SDK Request - New building effects based on number of bonuses

[davidlallen]

I have read this thread, but I never really understood it. Deliverator has recently added a CHOAM corporation which also gives income from spice. The maintenance cost of a corp can be adjusted to zero; it can convert any list of resources into any type of commerce or yield.

How is your request different from a corporation?

 

[Ahriman]

Corporations have all kinds of extra issues tied into them, they have maintenance (and that maintenance is very confusing), they are spread by missionaries, they have a "holy city"/hq aspect with a single founder, they have to be established by sacrificing a great person or by python, etc.
Plus, you can't have that many individual corporations: they take up UI space in the city screen, and display an hq icon on cities in the main screen.

The corporation mechanic works fine when implemented like the Dunewars House Spice Firm: a single building with one copy which can never spread elsewhere.

But what we want are buildings that can be constructed in every city that have effects based on the number of resources (not just the presence or not of a particular resource).

Like a Spice silo building that can be constructed anywhere that gives +0.15 gold per turn per spice resource in that city.

Or a Gargantuan Larder building that can be constructed anywhere that gives +0.5 food per turn for each extra pig, cow, horse, sheep or deer resource.

And we want any faction that meets the appropriate requirements (eg: civic = spice industry, or faction = ogre tyrants) to be able to build the structure, rather than having to rely on a corporation being founded somewhere.

The corporation itself doesn't really work well for this; it causes large gold maintenance costs for each resource consumed, and it is spread by missionary rather than by building.

If you can think of a way to get the effects we want straight from corps without the associated clutter, then that could work fine too.

 

[Deliverator]

Yes, we want buildings that provide a scalable bonus based on the number of resources connected without any of the other corporation mechanic clutter.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, just like corporations but simpler.

We went through this long discussion about the N squared behavior, and this is what you want. If I have five cities, and six copies of the resource, then I get 30 benefits. Each city, gets the benefit of all the copies of the resource. Right?

 

[Deliverator]

Correct.

As we said earlier you can always tune the effect scaling accordingly, using fractional values 0.25, 0.5, etc.

The point of the exercise is to give a benefit to controlling multiple copies of a resource rather than just one. For Dune Wars, additional benefits from multiple Spice and additional water from multiple Polar Ice would be the prime candidates.

 

[Ahriman]

I have five cities, and six copies of the resource, then I get 30 benefits.

Right. Hence why the benefits per unit need to be small.

So, 5 cities, 6 copies, 0.15 gold each = +4.5 gold per turn total.

8 cities, 15 copies, 0.15 gold each = +18 gold per turn.

This is the easiest way I think to make Spice more important, which many people have called for. The building could require Spice Industry civic too.

We can then easily tune the number per resource and building hammer cost up or down to balance.

 

[Deliverator]

This can also feed into the new list of Wonders. Ideas like these (maybe with better names and fractional values):

Guild Research Facility (Wonder) +3 Research per Spice consumed
Prescience Chamber (Wonder) +3 Espionage per Spice consumed

I am going to try and collate the wonder ideas this weekend, so I can throw a few of these it if this change is going ahead.

 

[Ahriman]

Guild Research Facility (Wonder) +3 Research per Spice consumed
Prescience Chamber (Wonder) +3 Espionage per Spice consumed

I like the idea of these, though I worry if +3 beakers per spice might be too high. GRF + 20 spice + library + university + academy = +120 beakers from one wonder. Maybe if its expensive enough hammerwise.

Removing the ability to build forts outside cultural borders (a human player exploit to get more spice) would help reduce the potential for abuse.

 

[davidlallen]

Removing the ability to build forts outside cultural borders (a human player exploit to get more spice) would help reduce the potential for abuse.

You have mentioned this a few times. It is a bit of a tangent, but do you mean, forts should only be buildable inside cultural borders? Or do you mean, forts can be built anywhere but they should not produce any cultural borders?

 

[Ahriman]

but do you mean, forts should only be buildable inside cultural borders

This is what I meant. So they can push your borders out, and the AI uses them like this, but they can't be used to claim resources (whether spice or others) outside your culture, which the AI can't do.

Or do you mean, forts can be built anywhere but they should not produce any cultural borders?

I don't think this would work as well, it would make forts uninteresting.

 

[davidlallen]

That is curious. In vanilla, forts can be built anywhere, and they do not spread cultural borders. So your preference is the opposite; only within borders, and spreading cultural borders. I guess the AI spreads its borders this way completely by accident; it will build forts on strategic resources that are not within any city's BFC. Some of these may happen to be on the edge of cultural control, so it spreads.

