Opportunities

[Txurce]

Do you have the gold reserves to pay it and still have a comfortable amount?
Do you anticipate the game lasting more than 50 more turns?

If the answer to either of these questions is 'no', then pass. Otherwise, do it!

No, I'll take + culture or science or production every time. It seems worth more to me than +3g after 30 turns. I forget how Thal recently said he values them in balancing. If it's even, then the 30 turn wait to get in the balck makes it the worst choice, for sure.

 

[albie_123]

I'm wary that the after-war thing would encourage warmongering, or strategic "wage a meaningless war for a while just to reap the recovery benefits" play.

Well it wouldn't happen every single time. Saying it would encourage warmongering is like saying the previous events encourage building a mine.

 

[wobuffet]

Well it wouldn't happen every single time. Saying it would encourage warmongering is like saying the previous events encourage building a mine.

No, it's not. I will build a mine if I have the worker-turns to spare. Starting no-conflict ("cold") wars with CSs I don't have relations with or AIs that dislike me, then just ending them to see if I win the bonus, has no (opportunity) cost.

 

[Thalassicus]

1 = 1 = 2 = 3 = 3 = 3 = 3

This is the goal. If you feel gold does not adequately meet the standard, how would you suggest we improve its importance?

 

[Txurce]

1 = 1 = 2 = 3 = 3 = 3 = 3

This is the goal. If you feel gold does not adequately meet the standard, what would you suggest to improve its value?

That's what I thought, and why Jaybe's pov seemed off. Taking the gold option makes you wait 30 turns before you start drawing evenly with every other choice. On the other hand, the option of an instant temple or academy or even water mill early on feels like manna from heaven. I would lean toward making (c) +1g, and (a) and (b) two of the other choices. But if that's not practical, I would just boost the gold to +4.

 

[Thalassicus]

We can change the yield from opportunities, but that's just one small part of the game as a whole. Improvements, buildings, policies and so on are all designed under the assumption 3 gold equals 3 of the other yields. If that assumption isn't accurate, then we need to fix it, by improving the overall importance of gold in the game. Does that make sense?

 

[wobuffet]

In the early game, 3 = 3 is probably not too far off. But relatively quickly, money becomes less and less useful. (Yes, so does each beaker, hammer, etc., but not so the same extent, I'd argue. By turn 180 or so, I almost always have tons of money floating around that I throw at CSs. Then I promptly feel like I'm cheating because the AI has way more gold than I do, but they're just hoarding it instead of lavishing it on CSs.)

Perhaps we should have a poll or something? Multipliers make things difficult, but I'd say 3 = 2.5 = 2 is more like it. Beakers could easily be adjusted by scaling various buildings' yields or tech costs. Culture is tricky because it's incredibly useful (6 >>> 2) if you're pursuing a Cultural Victory, and not nearly as valuable otherwise; however, if these are going to be players' choices, we should assume the most valuable case for each yield.

 

[Thalassicus]

Most yield income is very low numbers, such as 1 from tiles adjacent to rivers. Since decimal improvement yields are not possible, we cannot adjust incomes, and must have the 3=3=3 value ratio I posted earlier. Most costs are very large numbers so there's a lot of wiggle room (200 to buy a scout). This means we can change expenses and rewards from those expenses.

6 >>> 2

I got this from 2 = 2 artists of 3 culture apiece = 6. However, culture is an unusual exception to the above rules because there's few sources of it from terrain. This means we could set artists to 2, in theory. The problem is the psychological effect it would have. I strongly suspect most people would infer artists are less powerful than other specialists if this change were made, since all the others give 3 yield and artists give 2. This might revert back to the unfortunate situation in vanilla where everyone avoided artists.

This is why I aim for equality between the major yields. In game design psychology is more important than mathematics. The perfect example is the spearman-vs-tank situation. People almost universally felt frustrated when we lost battles with 98% chance of success. Our mind inherently rounds up such situations to 100%. Another example is things like the Great Lighthouse can be mathematically very powerful, yet be perceived as very weak, as demonstrated here on the City Development thread.

On a side note... this is why back in 2010 I seriously considered scaling up all yields by a factor of 5. If everything was 5 times higher we'd have a lot more room for adjustment. Or alternatively... if we could have half-yields on a tile, but that would require the game core only Firaxis has access to.

 

[Seek]

I've posted a reply to this discussion in the Specialists thread, which seems more appropriate, here.

 

[Txurce]

Improvements, buildings, policies and so on are all designed under the assumption 3 gold equals 3 of the other yields. If that assumption isn't accurate, then we need to fix it, by improving the overall importance of gold in the game. Does that make sense?

