Inflation should be included in displayed City Maintenance costs +4 other suggestions

[Petros]

Here are some ideas to improve the interface and gameplay of Civ4 BTS a bit:

1) In the city screen, you see a City Maintenance cost displayed, but you're actually paying (1+inflation_rate) times that cost, that is misleading IMHO. The same holds for Civic Upkeep, too.

2) The "worst enemies" of your rival AI civs should be displayed somewhere in the Foreign Relations screen so that you know who not to trade with if you want to keep a certain AI civ as your friend.

3) The times of the next AP and UN voting sessions should be displayed in the appropriate screens so that you can plan ahead better.

4) I don't like the Demographics screen the way it is now because I don't understand completely what certain figures represent. Why use fictitious, albeit aimed-to-be realistic concepts like "million tons" or "million inhabitants" instead of in-game concepts which would be more informative?

For example, population should be displayed as the sum of population points.
Production should be displayed as the sum of hammers.
Military size should be displayed as the sum of strength points (e.g. this way an Archer would only count for 3 points while a Modern Armor would be worth 40 points, and low-health units would also decrease your displayed military strength), with Land, Sea and Air units counted in different categories (as you clearly cannot compare the 4 points of a Galleon with the four points of a Spearman).
Instead of the fictitious GNP, I would like to see Gold (total) and Gold (increase per turn), Research (total number of beakers accumulated so far) and Research per turn, as well as Culture (total) and Culture (per turn), and perhaps Espionage (total) and Espionage (per turn).
Perhaps GPP/turn could also be displayed somewhere.
And instead of Life Expectancy and Approval Rate, which say nothing to most people, it would be more useful to see the total Happy/Unhappy and Healthy/Unhealthy ratios.

5) Finally, like Music allows you to build Culture in your cities and two other techs allow you to build Research or Wealth, one of the techs (e.g. Communism) should allow you to convert your shields into Espionage points, as well. Along with the Espionage slider and Spy specialists, this slight change would make Espionage function the same way as Research, Wealth and Culture do in all aspects.

These changes could be implemented very easily. What do you think about them? Do you have anything more to add?

 

[Cookie Crumbs]

The relationship between population points and population isn't linear because each successive population point requires more food to obtain.

I do agree with 3 and 5 though.

 

[PotatoSamurai]

5) Finally, like Music allows you to build Culture in your cities and two other techs allow you to build Research or Wealth, one of the techs (e.g. Communism) should allow you to convert your shields into Espionage points, as well. Along with the Espionage slider and Spy specialists, this slight change would make Espionage function the same way as Research, Wealth and Culture do in all aspects.

I think the reason for this is the same as not having a 'military' slider: both technology spending and building Spies takes care of this. After all, what would represent building Espionage? Developing James Bond-type weaponry? Technology. Building more resources for spies? Either building Spies themselves or building Courthouses, Jails, etc.

 

[Petros]

I think the reason for this is the same as not having a 'military' slider: both technology spending and building Spies takes care of this. After all, what would represent building Espionage? Developing James Bond-type weaponry? Technology. Building more resources for spies? Either building Spies themselves or building Courthouses, Jails, etc.

Sorry to disagree with you, but I think that by your argument, building Research could be considered just as foolish as building Espionage, after all, what would it represent to build Research from production? You can use the Research slider and/or build Libraries, Universities, Observatories, Laboratories and Academies isntead.

 

[Infantry#14]

I would like the interface change you suggested, but building espionage is a bit unbalanced to the game.

 

[KMadCandy]

long post, my main point first:

my biggest disagreement is with part of point 4, wounded units giving less power. i think that would impact gameplay, AIs would be less willing to sign peace. often when you're beating them, quite a few of your units are wounded, even tho you're winning. after all, you have been in battle *giggle*. wounded units aren't a factor in power now, but if that changes to be a sign of weakness, it could change their decision in some borderline cases. and really, there are already enough times when i sit here thinking "come on, you are soooo losing, admit it and move on!"

so now the rambling rest...
1) what would be the point of showing inflation along with maintenance and civics cost? nothing i can do will change how much the city costs me. imo if that change is made, the breakdown of how much is due to inflation should be shown when you hover over it, not just hide it in the background making you think the distance from the palace really is that much in and of itself, etc. that'll make it ugly and cluttered, but i'm not sure how i'd figure out the "before inflation" picture otherwise.

if i want to know the nuts and bolts now, it's fairly easy for me to look at F2 and see how inflation is hitting my economy in the current setup. if they just meld it into each city but don't break it down in each city, i have no clue how i'd look at an "inflation number" on F2 and figure out some way to take it out for each individual one to find the cost before inflation, so i'd want that clutter, even tho i'm really not a fan of more clutter . so i'd leave it like it is.

