RFC Europe - Buildings Thread

[Disenfrancised]

Because we have no Buildings thread.

We should probably get on that then .

Based on the earlier discussion I took a look at the various buildings currently in the mod - so right now the 45 basic buildings (not including religion etc) in the Mod produce 22 happiness, and 19 healthy on top of the 19 happy and 14 healthy resources. I think we may have a bit too many buildings (or at least too many that are available at any one time, I think lots of buildings are fine if the earlier ones go obsolete before the later ones turn up) and too much possible healthy and happy. Some of buildings could do with reworking as well...

A quick design philosophy:
1. Less is more: fewer and simpler buildings is a good idea
2. Thematic linkage makes things more accessible for new players: being able to clearly group buildings into 'sets' of similar functionality means less to remember and less to explain.
3. The game is about choice: having clearly superior options restricts choice, thus try and equalise the power of buildings that do similar things.

Proposals:

A)The buildings from early in history (Pagan Shrine, Herbalist, Manor House etc) go obsolete sooner or at all.
-Manor House with Banking
-Herbalist with Chemistry
-Pagan Shrine is fine
-Inn goes away with Liberalism (replaced by coffee shop, so if implimented give Coffee shop a 10% espionage bonus)
-Toll House obsoleted by Economics.

B)Concatenate some weak buildings
-Mason and Carpenter merged into 'Builders Yard' that comes with replaceable parts, give it a 10% base production bonus and cost 1 unhealthiness too.
-Get rid of the Butcher with the Cow and Pig Commerce bonus given to the Grocer building, and its Sheep commerce bonus given to the Warehouse (Warehouse and Grocer now give bonuses from six resources each).
-MAYBE: Merge the Toll House and the Inn (loosing the Inns food bonus) as both are trade infrastructure/regional influence themed buildings coming in at roughly the same time, combined building should probably be called the Inn (or Highway Inn).

C)Military production buildings, since the raising and maintenance of armies was generally unpopular with wherever they were stationed, now produce some unhappiness or unhealthy.
-Barracks, 1 unhappy
-Archery Range, 1 unhappy
-Stables, 2 unhappy
-Siege Workshop, 1 unhealthiness
-Drydock, 1 unhappy 1 unhealthiness
The UB versions should lack these drawbacks as another advantage to them.

D)Improve some buildings and weaken others:
-Luxury store to give commerce bonus for dye as well (now has 6 to match with Warehouse and Grocer)
-Tanner renamed Tannery (that naming issue irks me ), have the Civpedia explicitly mention production of glues and stuff so that its clearly about lots of different products. Change so it gives 2 unhealthiness, a base 10% production bonus, and a 5% production bonus from deer, pigs, cows, and coal. The applications of its products (leather, glues, oils) were far more work and production oriented than making people happy.
-Textile Mill as discussed earlier changed to 10% base production, with 5% bonus for Sheep, Cotton and Coal. Requires coal to build. Now the production buildings of Tanner, Blacksmith, Builders Yard and Textile Mill are all similar in operation. They all work slightly better when the transition to Coal based energy usage occurs (also the Tannery and Builders Yard use Coal by products)
-With the above new production scheme in mind, change the Guild Hall so it no longer gives a production bonus, but instead allows 2-3 engineers to be hired ala the Industrial Park of normal CIV4 (if it gives 3 engineers, increase the unhealthiness to 3 as well).
-Warehouse and Luxury Store both allow 1 merchant, making them similar to late grocers (also allowing more merchants overall)
-Brewery causes 1 unhealthiness.
-Weaver picks up the Fur +1 happiness lost from the Tanner (fur coats need stiching too after all ), and now Weaver and Brewery use the same number of resources.
-Smokehouse doesn't give health bonus from fish, as fish already gets a bonus from lighthouse
-Granary gives a health bonus from Potatos (they were often stored communally as well). Equal now number of resources to Smokehouse.
-Weaver and Brewery made more expensive.
-Dungeon causes 1 unhealthiness
-Walls cause 1 unhealthiness (due to overcrowding within city walls)

