Removing Rush Purchasing of Buildings?

[OzzyKP]

1) In late game Human players have much more money than AI

They can thus build / hurry Cannons quite easily - additionally to equiping other military professions - and steam-roll Natives and other European AIs.
It also allows Human Players to easily replace lost troops in WOI by mass production of Cannons.

Basically it gives Human Player more advantages than AI currently if he decides to use this "exploit" that way.
(I personally don't do it because it destroys my immersion and thus my fun.)

This makes me wonder whether we should get rid of hurrying production altogether. It is an abstraction well suited for Civ where there isn't an economy as detailed as Colonization, but seems out of place in Colonization.

All raw materials in this game come from somewhere. Either purchased from Europe or built by your colonists. If you hurry a building, or a cannon, where do the raw materials come from? Instantly transported from Europe? Thus bypassing the whole aspect of the game involving transporting goods. Or purchased from a hidden section of your domestic economy? A magic buy now button seems to just bypass most of the mechanics of this game.

If anything I could see spending money to make your existing workers work a bit faster (pay for overtime, incentive bonuses, etc). Either limited to carpenters or, perhaps, extended to all workers. Give just a percentage bonus on production for X turns. Could be a neat new mechanic that could be modified by civics or founding fathers.

But having raw materials instantly appear just seems like an odd fit.

 

[raystuttgart]

This makes me wonder whether we should get rid of hurrying production altogether.

I really do not like that idea.
(Even though I understand your point considering immersion a bit.)

1) AI really needs to be able to hurry productio of buildings sometimes.
It simply does not manage to plan its long term production and storage for Yields like Tools, Stone, ... like Human players.

2) Hurrying itself is not too cheap already and thus relatively well balanced.
It would not be an exploit if you could not use it for buying Cannons in WOI. (And "Changing Cannos to Professions" will aready take care of it.)

3) We had a big discussion on that in TAC already and at least 50% of team and community hated the idea of removing it. (Might be different now of course. )
To be honest I do "hurrying" as well from time to time if my Specialist would be sitting around 4 turns waiting for his Building.

4) The Colonies in the New World were not completely isolated from the Rest of the World. Thus "Hurrying" is not completely unimmersive to me.
There was a bit Free Trade (with Old World to acquire specific Goods) and there were Free Workers (to hire for some time to speed up constructing Buildings.)

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Basically we would spend effort and risk heavy bugs to kill a fuctional system only for "immersion" which could be argued about if it is really that "unimmersive".

• that AI needs
• that is not broken or generally unbalanced
• many players like to use occassionally or really have gotten used to it
  
• that has no exploits in itself - after "Chaning Cannons To Professions" will be implemented (to prevent Hurrying Military in WOI)

 

[Nightinggale]

We could use CivEffects to enable/disable hurry types like BTS does. We already have two CivEffects, which are given to humans and AI respectively. This means from a coding perspective it wouldn't be much work to make AI only hurry types without actually hardcoding the dll to have any AI specific code.

Another question is if I like that solution. I'm not too sure about it because we want to get rid of AI cheats, not introduce new ones. Also if some code breaks, it has a much higher risk of being undetected if it's AI only code.

If anything I could see spending money to make your existing workers work a bit faster (pay for overtime, incentive bonuses, etc).

We could add a setting for colonies where it gains +50% hammers, but then each hammer cost gold. While I like the idea, I feel like it would take ages to balance it correctly and it has the risk that we will never agree to what it a fair balance.

 

[OzzyKP]

Can't you hurry ships as well? (I know they are expensive though)

I haven't studied the game balance as much as you all have, but based on your comment in the other thread it seemed like rush buying was giving humans a bit of an advantage. That is what inspired my post, not just for immersion reasons. But if, as you say, it is unbalanced in only limited areas, then I'll take your word for it. I certainly don't want to make things harder for the AI. But allowing only the AI to rush-buy would be a good solution.

I'm not making the suggestion only for immersion. It is basically a parallel system which allows you to circumvent the core game system. Even with the increased costs for hurrying, it is much cheaper to rush-buy some cannons for your new ship than to invest in armories and gunsmiths and all the rest. It is much easier to have horses just suddenly appear in your landlocked city than transport them from Europe or raise them yourself.

 

[raystuttgart]

Can't you hurry ships as well? (I know they are expensive though)

Yes you can but it will not really help you in WOI (in WTP or in RaR).

You would just waste your money because the King's Fleet in WOI is so massive it will waste all your fleet that you want to throw at it.
The only realistic way to win WOI in WTP is on land where you can step by step crumble the land military of the King by a war of attrition.

Even with the increased costs for hurrying, it is much cheaper to rush-buy some cannons for your new ship than to invest in armories and gunsmiths and all the rest.

Not on the long term.

If you do want to build only one ship then yes, it is more effort and more expensive to get the production going (with Buildings, Experts, Producing Yields ...).
But if you want to have 20, then building your own Production Buildings, getting the Experts, Producting the Yields (instead of Buying in Europe which results in Price Increases) is dramatically better.

It is just the same in reality.
If you want to have only 1 TV - go and buy it.
If you want to have a million TVs - you rather build a prodution line.