2) i sort of like.

3) i like.

4) total number of beakers so far, i don't know what that figure would tell you. i'm assuming you mean beakers-worth of techs that you know? and that isn't representative of how speedy their research itself has been over the course of the game, usually you get quite a few beakers worth of techs in trades/peace treaties/whatever. i guess it's a measure of how much research they did / how many GPs they bulbed / how many freebie techs they got / how good a tech trader and/or extorter they are. and i probably forgot something too . i guess it tells you who knows the most techs, but you can see that on F4. if you mean "just plain old number of beakers earned overall" without trades and freebies, that wouldn't tell you much at all if a big chunk of their learning has been pointy-stick research or lightbulbing. and the gold earned over the course of history, if it's gone how does affect the picture now?

5) i'm with PotatoSamurai as far as i go thru plenty of hammers with disposa-spies. also, the buildings that are available by the time i get communism and democracy let me get enough spy points that i wouldn't have my cities spending hammers on the points themselves. i'd just build more spies to spend the points. or to protect myself from the evil so-and-so's spending their points on me!

 

[Petros]

KMadCandy: Thank you for the long reply. I will try to react to your remarks one by one.

long post, my main point first:

my biggest disagreement is with part of point 4, wounded units giving less power. i think that would impact gameplay, AIs would be less willing to sign peace. often when you're beating them, quite a few of your units are wounded, even tho you're winning. after all, you have been in battle *giggle*. wounded units aren't a factor in power now, but if that changes to be a sign of weakness, it could change their decision in some borderline cases. and really, there are already enough times when i sit here thinking "come on, you are soooo losing, admit it and move on!"

The main point of my suggestion was not that having wounded units should decrease your power rating but that the Military Size in the Demographics screen should be displayed on the basis of some in-game concept, like the total number of strength points of your military units, rather than in hundred thousands of military personnel, which says nothing to the player by itself. It could also be computed without taking injuries into account (e.g. a 4.5/8 Maceman could still count as 8).

Nevertheless, having lots of seriously wounded units instead of full-health ones means that you are lower on power, so that should be taken into account IMHO. And the AI's capitulation threshold could be finetuned accordingly, so as to avoid situations like sitting and thinking "come on, you are soooo losing, admit it and move on!".

1) what would be the point of showing inflation along with maintenance and civics cost? nothing i can do will change how much the city costs me. imo if that change is made, the breakdown of how much is due to inflation should be shown when you hover over it, not just hide it in the background making you think the distance from the palace really is that much in and of itself, etc. that'll make it ugly and cluttered, but i'm not sure how i'd figure out the "before inflation" picture otherwise.

My point is that if a less experienced player reads in a city screen that he gets 10 Gold per turn from a city and only pays 7 Gold per turn for maintenance then he might think that the city is even bringing him a profit of 3 Gold per turn, whereas in reality, with an Inflation Rate of - let's say - 100%, he pays 14 Gold per turn for Maintenance, which results in a net loss of 4 Gold per turn. If the situation is even more serious then the player should also consider splitting off some overseas colonies - a necessity that may be overlooked if one forgets to consider the effect of Inflation.

Perhaps the best would be to display both the base Maintenance Cost and the Maintenance Cost due to Inflation in the city screen and do the same for Civic Upkeep.

2) i sort of like.

3) i like.

I'm glad that you like these two.

4) total number of beakers so far, i don't know what that figure would tell you. i'm assuming you mean beakers-worth of techs that you know? and that isn't representative of how speedy their research itself has been over the course of the game, usually you get quite a few beakers worth of techs in trades/peace treaties/whatever. i guess it's a measure of how much research they did / how many GPs they bulbed / how many freebie techs they got / how good a tech trader and/or extorter they are. and i probably forgot something too . i guess it tells you who knows the most techs, but you can see that on F4. if you mean "just plain old number of beakers earned overall" without trades and freebies, that wouldn't tell you much at all if a big chunk of their learning has been pointy-stick research or lightbulbing. and the gold earned over the course of history, if it's gone how does affect the picture now?