SIDENOTES ON UNIQUE BUILDINGS
-As mentioned before the Soldier Tennant, Arsenal, and Stan don't have the respective health and unhappiness disadvantage of the base building, as expressions of national culture are more easily tolerated.
-The Austrian Opera house appears to have been modified from the Colosseum rather than the theatre it replaces (inherent happiness, +1 happy per 20% rather than 10%, costs 80 rather than 50, doesn't give happy from dye) was that intentional?
-The Noria is pretty anaemic right now, and I'm not sure how a production bonus fits in with mechanisms making water go further; how about changing it so that IF the city has Fresh Water it gives +4% food for Wheat, Barley, and Rice (maybe make it 10 more expensive too?).

 

[BurnEmDown]

Brewery shouldn't cause unhealthiness. Actually beers and such were quite healthy for people in medieval Europe, you see in the waters there were a lot of germs, and adding little alcohol to them killed the germ and made the drinks healthier.
Also I don't see why Arsenal shouldn't give unhealthiness, except for gaming issue.
I mean sure it's a UU and the people shouldn't be unhappy but if the building's bad for your health there's nothing much that can be done.

 

[jessiecat]

@ Disenfranchised. I like most of the suggestions, with a couple of provisos.

1. The Manor House shouldn't be obsoleted. Landed estates based on some form of serfdom survived well into the 19th.C, especially in central and eastern Europe.

2. We should be careful about coal. It was important for forging, esp. for weapons, but it didn't become very important in industrial applications until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, ie. late 18thC..

3. Potatoes come too late in history to have much use in our mod. The first ones were only imported
from the early 17thC. onwards and were not grown on any great scale until the mid-18thC..

4. The Noria is underpowered. It didn't just provide irrigation but powered many early industrial applications and circulated fresh water to the cities and enabled sewage systems. So its benefits should combine food, health and hammers.

 

[Disenfrancised]

Brewery shouldn't cause unhealthiness. Actually beers and such were quite healthy for people in medieval Europe, you see in the waters there were a lot of germs, and adding little alcohol to them killed the germ and made the drinks healthier.

Drinking was certainly healthy back then - the unhealthiness is from the process of brewing and distilling (since the building also represents spirit production), which often released some harmful biproducts into the environment.

Also I don't see why Arsenal shouldn't give unhealthiness, except for gaming issue. I mean sure it's a UU and the people shouldn't be unhappy but if the building's bad for your health there's nothing much that can be done.

You may be right there.

@ Disenfranchised. I like most of the suggestions, with a couple of provisos.

1. The Manor House shouldn't be obsoleted. Landed estates based on some form of serfdom survived well into the 19th.C, especially in central and eastern Europe.

They did indeed survive, but right now the manor house ends up in every city by the end of the game - the tech trailing eastern europeans just hadn't obsoleted it yet . Though maybe banking is too early - any suggestions?

2. We should be careful about coal. It was important for forging, esp. for weapons, but it didn't become very important in industrial applications until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, ie. late 18thC..

Thats why I think coal should give lots of bonus, but is revealled quite late in the tech tree, just when you do get it all your production buildings start working better.

3. Potatoes come too late in history to have much use in our mod. The first ones were only imported from the early 17thC. onwards and were not grown on any great scale until the mid-18thC..

The first potatoes were introduced in 1536, the lack of usage was due to social barriers rather than integral ones. Perhaps its better to have potatoes revealled by a late technology (biology? Scientific method) rather than a time delay to show this.

4. The Noria is underpowered. It didn't just provide irrigation but powered many early industrial applications and circulated fresh water to the cities and enabled sewage systems. So its benefits should combine food, health and hammers.

Unfortunately if it were to do all of those things well it would be massively overpowered in game terms. I think one good bonus should be provided (+3 health, or 10% hammers, or 10% food) if the city has fresh water, we just need to pick the most thematic one.

 

[merijn_v1]

I like the idea many building provides , because we have too much health in the game. You can grow you cities easily above size 20 without being unhealthy. And AFAIK, the Medieval ages weren't the most healthy ages. So you haven't big healthy cities anymore.