I don't know that it's inaccurate enough to really rock the boat. Gold is often indirect, and that makes it less appealing psychologically. In the Opportunities example, It doesn't seem to be worth waiting 30 turns to get an indirect benefit.

Most costs are very large numbers so there's a lot of wiggle room (200 to buy a scout). This means we can change expenses and rewards from those expenses.

Gold's importance would rise in relation to hammers, right?

Rightly or wrongly, I tend to prefer hammers over gold. If everything cost more hammers to the point where I thought it was worth focusing on gold so as to regularly purchase improvements (rather than build them), then I would. I don't know if that would create too large a shift in the game... but it could be quite balancing.

This is why I aim for equality between the major yields. In game design psychology is more important than mathematics... Our mind inherently rounds up such situations to 100%. Another example is things like the Great Lighthouse can be mathematically very powerful, yet be perceived as very weak, as demonstrated here on the City Development thread.

Yep. Shortly after you explained the benefits of the GL, I had the opportunity to build it. I gave it some thought and... passed.

 

[Thalassicus]

In v132 I reorganized opportunity rewards so paid options exchange gold for a non-gold resource (like citystates do), and free options give 1-2 per turn. If we cannot invest in an opportunity, the extra revenue makes it easier to afford future ones.

 

[Zaldron]

1 = 1 = 2 = 3 = 3 = 3 = 3

This is the goal. If you feel gold does not adequately meet the standard, how would you suggest we improve its importance?

I find that early in the game I'll always pick the +3 hammers while late in the game I'll almost always take the food. The reason is that hammers are just so hard to come by and 3 extra hammers might be a 20% increase in production for that early wonder. In contrast at the end of the game extra food lets you keep growing and either running more specialists or high-yield improved tiles.

I'm not sure there's a good way to balance this shift over time effectively. I find that consistently throughout the game production is always worth more than gold as a yield. I'm usually swimming in gold even in a 3 city tall empire, so extra gold isn't that beneficial. This holds all the way until the end of the game where if I start upgrading all my units to mech infantry I start going negative income.

 

[Txurce]

In v132 I reorganized opportunity rewards so paid options exchange gold for a non-gold resource (like citystates do), and free options give 1-2 per turn. If we cannot invest in an opportunity, the extra revenue makes it easier to afford future ones.

This works for me.

I find that early in the game I'll always pick the +3 hammers while late in the game I'll almost always take the food. The reason is that hammers are just so hard to come by and 3 extra hammers might be a 20% increase in production for that early wonder. In contrast at the end of the game extra food lets you keep growing and either running more specialists or high-yield improved tiles.

I'm not sure there's a good way to balance this shift over time effectively. I find that consistently throughout the game production is always worth more than gold as a yield. I'm usually swimming in gold even in a 3 city tall empire, so extra gold isn't that beneficial. This holds all the way until the end of the game where if I start upgrading all my units to mech infantry I start going negative income.

Speaking generally, I do the same in the very early game, but then switch to gold (and science) in the late game with Villages.

 

[skodkim]

Hi Thal

Looking forward to v132 that keep mentioning. Any updated ETA on this?

\Skodkim

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm hoping by Friday or so. I've generally been aiming for Friday releases so everyone has time to try stuff over weekends.

 

[Jaybe]

Thal, we appreciate your productivity very much, especially when the collective creativity is so ... exuberant!

But really, you should take the time once in a while to play a REAL game of civ -- a large & epic game of civ. It can be like the difference between checkers & chess. Spend more than just a weekend on it; a LOT more.*

Just never do it NOW!


* As I may have stated before, my large/epics usually take 40-60 hours over 2-3 weeks (but then again, I AM a little patient (and slow). Since I have issues (forebodings?) with the first 60-100 turns getting established, I often prefer the 'fun' of the latter part of the game and tend to drag it out.

 

[Txurce]

Tying this into the overabundance issue: logically if there's too much gold, then Opportunities should cost more, or deliver less (since there's too much of everything else, too).

As an additional source of improvements, Opportunities are a brand-new, major factor in benefits inflation. Once again, adding more choice and more fun contributes to the overall complaint that the game has become too easy. But if you alter the cost/benefit of Opportunities, then they naturally become less fun. I don't think we can have our cake and eat it, too.

 

[Jaybe]

Nah, you should NEED to take what opportunities are available, because while there is overabundance, costs are going to become higher to compensate.

 

[Txurce]

Nah, you should NEED to take what opportunities are available, because while there is overabundance, costs are going to become higher to compensate.

That's effectively the way I suggested we go: either charge more for valuable stuff, start with more difficulty, making the valuable stuff necessary rather than superfluous, or a combination of both.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm now in the debugging phase of the new trigger system, on track for the scheduled Friday beta release.