Making Doviello (and maybe Clan of Embers) more fun to play

[Sureshot]

excess hammers can become anything commerce can with the right techs

and there are many uses for food like grey fox said

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Well, for most situations it is. And even when it isn't worthless, hammers could do the job just as well. In fact, under God King, hammers are multiplied by 1.5 while food converted to production is not.

And hammers can only be converted to stuff that commerce can with a terrible rate of efficiency.

 

[Sureshot]

Well, for most situations it is. And even when it isn't worthless, hammers could do the job just as well. In fact, under God King, hammers are multiplied by 1.5 while food converted to production is not.

ahhh, that explains why food didnt seem to match up to production for me before under conquest heh

but still, pop rushing is useful, and being 2/3 of the production of hammers isnt so bad, food has some versatlity so its good, 2/3 of the function of something else is alright, since its not its main purpose

hammers 1/2 to commerce isnt bad either, commerce can't be converted into food or hammers, so its not as versatile (though can kinda be turned into hammers at some rate by rush buys, dont know what the conversion rate is on that)

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Agreed. I'm still struggling to figure out a ratio of value for ::, but I guess it's really situational.

 

[Grey Fox]

Agreed. I'm still struggling to figure out a ratio of value for ::, but I guess it's really situational.

I can agree that its Highly situational. But Commerce is almost always useful, wether it be paying for maintainance, or research, or rushing something.

 

[QES]

to me is always a realative value of capasity, in general, its the weakest of the three, but is also the most necessary to garner the other two.

are always about expansion, they're directly responcible FOR that expansion, in multitudes of areas, physical expansion through cities and workers, or military and forced expansion through units and conquest, or the production of bulidings for expansion of culture and enterprize.

Progress. simple and succinct, thats what this is. WIth Gold you progress through the ages, which is what a lot of civilzation is all about, and functions as the lifeblood of everything else, like civics manipulation, army size, and diplomatic barter.

The main issue with these three, is that while the first seems like it could potentially be the most powerful, it is mitigated by not one, but two different factors, unhealthiness and unhappiness, each producing their own kind of cap.

These two vairables, DO NOT put caps on production or production. In this, Food loses value becuase it has to be manipulated through more means than does the other incomes. If happiness and Unhealthiness more directly impacted the non- income, i think that we'd see a balancing of the issue.

My suggestion? Make it an incomplete transfer. In this, If specialists were made more important, then High population cities would be come more valuable (in general all population points would increase in individual value)
Secondly, perhaps we could tie Unhealthiness to , and Unhappiness to . The excuse being, that Unhealthiness regards easily the level of sophistication and trade occuring, unhealthy cities do worse in trade, because they're not as glitzy, or the like. Unhappiness could directly impact because an unhappy laborer is a violent laborer. Directly impacting production via this method would be good. Also, this would make the impacts of Happiness and Healthiness far more important to deal with than merely increasing the population size of cities.

How To implement?

I suggest that should be related to Unhealthiness and Unhappiness as it is now.

I Suggest that Lose One base hammer for each Net Unhappiness

I suggest that Lose 2 Gold per net Unhealthiness.

We Can also tie in alignment to this.

Evil civs should be immune to the negative effects of Unhealthiness (Wallow in filth)
Neutral Civs should be Immune to the negative effects of Unhappiness. (Protests are Peaceful)
Good civs should get +1 Happiness (like being good)

Just Ideas,
-Qes

 

[Sureshot]

in previous civs i think lots of production led to waste, which seems more like itd be unhealthiness... though not sure that was fun

 

[Grey Fox]

Unhappiness already affects & , since an unhappy worker dont work. And unhappines makes you value less since you dont want your city to grow to become unhappy. Unhealthiness does and should affect . Thats a GOOD mechanic. And since it affects , it affects & as well. Since they are both dependant on you having population, and population is dependant on .

So I think it should stay as it is.

 

[QES]

Unhappiness already affects & , since an unhappy worker dont work. And unhappines makes you value less since you dont want your city to grow to become unhappy. Unhealthiness does and should affect . Thats a GOOD mechanic. And since it affects , it affects & as well. Since they are both dependant on you having population, and population is dependant on .

So I think it should stay as it is.

