checklist. Since like it or not each building must be done individually since each has its own unique requirements and stats.

For instance for Farms and Mines I have them a straight 50 cost. This means that a Wheat Farms cost the same as a Carrot Farm even though Wheat is at Agriculture tech and Carrots are at Plough tech.

Note that most Factories are 300. Since the Factory is enabled at Assembly Line and is at X55, your chart says it would be a base of 450.

So should I at least go and tweak them all factories to 450 to help balance them?

 

[ls612]

Well when we get to doing this I still would like us to go over the buildings like a checklist. Since like it or not each building must be done individually since each has its own unique requirements and stats.

For instance for Farms and Mines I have them a straight 50 cost. This means that a Wheat Farms cost the same as a Carrot Farm even though Wheat is at Agriculture tech and Carrots are at Plough tech.

Note that most Factories are 300. Since the Factory is enabled at Assembly Line and is at X55, your chart says it would be a base of 450.

So should I at least go and tweak them all factories to 450 to help balance them?

Sure, that would be a great start. And regarding farms, they come before the point at which this chart would take effect, so I'm not too concerned about them. For other examples of building "families" which are close together on the tech tree I'd suggest figuring out a happy medium on the chart and setting all of the buildings in that family to that cost. But this thread is for discussing the cost changes (which affect Units too, so I should get onto that), so feel free to post other building families to discuss. I'd like to get this part done in the next week or so, so that the last two and a half weeks of the long Freeze can be devoted to bugfixing and stability.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@ls612

Factories which cost around 300 were increased to 450 and put on the SVN. This is at least a start in the right direction.

As for other buildings groups we have some Guild level buildings. Guilds is at X36 which on your char says 130. Many of these like ...

- Potters Workshop = 150
- Mattress Store = 150
- Toy Maker = 100
- Basket Maker's Workshop = 120

These actually seem to be in the right range. What do you think?

 

[Hydromancerx]

@ls612

Well might as well start at the beginning ...

X30 = 80

X30
- Astrology School = 100
- Library = 90
- Madrassa = 90
- Agora = 120
- Forum = 150
- Festival = 75
- Colosseum = 80
- Odeon = 80

So what should they be changed to if at all?

 

[ls612]

@ls612

Well might as well start at the beginning ...

X30 = 80

X30
- Astrology School = 100
- Library = 90
- Madrassa = 90
- Agora = 120
- Forum = 150
- Festival = 75
- Colosseum = 80
- Odeon = 80

So what should they be changed to if at all?

They can be left as-is, that was the whole point, is close to X30 there will be few changes necessary, and as you get farther along more increase will be needed.

 

[Sgtslick]

Maybe make agora to 150 since its uber powerful and can't get a double build speed from a civic or something?

Can you plz make riding school more expensive and the building that allows you to build stone spearman/stone axeman etc 10% cheaper - can you make this cheaper.

 

[ls612]

@Hydro:

Also, could you please check whether or not buildings are NWs or WWs? Remember that under my system that makes a difference, and I don't know what type of building something is OTOH.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Hydro:

Also, could you please check whether or not buildings are NWs or WWs? Remember that under my system that makes a difference, and I don't know what type of building something is OTOH.

These were all normal building. I left out the NWs and WWs.

 

[ls612]

These were all normal building. I left out the NWs and WWs.

OK, great. Here are two spreadsheets. The Tech one is a list of techs and their X column, and the Building one is a list of buildings and their tech requirements. With a little bit of editing in a spreadsheet tool (Excel or Libreoffice) you should be able to correlate from that all buildings and what X column they come at. Hopefully this will be of much help to you for making the changes detailed by my plans.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Sorry I am a bit confused. These are just notepad files. Why did you just not make a spreadsheet in google docs like the online tech tree is.

 

[ls612]

Sorry I am a bit confused. These are just notepad files. Why did you just not make a spreadsheet in google docs like the online tech tree is.

They are CSV files. Open them in a spreadsheet utility with the proper settings (columns delimited by commas) and they are spreadsheets. I generated these automatically with a modified version of Koshling's old XML scanner, so that is why I didn't make them a google doc.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I tried to open them with Open Office. The "C2C Building Techs" seemed to work but the "C2C Tech Columns" did not.

I am still confused on what I am suppose to do with these.

Is it like ...

# Value = X Column = Tech in Column = Building in Tech

Thus # Value = That specific Building

Seems like a lot of conversions just to figure out what it should cost.

So basically we just need to go down the list right? Because not all values are that far off and can be around the ideal value at that point in the tree. Also buildings families would have similar costs despite where they sit on the tree. Furthermore buildings are not listed in alphabetical order so it takes longer to find out where the building data is located in the mod. Be it in the core or in one of the many mods within the mods. Not only by different people but by different mods within a mod. Sometimes with different people influencing the same building such as with Project Hades overwriting other mods.

In addition you lists seem to be indiscriminate in where and what buildings/tech you have. There are many on the list which are under X30 and thus just make more information that their needs to be. Likewise you have techs of the galactic era which as you said before do not need to worry about yet.

In addition you also list buildings that cannot even be built such as Myth of the Bear or Housing (Igloo). These buildings do not need their cost adjusted by tech because they are not built with hammers.

 

[ls612]

I tried to open them with Open Office. The "C2C Building Techs" seemed to work but the "C2C Tech Columns" did not.

I am still confused on what I am suppose to do with these.

Is it like ...

# Value = X Column = Tech in Column = Building in Tech

Thus # Value = That specific Building

Seems like a lot of conversions just to figure out what it should cost.

So basically we just need to go down the list right? Because not all values are that far off and can be around the ideal value at that point in the tree. Also buildings families would have similar costs despite where they sit on the tree. Furthermore buildings are not listed in alphabetical order so it takes longer to find out where the building data is located in the mod. Be it in the core or in one of the many mods within the mods. Not only by different people but by different mods within a mod. Sometimes with different people influencing the same building such as with Project Hades overwriting other mods.

In addition you lists seem to be indiscriminate in where and what buildings/tech you have. There are many on the list which are under X30 and thus just make more information that their needs to be. Likewise you have techs of the galactic era which as you said before do not need to worry about yet.

In addition you also list buildings that cannot even be built such as Myth of the Bear or Housing (Igloo). These buildings do not need their cost adjusted by tech because they are not built with hammers.

Yes, basically we just need to go down the list. I've attached an Open Office spreadsheet with the data already formatted for you if it helps. You can go as fast as you want to, I'd like (ideally, I understand that it could be a lot of work) to get this and the unit cost adjustments (which I'm doing myself using a similar process) done by next week, so that the last two weeks or so can be devoted to bugfixes and stability.

 

[Hydromancerx]

1. Oh those look much nicer. Thanks for converting to Open Office.

2. Ideally the easiest way for me to do it would be like how I did it with Praetyre. Where they are in small chunks I can break down. it will take awhile (possibly longer than the freeze) but if we just went one column at a time it would make this HUGE task manageable.

So I guess what I would need for you is to post the buildings one column at a time like I did for the first column and then we can focus on them individually to see if and by how much they need to be changed.

Once discussed I will go alter the building cost. Since after working with Praetyre I am getting pretty good at knowing where each building is in the mod.