 

[micbic]

Anyone there played SMAC? In case yes, you will remember two specific buildings, the Hab Complex and the Habitation Dome, which allowed to get your city pop over 7 and 14 respectively. IMHO, the Wells could play a similar role. See it like that:
Well: An early tech, allows pop over 5
Public Baths: Kind of later (1300-1500), allows pop over 10

I think that it would stop population boom phenomena, while giving these buildings a diverse role, apart from the stereotype '' +1 ''

Thoughts/objections?

 

[Wessel V1]

I like the idea but I don't know if it actually works. Most cities have plenty of production so these buildings have to be rather expensive to give them some impact on the game.

I just got a very simplistic idea that could also solve the "problem". Well, actually there is no big problem IMO. There is nothing wrong with cities with 25 pop. that work all land available and have some specialists. Cities in the Medieval age also had some specialists, and most people lived outside the city anyway, so there is no big problem about that. The problem I see is, that a city of 12 pop. is a city of 1 mln. citizens, and that is of course not historical. It is very easy to adjust this though. A city of 20 pop. could translate into a city of 500,000 habitants, or perhaps 400,000, and the problem is gone, isn't it?

 

[embryodead]

Anyone there played SMAC? In case yes, you will remember two specific buildings, the Hab Complex and the Habitation Dome, which allowed to get your city pop over 7 and 14 respectively. IMHO, the Wells could play a similar role. See it like that:
Well: An early tech, allows pop over 5
Public Baths: Kind of later (1300-1500), allows pop over 10

I think that it would stop population boom phenomena, while giving these buildings a diverse role, apart from the stereotype '' +1 ''

Thoughts/objections?

That's going back to Civ3 mechanics for no reason. introduced in Civ4 does exactly the same, it replaced Civ3 Aqueduct/Hospital (same as SMAC domes), and allows fine tuning up to every single point, instead of two fixed thresholds. Why putting in two mechanics doing the same thing when you can adjust the values? There's simply way too many health from resources and the bonus buildings all come early. Some obvious fixes are in the OP, like reducing the health from fish from 3 to 2.

 

[micbic]

I just got a very simplistic idea that could also solve the "problem". Well, actually there is no big problem IMO. There is nothing wrong with cities with 25 pop. that work all land available and have some specialists. Cities in the Medieval age also had some specialists, and most people lived outside the city anyway, so there is no big problem about that. The problem I see is, that a city of 12 pop. is a city of 1 mln. citizens, and that is of course not historical. It is very easy to adjust this though. A city of 20 pop. could translate into a city of 500,000 habitants, or perhaps 400,000, and the problem is gone, isn't it?

It also is a good solution. Actually, I have just thought out an algorithm:
According to that, if a city has n shown pop, the actual city pop should actually be n^2*1000. Eg, A city with 4 pop gets 16000, a city with 9 pop 81000, etc

That's going back to Civ3 mechanics for no reason. introduced in Civ4 does exactly the same, it replaced Civ3 Aqueduct/Hospital (same as SMAC domes), and allows fine tuning up to every single point, instead of two fixed thresholds. Why putting in two mechanics doing the same thing when you can adjust the values? There's simply way too many health from resources and the bonus buildings all come early. Some obvious fixes are in the OP, like reducing the health from fish from 3 to 2.

Oh yes, I forgotten the mecahnics were in Civ III as well (actually, having 10 12-sized cities was annoying). Anyway, I see the point, and have to agree it is actually right.

 

[3Miro]

The pop number is just a cosmetic feature. We can easily fix that to be whatever.

Civ III mechanics makes some tech too overpowered, the one that gets them first gets huge bonus in economy.

Too much health and too much happiness are problems in the game. I don't think adding unhealth and unhappiness to buildings would be the best fix. How about we change the unhealthiness and unhappiness generated by people. Right now 1 citizen = 1 unhealth and 1 unhappy, we can make that 2 unhealth and 2 unhappy. That would cut the size of the cities by 2 and will make sure we do not get big cities very early on.