Total number of beakers from all sources (Research, tech stealing, lightbulbing, tribal villages etc.) could be a rough measure of how developed a certain civilization is technically. Even though you get something similar by opening the F4 screen, it may be more informative to see it in terms of numbers, as well. For Gold (total), I meant your current treasury, not the total amount of Gold earned in history, which would be clearly useless.

5) i'm with PotatoSamurai as far as i go thru plenty of hammers with disposa-spies. also, the buildings that are available by the time i get communism and democracy let me get enough spy points that i wouldn't have my cities spending hammers on the points themselves. i'd just build more spies to spend the points. or to protect myself from the evil so-and-so's spending their points on me!

It seems that we disagree on this one. Even though perhaps most players would hardly ever use it, it would be better IMHO to treat Espionage in the same way as Research, Wealth and Culture in this aspect, as well. It's not overpowered IMHO: in fact you can already do it by building wealth and raising the Espionage slider, although you cannot e.g. if you have a 100% tech rate. But you can also do it with Culture for instance, and still, there is the option of building Culture, so why not do it with Espionage, too?

 

[Petros]

I have one more suggestion:

6) Either the average number of XP's of your units or the average number of promotions they have should be displayed in the Demographics Screen so as to display some measure of the quality of your military beside the sheer quantity.

Added: It could also be a weighted average with stronger units having larger weights, e.g. the weights could be the Strength points. This index could be computed and displayed separately for Land, Sea and Air units. E.g., it would be fun to see in the Demographics screen that Mansa Musa has a large but rather inexperienced land army as opposed to Alexander's moderate-sized "elite" troops.

 

[Bushface]

My opinions :-
1). Inflation affects your total costs, not just city maintenance, so including its effect on the city-screen display would still be somewhat misleading.
2). To see who's somebody's worst enemy, click around on the "Relations" screen. Civ A may be cautious towards civ B, which is regarded as a minor nuisance, while civ B is annoyed with civ A and regards civ A as its worst enemy.
3). No opinion; never built the Apos. Pal. or the UN.
4). Oh, the demogs screen ! It'd be much more useful to see treasury totals instead of a synthetic GNP (which is actually calculated from commerce, not including that from holy cities, markets, banks etc., minus your expenses, and so is not a 'gross' anything except a misnomer): mfg. goods and crop yields are irrelevant to gameplay: the figure for "soldiers" includes values for certain techs and buildings, city population points, and finally values for your actual fighting units, ranging from 1000 soldiers per Warrior to 40000 for a Mod. Arm. Lastly, the displayed import/export ratio is very misleading: for a start, the commerce you gain from foreign trade is called 'imports' and the trade all the other civs get from trading with you is called 'exports', these terms being used exactly inversely to the real world, and since the trade other civs get from you costs you nothing, what relevance does it have ? What concerns you is simply the money you are making, the 'imports', not the ratio of your income to that of the combined rest of the world.
5). Why convert hammers to EPs by slider ? If I put an EP slider to the minimum 10% the generated EPs would utterly swamp those from buildings, rendering pointless (ha !) construction of the latter.
6). I suppose it would be possible to add a factor for XPs to the "soldiers" calculation but using Levels (number of promos) would be better; after all, a unit with 25 XP has no combat advantage over one with 17, both being at level 5. But why bother, except that I like the idea of getting to see a detailed breakdown of the strengths of the various branches of the opposition's forces. However, that would require the expansion of the demogs screen to show each separate civ's details - a spymaster's dream.