I agree that having both "build anywhere" and "spreads culture" leads to a human only exploit, but I would have thought that bringing it back to vanilla would be better.

 

[davidlallen]

Back to the original topic, the proposed new building type would replace both the existing spice corps and the choam corp, right? So we would have no corporations in the game. It doesn't matter much to me, but I am still testing my understanding.

Also, please consider how this should be reported. Suppose we give +espionage, or +food, or whatever from these buildings. Which all places should this be shown? It is more complicated if new subtotal lines need to be created.

 

[Ahriman]

That is curious. In vanilla, forts can be built anywhere, and they do not spread cultural borders.

In vanilla, forts are nearly useless and hardly ever see any play. I've never tried building them outside cultural borders, there was never really any gain from doing so.

I like the idea of culture-spreading forts, I just don't want it to be a human exploit.

The Dunewars AI also builds them on tiles that do not have a bonus resource (or at least, not one that has yet been revealed - maybe they had Stradvium or Uranium) on its borders in order to expand slightly.

the proposed new building type would replace both the existing spice corps and the choam corp, right?

No. As referenced earlier in the thread (posts 8, 10), these other mechanics would be *in addition* to the existing house spice corp. The house spice corp is good, it doesn't need to be removed.
Similarly, CHOAM would stay. The idea is to boost spice slightly, and make it more interesting.

However, I would block the Wonders from being in the same city as CHOAM shrine, House spice hqs, or each other. One major spice magnifier per city.

Also, please consider how this should be reported.

The yields should ideally be reported in the building list, next to the building, like for a religious shrine.

 

[davidlallen]

As referenced earlier in the thread (posts 8, 10), these other mechanics would be *in addition* to the existing house spice corp. The house spice corp is good, it doesn't need to be removed.

The new mechanism will duplicate the spice corps. We could use the new mechanism, so that everything uses the same mechanism. Or in the interest of minimizing changes, we could leave them unchanged. My point was, the *effect* of the spice corp is the same either way.

However, I would block the Wonders from being in the same city as CHOAM shrine, House spice hqs, or each other. One major spice magnifier per city.

Well, that is a separate project. The request in this thread is to allow any resource to produce any commerce/yield. If you also want to make certain types of buildings mutually exclusive, we can discuss that; how would you like that to work?

 

[Ahriman]

My point was, the *effect* of the spice corp is the same either way.

Oh, see what you mean. Thats a good idea; change the spice corps to use the new mechanic, and then they can just give +3 gold per spice resource. Make them a National Wonder limit 1 that requires spice to build. Have them auto-destroyed when the city is captured. That way, a faction who loses their spice corp can just rebuild it. We wouldn't even need 9 different versions; a single version could do fine for the House firms, and then another for CHOAM.

You're right, that is much cleaner than using a corp.

Well, that is a separate project.

Understood. Its lower priority.

we can discuss that; how would you like that to work?

I'm not sure technically the best way to do this; I thought it was already something easily doable. The way I would interpret it is:
If a city already has a "House Spice Corp" national wonder or the Landsraad religious shrine or Guild Research Facility or a Prescience Chamber, then you cannot build any of those other structures in this list.

(If you manage to build one of them in the Landsraad holy city before you create the CHOAM shrine through a great person, you should still be able to create the shrine).

 

[davidlallen]

If a city already has a "House Spice Corp" national wonder or the Landsraad religious shrine or Guild Research Facility or a Prescience Chamber, then you cannot build any of those other structures in this list.

Are you saying that only one building which uses a particular resource, can be built in a city? For corporations, each corp can use a number of different resources. For example, Sid's Sushi uses crab, clams, fish and rice. So a Sid's Sushi building (assuming we defined a building just this way) would prevent some other building which uses crab, gold, silver and gems, because they both use crab. Is that what you mean?

One problem is that there is no way to unbuild a building. So if you define two buildings which use the same resource but give any different benefits, the user may wish to unbuild the first to build the second, and there is no way to do that. How should we handle this?

I am not sure how the user would describe exceptions like "shrines should be buildable even if they use the same resource" in the xml. That seems to add a lot of complexity. Do you have any thoughts about that?

 

[Ahriman]

Are you saying that only one building which uses a particular resource, can be built in a city?

Not quite... this isn't something that should be built into the resource unit effect, it should be specificlaly implemented for the Wonders, for balance reasons.
So for example, there is no balance reason to block both a "spice silo" (+0.15 gold per spice) and a House Spice Corp (+3 gold per spice) from being in the same city.
But we should block having House Spice Corp (+3 gold per spice) and Guild Research Facility (+3 beakers per spice) from being in the same city.