I know all of what you just said, but theres not a direct corilation. THe only corilation between unhappiness and unhealitness and & is the relation it has to and subsequent citizenry to work tiles. Thats a long way around to affects something.
I was comparing each "income resource" one to another. Food is the weakest, with Gold being the strongest. Gold is a direct contributor throughout the whole of the game, it gives money for purchases, and beakers for science and potentially notes for boarder expansion. Hammers produce units and buildings, food produces citizens. Note how gold does 3 things, hammers 2, and food 1. Yet there are not one but 2 types of impedements to food.

I maintain that its debateable if having more total population, one civ to another, makes that civ more powerful. Honestly, I think that there are too many other considerations to be assessed. But it's debateable enough that we cannot consider total-citizenry to be the mark of whether or not a civilizaiton is particularly powerful. I think we CAN determine NUMBER of cities and the ability to hold them as a good signifier, because it would mean that enough money is being made to deal with maintenance, and enough hammers are being produced to effectively protect that much space. I believe, and have always believed that # of cities is the best indicator of a civilizations power.

Now many of you are going to say that a few great cities is better than a lot of crappy ones. But let us be honest, In building our civilziations, we dont spam cities and grab the crappiest city spots first, we grab the best spots first. So it can be assumed that most cities of any given civilzation were the best possible options they had at any given time. Including the "crappy" spots. In this, then, it still is about direct number. Those who can effectively have and hold and continue to produce with more cities is more powerful.

Food, however, does not equal cities. In fact people with lots and lots of hammers can produce settlers equally as fast as your nearest food king. Or if slower, its not a big deal because the hammer king could simply invade the food king.

Food as a resource is increadibly weak. Primarily becuase it only serves one function, but subsequently becuase its blocked by two impedements. If hammers and Gold were also blocked by SOMETHING, then you'd see strategies emerge that would focus on food, and slavery and the like.
For food to be more equally effective in any game, it would have to be able to preform another role, or citizens, the output of food, would have to have more functions that working tiles that bring hammers and gold.

Let me put it this way. Food is Oil, Gold is Fuel, and Hammers are a M60 machine gun. If your civilization is a Armed Jeep, then you can see the relation of how this works. You need the oil for your jeep to run, to function, however, it does nothing else interesting. The Gas does everything, it powers the beast, and can accelerate it to mindnumbing speeds, the machine gun is to ward off other armed jeeps, if you didnt have it, your jeep would be toast.

The function of the Food, in my little analogy, clearly makes it important, and necessary, but not at ALL interesting or powerful.

As it is, people have "just enough" food to be slightly growing. Even then you dont want unhappy people. Though unhappyness doesnt really have any negative modifiers to it, since all execess unhappi people simply dont work. Its still good to actually have those citizens.

Regardless food is weak, hammers are nominal, and gold is uber powerful. This is why the cottages are the "best" improvement in the game, because they offer the most possible for their tile. In gold.

If food had more options, or if hammer and gold has some impedements, I think we'd see more diverse economic strategies.

I just want it to be plausible that someone would try to "monopolise" food and make food production a back bone of some strategy. Same with Hammers (the kahazad sort of fill this role currently, but really thats STILL based on gold) Gold as a strategy is ALREADY the mainstay. You maximise gold? You win. I want hammer based, and food based socieites. I think to do this for food, specialists need to be enhanced (so that there are causes to use them more often) and/or increase the sheer amount of food IN the game, so taht the "undervalued" nature of it is supplanted with sheer volumue. If for example, we dont want to change how food works, then let us increase the total potential yeilds of it everywhere. The net consequence of this would be that strategies like "conquest" as a civic, and slavery - uses would be far more useful, because youd have more excess population to spend on things.

I'm done rambling again.
-Qes

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Making all three of the yields simply clones of each other won't help anything. I'm still not sure what you're trying to fix here, but I believe that the game is better with the three different yields having three different effects. Currently, two corn resources next to your capital means that you can expand it really fast, and quickly build settlers and workers. I see no reason to make it more powerful.

I also disagree about having unhappiness and unhealthiness effect hammers and commerce directly. Even if it takes a moment to see how they're related, it cannot be denied that they are, and so they work out as game mechanics. If you want the connection to be greater, just say that one unhealthiness subtracts two food and one unhappiness makes two citizens not work.

And further, do we really need another confusing mechanic to alienate any new comers to FfH?