 

[KMadCandy]

Nevertheless, having lots of seriously wounded units instead of full-health ones means that you are lower on power, so that should be taken into account IMHO. And the AI's capitulation threshold could be finetuned accordingly, so as to avoid situations like sitting and thinking "come on, you are soooo losing, admit it and move on!".

yeah i forgot to say that i see what you mean about changing the basis of the whole thing into something more translated into in-game factors, i'm sorry. and i definitely don't disagree with that idea, the whole thing is weird. citadels count as soldiers but castles don't? what kind of silly world is that?

but i really do think you're heading the wrong direction with taking wounds into account. i definitely don't think having hurt troops on a given turn means you're lower on power in any meaningful sense. i think it means you're out there fighting and your troops are staying alive and earning exp! some might need to rest but they're at least one point closer to a promotion now than they were last turn, and some earned promos and got stronger. any troops that are wounded aren't dead . there's no need to adjust the powergraph for that, i just really strongly disagree with that idea, in fact i think it'll hurt the AI.

first of all it's very temporary, so it would be changes on the graph that would only be there for 1 to 2 turns max per unit but would require pc time to calculate. no big deal early on but i hear folks with not-so-hot pcs already complain about late-game wars. this all follows from the assumption that they'll be temporary deviations. i don't think you assume you'll have wounded troops all the time do you? maybe some folks are at war constantly. i'm not, so i can't judge that situation . anyway, if you agree with that premise, the only times i can think of these fluctuations on the powergraph having any potential to come into play are the most problematic times:

• the AI is debating whether to declare on me. worst case, his RNG roll happens to be on a turn where i am severely wounded. the roll is 4 or whatever, which if i wasn't wounded would be a NO WAR since my power rating would be X. but since i am wounded my power is X-1 so 4 = WAR, so he'll declare on me after some prep time to get ready. they don't generally change their minds once they've decided, but they do take some time to get ready. so i may well be done with the war that's wounding me now by the time he comes over, and he may really be in for it once he meets my now-healed troops which of course earned experience when they got wounded . the lower-power-from-wounds didn't help him make a better decision, it gave him false info.

• and then the case i mentioned, an AI that's losing a war but not realizing it yet based on his interpretation of the powergraph. they do calculate that every turn i think. so adding this temporary deviation as tho it's a reflection of a loss of real power would give a false impression, and perhaps make wars last longer than they already do.

i know i keep harping on this. but i truly see no benefits, only negatives. to me wounded troops aren't enough of a long-term issue to be part of the "full story" when you consider how the AI makes decisions. they don't look at the graph over time, they look at the snapshot on the turn that the program tells them to look at the graph. so we need to give them the truest picture we can. if they roll on a turn that the graph they see isn't telling the full story, i'm sure we agree that's not a good thing. i think the part we disagree is about what the "full story" is. and i think humans would look at the big picture and know what the temporary fluctuations in power are anyway so we'd shrug them off as wounds that went away.

My point is that if a less experienced player reads in a city screen that he gets 10 Gold per turn from a city and only pays 7 Gold per turn for maintenance then he might think that the city is even bringing him a profit of 3 Gold per turn, whereas in reality, with an Inflation Rate of - let's say - 100%, he pays 14 Gold per turn for Maintenance, which results in a net loss of 4 Gold per turn. If the situation is even more serious then the player should also consider splitting off some overseas colonies - a necessity that may be overlooked if one forgets to consider the effect of Inflation.

Perhaps the best would be to display both the base Maintenance Cost and the Maintenance Cost due to Inflation in the city screen and do the same for Civic Upkeep.

okay i think maybe i see why i wasn't getting this. even including inflation isn't giving the full picture really. a single city doesn't cost you just the maintenance the screen says it costs you, even if you factor in inflation, until you hit the maximum number of cities cap. prior to that point, the "number of cities" cost in every city goes up when you settle a new city, and there's no way to predict how much that will be before you settle (at least that i know of). and if you get rid of a city before you hit that cap, you'll save more than just the maintenance cost + inflation factor for that city, because that number of cities cost will go down in all your cities.

i can't remember when i tend to hit the cap on number of cities. maybe it's by the time the colony question comes around? i've never made a colony so i really can't tell you . i don't want colonies trading techs willy-nilly, i just scrimp and scrounge and try not to go broke.

thanks for the explanation on beakers and gold, i was quite confused!

It seems that we disagree on this one. Even though perhaps most players would hardly ever use it, it would be better IMHO to treat Espionage in the same way as Research, Wealth and Culture in this aspect, as well. It's not overpowered IMHO:

yeah, that's the definition of not overpowered i think, if most players wouldn't use it *giggle*. that's all i was saying tho. all of it was just rambling. i think you took it all how i meant it, just posting my thoughts like you were posting yours. i type a lot, does it show? i'm just not as creative as you. all i can do is respond to ideas, not come up with my own /sigh.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

1) In the city screen, you see a City Maintenance cost displayed, but you're actually paying (1+inflation_rate) times that cost, that is misleading IMHO. The same holds for Civic Upkeep, too.

