SDK Request - New building effects based on number of bonuses

[davidlallen]

Very strange. Is that from the financial screen? In general the mouseover corporation yield in the city screen that has the corp seems to be fairly predictable.

Thanks for the suggestion, but the financial screen (which I used) and the corp hover help in the city screen both show the same value. It isn't anything like 3x the number of spice resources. I had not noticed this before. Could you look into any save game which you have, or any current game, and see if you see a 3x relationship?

I think I'd make it +3 gold, not commerce. So you can get a huge gold income, but still can't run more than 100% science and so there is some cap on how much you can power ahead.

That is an interesting suggestion. I suppose there was nothing preventing us from doing this a long time ago since corps can also yield gold directly. This seems to be a big play balance change since the only thing you can spend gold upon is offworld troops. How shall we test this change to see if it is well-liked?

I think the Landsraad religion works fine as it is. Having a trade religion helps keep it separate from Imperium, which is a culture, happiness and diplomacy religion. I don't see any gain from trying to use corporation mechanics from it instead. But the Landsraad shrine building should also get the +3 gold per spice.

@ deliverator, at some point I recall you were using corp mechanics for something else, before I implemented the sdk change of this thread. I can't find that in the current version so I guess it is gone now anyway. Please remind me of the details?

And yes, Landsraad directorate should be renamed CHOAM directorate, which is what it was always intended to be called.

The religion is called "Landsraad" and it uses the lion flag. Its three buildings are currently called "Landsraad Outpost", "Landsraad Directorate" and "CHOAM Headquarters". This is a little inconsistent. I used "Landsraad" in the names of the first two buildings in order to have some name consistency. Even players knowledgeable about Dune canon may not recognize that Landsraad and CHOAM are related. I am sure there was some debate about this a while ago, but since we have a trade religion, perhaps it should be called CHOAM instead of Landsraad, and the first two buildings renamed. The current situation is halfway between, which is not ideal. Changing the name should involve adding back the yellow/red/black CHOAM flag, including in the fonts.

 

[Deliverator]

I think I'd make it +3 gold, not commerce.

Not sure about this. If you control lots of spice surely you should be able to spend that wealth on research, culture or espionage - whatever you like. I know you can spend gold on deficit research, but overall surely changing to gold from commerce would make spice less important wouldn't it?

@ deliverator, at some point I recall you were using corp mechanics for something else, before I implemented the sdk change of this thread. I can't find that in the current version so I guess it is gone now anyway. Please remind me of the details?

The only other corporation in the mod apart from the House Spice corps is CHOAM, which we can replace by adding the +commerce per spice effect to the CHOAM HQ building.

The religion is called "Landsraad" and it uses the lion flag. Its three buildings are currently called "Landsraad Outpost", "Landsraad Directorate" and "CHOAM Headquarters". This is a little inconsistent. I used "Landsraad" in the names of the first two buildings in order to have some name consistency. Even players knowledgeable about Dune canon may not recognize that Landsraad and CHOAM are related. I am sure there was some debate about this a while ago, but since we have a trade religion, perhaps it should be called CHOAM instead of Landsraad, and the first two buildings renamed. The current situation is halfway between, which is not ideal. Changing the name should involve adding back the yellow/red/black CHOAM flag, including in the fonts.

I'm sure I disagreed with having CHOAM as a religion in the past, but these days I don't mind switching the religion name to CHOAM. It makes sense since the theme is trade anyway.

The gamefonts and icon are already there and being used for the CHOAM Corporation. The building icons would need updating.

 

[Ahriman]

Could you look into any save game which you have, or any current game, and see if you see a 3x relationship?

I will check, but I do not recall ever noticing anything other than the 3x relationship.

This seems to be a big play balance change since the only thing you can spend gold upon is offworld troops. How shall we test this change to see if it is well-liked?

Well, if you're at less than 100% science then the difference is not huge.
What it does is it makes your spice corp city a gold specialist, so its not also just "build all my big % multipliers in the same city".