So, the block is not built into the mechanic; it is defined only for very specific wonder combinations, for balance reasons.

The mechanic should be as general as possible; if a mod wants to have 5 different buildings that all give a bonus for a resource (like spice resource) and wants to allow them to all be in the same city, it should do that.

Similarly, there is nothing in the corporation mechanic stopping you from having multiple corps in the same city that use the same resource (I think), its just that the designers deliberately set corps that used the same resource to "compete" with each other, and thus not be present in the same city, for balance reasons. I don't think thats necessary though, is it?

So if you define two buildings which use the same resource but give any different benefits, the user may wish to unbuild the first to build the second, and there is no way to do that. How should we handle this?

a) The ordinary buildings shoudln't block, only the powerful wonders.
b) We handle this by forcing the player to plan; just like how in vanilla you have to plan because you can only have 2 national wonders per city. I don't see this as a problem. And the AI will just build the wonders in its best city that allows it to be built.

"shrines should be buildable even if they use the same resource" in the xml

Does this even need to be done in XML? I don't know how building blocks works, codewise.
But is creating a shrine from a great person the same as building it?

But I would imagine that the blocks would be set up for each wonder.
So: House Spice Firm cannot be built if CHOAM shrine, GRF or Presicence chamber are present in the city.
GRF cannot be built if HSF, PC or CHOAM shrine are present in the city.
CHOAM shrine can always be built (with a great prophet or trader), but only in the Landsraad holy city.
PC cannot be built if HSF, CHOAM shrine or GRF is already present.

 

[Deliverator]

The new mechanism will duplicate the spice corps. We could use the new mechanism, so that everything uses the same mechanism. Or in the interest of minimizing changes, we could leave them unchanged. My point was, the *effect* of the spice corp is the same either way.

Oh, see what you mean. Thats a good idea; change the spice corps to use the new mechanic, and then they can just give +3 gold per spice resource. Make them a National Wonder limit 1 that requires spice to build. Have them auto-destroyed when the city is captured. That way, a faction who loses their spice corp can just rebuild it. We wouldn't even need 9 different versions; a single version could do fine for the House firms, and then another for CHOAM.

You're right, that is much cleaner than using a corp.

It is not quite true that the effect of the spice corp is the same using these buildings. The amount of the bonus would have to be retuned since there would no longer be any corporation maintenance involved. So I think we need to be careful if we are thinking of removing the existing corps.

If we implement this using similar tags to corporations as I suggested in the OP, then there would be nothing to stop some of these buildings have a cost/benefit like +3 beakers and -1 gold from Spice, with the -1 gold represent the cost or maintenance of running the building. This might diminish the need to prevent two being in the same city.

The main thrust of this idea from my point of view was to provide bonuses other than more gold from spice.

So, the block is not built into the mechanic; it is defined only for very specific wonder combinations, for balance reasons. ... But we should block having House Spice Corp (+3 gold per spice) and Guild Research Facility (+3 beakers per spice) from being in the same city.

Not sure that this is really a big problem. Do we really need to go to all this effort to block some combinations of buildings and not others. Why not just keep it general and if there are any big balance problems we can look to address them later?

I don't want the main purpose of this idea to get lost beneath additional requirements and over-engineering. This idea of buildings blocking other buildings can be done as separate project if we really need it. It does add a lot of complexity.

 

[Ahriman]

The amount of the bonus would have to be retuned since there would no longer be any corporation maintenance involved.

IIRC the HQ building currently gives ~+5 gold, +1 beaker, and the corp gives +3 gold per spice, and some maintenance.
A buildnig that gave +3 gold per spice with no maintenance should be pretty similar to this, no?

This might diminish the need to prevent two being in the same city.

There is also a logical reason; the gold you get from the spice corporation represents you taking the spice and selling it off planet. If you're selling it, you can't also use it in a research lab or consume it to gain prescience.

Though of course... logically it doesn't make sense that the bonus a resource gives in a city isnt' diluted by the number of cities you have accessing that resource. So there is still a fudge either way.

Why not just keep it general and if there are any big balance problems we can look to address them later?

I could live with that, the blocks arent' a high priority. The priority is the core mechanic, we can leave the rest to balance testing.

 

[Deliverator]

IIRC the HQ building currently gives ~+5 gold, +1 beaker, and the corp gives +3 gold per spice, and some maintenance.
A buildnig that gave +3 gold per spice with no maintenance should be pretty similar to this, no?

It's probably pretty similar and easier to understand than corporate maintenance which has an insanely complicated formula.