1) what would be the point of showing inflation along with maintenance and civics cost? nothing i can do will change how much the city costs me. imo if that change is made, the breakdown of how much is due to inflation should be shown when you hover over it, not just hide it in the background making you think the distance from the palace really is that much in and of itself, etc. that'll make it ugly and cluttered, but i'm not sure how i'd figure out the "before inflation" picture otherwise.

if i want to know the nuts and bolts now, it's fairly easy for me to look at F2 and see how inflation is hitting my economy in the current setup. if they just meld it into each city but don't break it down in each city, i have no clue how i'd look at an "inflation number" on F2 and figure out some way to take it out for each individual one to find the cost before inflation, so i'd want that clutter, even tho i'm really not a fan of more clutter . so i'd leave it like it is.

Also (with both? huh? )

I think the inflation should be factored in as a line item much like , and are displayed in BtS.

You could easily be shown the "base" maintenance from Corporations, Distance, etc like we se now, but then the +/-% modifiers (including inflation) could be displayed below that. With it set up like that, you'd get both the gross and the net and could easily make your decisions based off those numbers without necessarily needing or obsoleting the <F2> screen.

Likewise, this same thing should be done for Corporations (preferably on their icon's popup near the religions.) The maintenance cost displayed in the City screen and on the Executive's Expand button can become quite deceptive as Inflation increases (the base maintenance displayed in the city screen actually goes down as Inflation increases). You may see "-8" and think your Wall Street/HQ is going to turn a profit from the expansion ... meanwhile, inflation is at 100%, which means you're actually losing 4g.

Anyhow, like KMad said, it's not that hard to figure it out right now, and an incomplete or improper change is likely to add more confusion than it would serve to resolve.


-- my 2

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well if it was complete an proper it would be

in the City Screen+Civics Screen the 'Inflation included' cost would be listed (and that only) followed by the courthouse effect

in the Financial Screen the 'Base' cost would be listed (AND Labeled a Base Civics, Base Units, or Base Cities cost) and inflation included as separate

As for the 'Strength' Right now it basically is like you describe... a sum of all your units, but it also includes population, and some buildings and technologies. Also the value for each unit is slightly different than its actual strength. (as you noted some are actually worth more/less than theri strength indcates.)

And i'm pretty sure the 'production' is numbers of total hammers (different by civ)

 

[Petros]

2). To see who's somebody's worst enemy, click around on the "Relations" screen. Civ A may be cautious towards civ B, which is regarded as a minor nuisance, while civ B is annoyed with civ A and regards civ A as its worst enemy.

Unfortunately, now you can only guess who the worst enemy of an AI civ is. Sometimes they apply the negative diplo modifier for trading with not just one but more civs. However, in reality, you can always ask a nation who they would not like you to trade with (e.g. "Will you be mad at me if I trade with Iran or is it OK?").

4). Oh, the demogs screen ! It'd be much more useful to see treasury totals instead of a synthetic GNP (which is actually calculated from commerce, not including that from holy cities, markets, banks etc., minus your expenses, and so is not a 'gross' anything except a misnomer): mfg. goods and crop yields are irrelevant to gameplay: the figure for "soldiers" includes values for certain techs and buildings, city population points, and finally values for your actual fighting units, ranging from 1000 soldiers per Warrior to 40000 for a Mod. Arm. Lastly, the displayed import/export ratio is very misleading: for a start, the commerce you gain from foreign trade is called 'imports' and the trade all the other civs get from trading with you is called 'exports', these terms being used exactly inversely to the real world, and since the trade other civs get from you costs you nothing, what relevance does it have ? What concerns you is simply the money you are making, the 'imports', not the ratio of your income to that of the combined rest of the world.

Right, that was exactly my point.

5). Why convert hammers to EPs by slider ? If I put an EP slider to the minimum 10% the generated EPs would utterly swamp those from buildings, rendering pointless (ha !) construction of the latter.

That depends on how many cottages you have. If you use a farms-only specialist economy then turning the slider up by 10% is not a big issue.

