Moneyproblemsolutions

[Ploeperpengel]

Let's discuss the moneyproblems in this thread.

Solutions could be early buildings and civics already discussed. Could someone collect those ideas here?

Other quick soltuions can be changing maintanance costs in handycapinfos as well. I'm currently working on "noble" and changed unitmaintanance to 30 % from 50% but that won't do alone. We can also give free units in handycapinfos but I don't know if that also applies to AI civs. Does somebody know? My guess is no.

 

[woodelf]

These are the 2 lines I would change in HandicapInfos:

<iDistanceMaintenancePercent>X</iDistanceMaintenancePercent>
<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>X</iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>

Prince is 85/80 and Noble is 75/70, Warlord 65/60, ect. Getting 3 cities to start with is excellent, but only is we drop these 2 numbers to 50s or 40s so the player isn't crippled.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Well, i mentioned this elsewhere but i will sya it again:

A new building called "Trading post" gives a flat sum of gold to the city every turn, (ie not a %) such as 1 gold/ turn. i dont think this should be a % building, becasue it would be the first financial building, and cities normally dont produce gold that early in the game. this would give each city a nice little foundation to work from. (if a city is producing 0 gold, a building which gives +15% of that will still only give the city 0 gold, and wont solve the problem, whereas if it give +1 gold, we might be able to solve this issue.

 

[woodelf]

Also, we could give the player 500 or 1000 gold to start so that -3 gp/turn isn't crippling until later on.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

no, thats pointless, we can just do that in world builder every game, and that would take out a big strategy factor. i dont want to start out with that much cash (no matter how much i want it in real life )

we can make goody hut give larger sums of money though, that would be OK in my books

 

[Ploeperpengel]

@woodelf
Yep will do that change(probably 60/60) for noble.
Edit: oh, no better not. I think this only changes the settings for the player but not the AI. On the contrary I think it even should be changed to 100% to even chances between AI and player or someone need to trell me how we can modify this in general.
@PL
yep that sort of building could be useful. What about a tanner available with hunting, producing gold if connected to deer, sheep or cows?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

thats also a good option Ploe, i would do both buildings and test that, see if it solves the money issue.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I don't think we should have buildings giving net amounts of gold. It would just cancel out maintenance cost and make infinite city sprawl a viable tactic again.

Good point. In this case just commerce for tanners may be better.

 

[neener]

I don't think we should have buildings giving net amounts of gold. It would just cancel out maintenance cost and make infinite city sprawl a viable tactic again.

Not if you make it obsolete at the right time. I think the point of giving net amounts of gold is because losing 3 gold a turn is a much bigger deal on turn 10 than it is on turn 300. If you made this net-gold-giving building obsolete somewhere around turn 100, you've given the player time to set up his own economy by building cottages and establishing trade routes.

 

[woodelf]

I'm not sure the AI is having maintenance issues to be honest. They chug along with huge tech advantages so while the player is at 40% tech trying to scrape by the computer is running 100% tech and still putting money away. That may be simply perception, but it happens on any diff level higher than Prince. I can deal with any other advantages that the AI is given except this one.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I'm not sure the AI is having maintenance issues to be honest. They chug along with huge tech advantages so while the player is at 40% tech trying to scrape by the computer is running 100% tech and still putting money away. That may be simply perception, but it happens on any diff level higher than Prince. I can deal with any other advantages that the AI is given except this one.

That's obviously because the AI gets strong research boost on any level higher than prince. Wont help us in our case. This mod needs to be balanced in the way AI and Player have even chances imo.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i think net commerce is good, and if it is only 1 gold / turn, it wont cancel out maintenance, plus, as neener says we can make it obsoleate at say, currency. i still think a Trading post and a tanner are the best ways to go.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

i think net commerce is good, and if it is only 1 gold / turn, it wont cancel out maintenance, plus, as neener says we can make it obsoleate at say, currency. i still think a Trading post and a tanner are the best ways to go.

It's just that fluffwise a trading post would make sense with tech_trading which is too late to spice up the ancient era. Otherwise we could make the tech available earlier as well. I think about it.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Hm, or wheel as direct prereq for trading(tradeing will get cheaper of course)?

 

[woodelf]

Most CivIII games I ever played had a cap on science at 60% for most of the game. If the AI is forced to do that as well I'd survive.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Actualy, I've been thinking about this.
So what if you're forced to have your science down to 40% for most of the game? I've always found it wierd in vanilla that you could get away with having 100% science for most of the game. What country spends ALL of its gdp on research?
The only thing we have to do is lower research cost by 40% so the game progresses at a normal pass and everyone's happy!

yes quite right. Let's add the tanner and play with the handcapinfo the way you mentioned.

Who is going to play some testgames with modified handicaps to see if this works?

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Another way to save money:

have units forage instead of using money?

-reduce food production in square occupied.
-if no (not enough) food produced in occ.square, have food deducted from a friendly city in 8squares.
-reduce morale/combat strenght when supplyline is too long/broken.
(Least experiened units effected first.)

any good?

Never understood why trading should come so late. I'm sure people bartered before they could even speak.
I'd suggest replacing trading with 'caravaning' or 'traderoutes' or even 'mercantillism'.
And using trading as an early tech to have shops that can make money.
...
? How come we have money before it is invented? (eg currency) :crazy:

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Having units forage sounds interesting but seems a little complicated, especially since we have many units that effectivly won't forage(undead, demons)
But I currently work on civics so lets see if we can solve this problem with the new civics and later also early buildings first.
I made an early barter civic i.e. but I wanted open borders late in game since they will reduce warfare and religion will spread to fast(though both techs and religion will have to be reworked)

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

im dont understand. what do you mean by 'forage' exactly?

I aggree with your idea of the techs.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

foraging is what early armies tended to do for food.

Supply was not the biggest concern of their leaders back then and armies had foraging parties, that searched the area for food.
Understandably the locals did not like this much, so usually this was only done in enemy territory.

You could say that civ already does this by making enemyunit occupied squares unusable for cities.


Edit: Another thing I didn't think of before was, that having units consume food, makes the early game stagnate even more.