Trust me, "Hurrying" is definitely not something you want to use all the time / too often.
(It will also increase the Prices for the Goods in Europe you need to buy for Hurrying and has additional costs in the calculation.)

It will get too expensive on the long run but can help you situationally - especially if you are impatiently waiting to get you expert to work.

Edit:

I personally use "Hurrying" only for the first low level buildings in my newly settled towns.
For everything else I do not consider the price to be worth it - especially if I can produce all the Yields required already in my colonies.

In WOI things start to change because you need to replace a lot of land military with a lot of time pressure and also have acquired a lot of money.
But this will change with the new concept "Rebuilding Cannons from Units to Professions" which will make hurrying land military impossible - if team and community like it.
(I personally consider the current way to be a heavy exploit)

 

[LordPer]

This makes me wonder whether we should get rid of hurrying production altogether. It is an abstraction well suited for Civ where there isn't an economy as detailed as Colonization, but seems out of place in Colonization.

All raw materials in this game come from somewhere. Either purchased from Europe or built by your colonists. If you hurry a building, or a cannon, where do the raw materials come from? Instantly transported from Europe? Thus bypassing the whole aspect of the game involving transporting goods. Or purchased from a hidden section of your domestic economy? A magic buy now button seems to just bypass most of the mechanics of this game.

If anything I could see spending money to make your existing workers work a bit faster (pay for overtime, incentive bonuses, etc). Either limited to carpenters or, perhaps, extended to all workers. Give just a percentage bonus on production for X turns. Could be a neat new mechanic that could be modified by civics or founding fathers.

But having raw materials instantly appear just seems like an odd fit.

I for one fully agree with you. Well maybe not remove the hurry function completely, but at least put more limits or restrictions on how it can be used. For example a need to have all required resources in the colony rather than just buy all resources out of thin air.

However I do also realize that it causes AI problems to change or remove the hurry function, so maybe be a bit careful with this.

Maybe sidetracking a bit here, but I can't stop wondering about the state of the AI when it comes to building both the colonies and army. Perhaps someone knows in-depth how the AI works, but I have come to suspect that the AI really buy's or hurry everything it builds. As an example go to the Demographics screen and look at the hammer production. In just about every WtP game I have done so far I'm always #1 with hundreds of hammer in production and best rival have like less then 10 hammer. Often it's the number of colonies the AI have (the one free hammer per colony).

I have even sort of confirmed my theory. In one game (relative early) I conquered most colonies of an AI controlled European power. I was surprised to see how far the AI actually had come in developing it's colonies. While I had barely put up my first few Town Hall's the AI already had a few City Hall's and other tier 3 buildings while appearing to have almost no production (hammer's) capabilities. With this in mind I started with some new starting strategies of starving the AI of early gold income and that was extremely effective, even at high difficulty settings. I was really surprised to see how easy it was to pacify the AI, I would even consider it to be a form of exploit.

I can put in some more details about this in case someone is interested.

 

[cammcken]

Only after seeing this thread did I search for and find the hurry production button. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Drunk-Monk]

4) The Colonies in the New World were not completely isolated from the Rest of the World. Thus "Hurrying" is not completely unimmersive to me.
There was a bit Free Trade (with Old World to acquire specific Goods) and there were Free Workers (to hire for some time to speed up constructing Buildings.)

But at the moment its possible to hurrying buildings in settlements that have no road or sea connections, in fact these are the settlements that have the most need for hurrying.

However I do also realize that it causes AI problems to change or remove the hurry function, so maybe be a bit careful with this.

Maybe sidetracking a bit here, but I can't stop wondering about the state of the AI when it comes to building both the colonies and army. Perhaps someone knows in-depth how the AI works, but I have come to suspect that the AI really buy's or hurry everything it builds. As an example go to the Demographics screen and look at the hammer production. In just about every WtP game I have done so far I'm always #1 with hundreds of hammer in production and best rival have like less then 10 hammer. Often it's the number of colonies the AI have (the one free hammer per colony).

This makes me question if the 'hurry' function handicaps the AI, as they spend their money hurrying basic buildings rather than buying specialists.

I totally agree with the OP that the 'hurry' function goes against the spirit of the game, which is to invest in specialists and planning and developing your economy, this function bypasses that. At the moment the game is too easy, and there is little reason to ever use units like slaves or criminals. Perhaps 'hurry' could be replaced by 'contracting' specialists for 20 turns or so, who would afterwards depart.

 

[Tugboatspotter]

If you get rid of hurrying production then where is all your money to go when your economy picks up? Buying units from Europe? That goes against the principle of becoming self sufficient and could unbalance the game.

I think it should be tweaked to make it progressively more costly, but ultimately should be kept.

 

[raystuttgart]

I think it should be tweaked to make it progressively more costly, but ultimately should be kept.

It already is scaling costs progressively a bit, because if you hurry you technically buy Yields (e.g. Tools and Stone) needed from Europe.
Thus the Europe Prices for those gets more expensive over time and Hurrying will become a bit more expensive.

Any stronger scaling is currently a very bad idea considering AI.