6). I suppose it would be possible to add a factor for XPs to the "soldiers" calculation but using Levels (number of promos) would be better; after all, a unit with 25 XP has no combat advantage over one with 17, both being at level 5. But why bother, except that I like the idea of getting to see a detailed breakdown of the strengths of the various branches of the opposition's forces. However, that would require the expansion of the demogs screen to show each separate civ's details - a spymaster's dream.

I agree that the average number of promotions is more relevant than average XP, also because of the free promotions for civs with Aggressive or Protective traits, which would not be taken into account by looking at only the XP's.

I would love that "spymaster's dream" of seeing a detailed breakdown of the enemy forces into Land, Sea and Air strength. This would also make it more worthwile to spend on Espionage for the passive effects.

 

[Petros]

but i really do think you're heading the wrong direction with taking wounds into account. i definitely don't think having hurt troops on a given turn means you're lower on power in any meaningful sense. i think it means you're out there fighting and your troops are staying alive and earning exp! some might need to rest but they're at least one point closer to a promotion now than they were last turn, and some earned promos and got stronger.

Alright, I see your point, but then perhaps it would be the best to take all units into account at their full-health strenghts (like a 4.5/8 Mace at 8).

even including inflation isn't giving the full picture really. a single city doesn't cost you just the maintenance the screen says it costs you, even if you factor in inflation, until you hit the maximum number of cities cap. prior to that point, the "number of cities" cost in every city goes up when you settle a new city, and there's no way to predict how much that will be before you settle (at least that i know of). and if you get rid of a city before you hit that cap, you'll save more than just the maintenance cost + inflation factor for that city, because that number of cities cost will go down in all your cities.

Thanks, somehow I overlooked the impact of the number of your cities. Nevertheless, I think that displaying the costs including Inflation is more informative and less misleading than as it is right now. And if you mouse over it then you could see a detailed breakdown.

Added a bit later:

first of all it's very temporary, so it would be changes on the graph that would only be there for 1 to 2 turns max per unit but would require pc time to calculate. no big deal early on but i hear folks with not-so-hot pcs already complain about late-game wars.

I don't think that's a big deal, as computing power graphs most likely only takes a negligible time on any PC. And computing this kind of graphs probably wouldn't take any longer than as it does now.

 

[Petros]

Well if it was complete an proper it would be

in the City Screen+Civics Screen the 'Inflation included' cost would be listed (and that only) followed by the courthouse effect

in the Financial Screen the 'Base' cost would be listed (AND Labeled a Base Civics, Base Units, or Base Cities cost) and inflation included as separate

I agree, perhaps it would be the best your way. My point is that Inflation is NOT a separate source of costs, so it should be included in the displayed costs. For example, in real life, let's say that if the total Inflation since the Euro was introduced is 50% and suppose you buy fancy clothes for 150 EUR then would you say that your expenditures for clothing were 100 EUR this month and your costs due to inflation were 50 EUR? This would be stupid, of course. Nevertheless, you should be able to look at costs due to Inflation in the F2 screen if you're interested in a more detailed breakdown, thereby not obsoleting the F2 screen.

As for the 'Strength' Right now it basically is like you describe... a sum of all your units, but it also includes population, and some buildings and technologies. Also the value for each unit is slightly different than its actual strength. (as you noted some are actually worth more/less than theri strength indcates.)

And i'm pretty sure the 'production' is numbers of total hammers (different by civ)

Thanks. I did not know what they represented, and I guess 90% of the players out there don't know either. But if it is that way then why does the Demographics screen not say that like e.g. "1500 hammers" instead of some meaningless "million tons"?

 

[Guardian_PL]

Well, I like Petros's suggestions, espionage should be treated the same as other forms of commerce conversion. It's logical, if we can divert production in our cities to research, wealth or culture, adding espionage could make late-game full of action, saboteurs, counterespionage, tech-stealing...
I mean, it's nice to "play" with espionage a bit, but unless one runs spy economy supported by Pyramids or Great Wall it's hard to load points into several nations, usually it's one civ and that's it.
Communism would be the perfect tech as well, because in modern era one has large enough empire to for instance swap military building to building etc.
"Building" espionage could provide few interesting twists in sometimes boring late-game period.

Other suggestions are ok to me as well

 

[AlessioCerci]

Number 3 is a very good suggestion indeed. I would like to see that added.