 

[BurnEmDown]

Lower it by half seems too much, how about 1.5 unhappiness and unhealthiness?

 

[Panopticon]

I think you could also delay many of the health/happiness benefits of early buildings by moving them to late buildings, or remove the second bonus altogether for some resources. There are lots available in the early game for civs like (say) Cordoba, which I'm playing at the moment, and those civs also have access to a very diverse set of resources compared to RFC civs of its time.

 

[st.lucifer]

We could also create a more gradual curve by having the development of engineering/biology/social order techs give a bonus of +1 health in all cities upon discovery, if we went with 2 health/unhappiness per population. 2 happiness does seem excessive, though - doesn't that make building productive cities impossible on emperor level, as they're constantly in revolt? We'd also have to check that the -2 health penalty doesn't result in negative growth for cities that don't have access to fresh water, or who have too many marshes in their BFC.

 

[Disenfrancised]

Whilst I do think harsher building penalities is a good solution (as it means you can have some big cities as long as you keep them 'clean'), the harsher health and happiness costs is also an interesting idea.

If we do do that is it possible to have a scaling cost rather than a straight 2 per pop, so that later pop points cost more: example were health and happiness = round down ( [Populations size]^1.1 )

Population	1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Unhealthiness	1  2  3  5  6  7  9 10 11 13 14 15 17 18 20 21 23 24 26 27 28 30 31 33 34 36 38 39 41 42

 

[3Miro]

Whilst I do think harsher building penalities is a good solution (as it means you can have some big cities as long as you keep them 'clean'), the harsher health and happiness costs is also an interesting idea.

If we do do that is it possible to have a scaling cost rather than a straight 2 per pop, so that later pop points cost more: example were health and happiness = round down ( [Populations size]^1.1 )

Population	1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Unhealthiness	1  2  3  5  6  7  9 10 11 13 14 15 17 18 20 21 23 24 26 27 28 30 31 33 34 36 38 39 41 42

I like the idea, I will try to implement it to see what effects it will have.

 

[micbic]

I also like this idea, since the unhealth/pop ratio starts low, but gradually increases.
Completely off-topic: How do I calculate x^n, where n is not an integer?

 

[Disenfrancised]

I also like this idea, since the unhealth/pop ratio starts low, but gradually increases.
Completely off-topic: How do I calculate x^n, where n is not an integer?

Well any program or calculator should do it for you but if you want the longhand you should think of it as a fraction. Thus X to the power of 1.1 is the same as X to the power of 11/10, which is the same as (X^11)^1/10, so you take the tenth root of X to the power 11.

 

[micbic]

Well, thanks.

 

[3Miro]

I also like this idea, since the unhealth/pop ratio starts low, but gradually increases.
Completely off-topic: How do I calculate x^n, where n is not an integer?

For an integer, it is a for loop (for i = 1 to n .... )

x^alpha is a more complicated concept. Suppose we are working with floats (doubles) i.e. floating point precision. Then there are stable algorithms to compute e^x and ln(x)

e^x = sum x^i / factorial( i ), i goes from 0 to a large enough number. (Finding what is large enough is a problem in itself, let me know if you are interested in it)

ln(x) is tricky. One way to do it is: you set y = ln(x), get both sized as e^y = x and solve the equation e^y - x = 0 using something like Newton's method, i.e. recursively set y = y - ( e^y - x) / e^y. The recursion converges to the solution and you keep on working until e^y - x is very small. Theoretically this converges for every initial guess for y, in practice you want to pick something that is slightly higher.

In C++ and I suppose other programing languages as well, there are exp(x) and log(x) functions for e^x and ln(x).

To get a generic alpha^beta, then you use properties of logarithms to get:

alpha^beta = e^( ln( alpha^beta) ) = e^( beta * ln(alpha) ),

in C++ it will be something like:

alpha^beta = exp( beta * log( alpha) )

I hope this helps

 

[micbic]

No offense 3Miro, but Disenfrancised got it more understandable. Thanks anyway