I prefer encouraging more specialization; city A ix a gold city, city B is a science city, city C is a unit factory, city D is a GPP farm. As opposed to having a single capital super-city.

As for testing... no real way other than make the change and collect feedback, or make a poll.

@ deliverator, at some point I recall you were using corp mechanics for something else, before I implemented the sdk change of this thread. I can't find that in the current version so I guess it is gone now anyway. Please remind me of the details?

There used to be (a long time ago) some corps that used other resources, like the groundwater resource. I don't see any particular gain from these. In general I do not like the corporation mechanic as implemented in vanilla BTS, the costs and benefits are too non-transparent to the casual player.

The religion is called "Landsraad" and it uses the lion flag. Its three buildings are currently called "Landsraad Outpost", "Landsraad Directorate" and "CHOAM Headquarters". This is a little inconsistent. I used "Landsraad" in the names of the first two buildings in order to have some name consistency. Even players knowledgeable about Dune canon may not recognize that Landsraad and CHOAM are related. I am sure there was some debate about this a while ago, but since we have a trade religion, perhaps it should be called CHOAM instead of Landsraad, and the first two buildings renamed. The current situation is halfway between, which is not ideal. Changing the name should involve adding back the yellow/red/black CHOAM flag, including in the fonts.

The whole design is a little fuzzy. The problem is that we have competing design goals.
1. Have a religion that is a "status quo" religion (ie represents galactic power before the events of Dune). Since our religions represent "power allegiance" to some extent, Landsraad makes sense for this; its the main competing power group to Imperium.
2. Have that status quo religion give a unique functional effect. Imperium gives culture, happiness and diplomacy (because it spreads so widely). An economy/trade religion is a nice contrast to that.
3. Include the trading corporation CHOAM in the game somehow, and the power/prestige granted by a CHOAM Directorate. This need not use a corporation mechanic.

It seemed sensible to try to bundle these three goals together.
I would have no problem with renaming the Landsraad religion back to CHOAM, which was my original religion design proposal, and just having the Landsraad as the United Nations Council. The objection then was that this didn't fit with the "allegiance" view of religions as well.
But then, Landsraad allegiance doesn't work that well either, since most of the factions in the game are competing Great Houses.

 

[Ahriman]

but overall surely changing to gold from commerce would make spice less important wouldn't it?

Would it? Why? If nothing else, it would let me build all my gold boosters in one city, and then science boosters everywhere else and run 100% beakers. I wouldn't have to bother building gold boosters elsewhere.

I see the appeal in being able to funnel spice into culture (=political influence) and espionage (bribes, etc.) through commerce sliders.

But I dislike the tendency for the one-big-city that does everything. I don't like it how I want to put my Academy (from great scientist) and my Oxford Univeristy (+100% beakers) and my gold boosters all in the same city. Though I guess a single primary base of operations is kinda Duneish in terms of fluff.

I don't feel strongly about gold over commerce, I just wanted to make sure we had the discussion.

 

[davidlallen]

I would have no problem with renaming the Landsraad religion back to CHOAM, which was my original religion design proposal, and just having the Landsraad as the United Nations Council.

Since the flags and fonts are still around, I will try changing Landsraad to CHOAM for the religion and two buildings. The UN building I will leave as Landsraad High Council, the name deliverator added in 1.7. I will add +3 gold per spice from the CHOAM HQ. That will leave some minor graphical bugs; the CHOAM building icons will have the wrong religion inset and the LHC building will have the same style as the three CHOAM buildings.

Let's think about +3 gold vs +3 commerce a little more; my inclination is to leave it at commerce. If nothing else, this encourages spending commerce on espionage. But either way, *all* the corporations will be removed.

 

[Ahriman]

Could you look into any save game which you have, or any current game, and see if you see a 3x relationship?

Only compatible savegame I have, 15 spice with 45 commerce income.