The OpenDev/Preview Thread

[Atlas627]

Oh yes, though you can still rush Shared Projects with Population, aka Food.

Yeah, the rush buy is too easy right now. But honestly the production costs are too low for how high production is, too!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Oh yes, though you can still rush Shared Projects with Population, aka Food.

Yeah, the rush buy is too easy right now. But honestly the production costs are too low for how high production is, too!

I think this summarizes the major problem with the game now: the cost in whatever 'currency' doesn't match the rapid increase in amounts of that currency - whether it is Production or Gold or Influence or even Religion - that you get in the first 2 - 3 Eras. Not even playing optimally (I was having too much fun building 'pretty' cities!), my Gold income (Faction-wide) went up 500% between the mid-Ancient and early Medieval Eras. None of the costs went up by more than half that. Production per city was similar: it at least doubled in every city, and went up by almost 400% in my Capital, in that same time frame, with no corresponding increase in production costs. This is going to have to be balanced before Release or the last half of the game threatens to become a Snooze Fest in which you Quick Buy everything and cruise to victory.

 

[Narcisse]

Even more with the fact than buyouts were unstoppable in Lucy. Buyout four districts in a row, after that eigth, after that why not a wonder with some pop and a lot more districts.

I wonder if changing the current "instant buyout" into "reducing building time to one turn", could slow down this "quick buy everything" and the snowballing.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Even more with the fact than buyouts were unstoppable in Lucy. Buyout four districts in a row, after that eigth, after that why not a wonder with some pop and a lot more districts.
I wonder if changing the current "instant buyout" into "reducing building time to one turn", could slow down this "quick buy everything" and the snowballing.

In addition, if the industry output in your city is very high, you can one turn hard build multiple items in the production queue as well, especially with infrastructures. A "one turn" limit should also be helpful in this case.

 

[Atlas627]

I think this summarizes the major problem with the game now: the cost in whatever 'currency' doesn't match the rapid increase in amounts of that currency - whether it is Production or Gold or Influence or even Religion - that you get in the first 2 - 3 Eras. Not even playing optimally (I was having too much fun building 'pretty' cities!), my Gold income (Faction-wide) went up 500% between the mid-Ancient and early Medieval Eras. None of the costs went up by more than half that. Production per city was similar: it at least doubled in every city, and went up by almost 400% in my Capital, in that same time frame, with no corresponding increase in production costs. This is going to have to be balanced before Release or the last half of the game threatens to become a Snooze Fest in which you Quick Buy everything and cruise to victory.

I feel that this should be balanced not by increasing the costs, but by putting a limit on the expansion. If they increase costs, then you'll HAVE to urban sprawl to meet those costs. If they instead just restrict how quickly you can grow, then you'll want to be efficient within that limitation, but can otherwise explore other things (little bit of exploration, little bit of war).

They should probably still increase the costs a bit though, so that you might actually want to pick a specialization. If you meet the limit without putting any effort into reaching it, then there's no economy specialization.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I feel that this should be balanced not by increasing the costs, but by putting a limit on the expansion. If they increase costs, then you'll HAVE to urban sprawl to meet those costs. If they instead just restrict how quickly you can grow, then you'll want to be efficient within that limitation, but can otherwise explore other things (little bit of exploration, little bit of war).

They should probably still increase the costs a bit though, so that you might actually want to pick a specialization. If you meet the limit without putting any effort into reaching it, then there's no economy specialization.

The mismatch between Yields and Costs can be corrected either by reducing Yields or by increasing Costs. I suspect the optimum solution will be a little of both.
My experience is that limiting early City Growth by limiting the placement options for Quarters reduced Yields per city by about 1/3 - but that was only a single 'test case' and will need to be verified in numerous games and, I suspect, over a wider time scale (and terrain variety) than just the first 3 Eras and a single section of a single map, which is all I played with in my test.
As suggested, a "1 Turn Minimum" Build time for all currencies (i.e., Production, Gold, Influence, whatever) to finish anything would definitely be a Positive Step, Whether it along with Growth/Quarter Limitation is enough, needs to be tested.

 

[mitsho]

I‘m not sure about the 1 turn-minimum build time. There are so many things to build in Humankind that you never get around to do and your build list would just prolong into eternity. Also, it makes it more difficult to get New World Cities up to speed.

What is definitely needed though for me personally is a rework of the City Building List User Interface. On my laptop screen, I can only ever see one row and have to scroll all the time. Annoying. Also that the window shifts downwards when you add a new line in the building queue. But also Colour-Codes or filters or I don‘t know. But I would like something to change there.

Also, the built infrastructure doesn‘t show up on the map, right? Or did I just not notice them? That would be neat.

 

[Shadowhal]

I think your idea of "quarters can only be placed adjacent to Main Plaza/Administrative Center, or adjacent to *those* quarters" is a pretty reasonable restriction. Then Garrisons provide something else to build adjacent to in Ancient. Then Harbors provide something else to build adjacent to in Classical. Then Hamlets provide something else to build adjacent to in Medieval. Then in Early Modern you are allowed to build adjacent to Garrison/Harbor/Hamlet adjacencies, to enable colonies. Then in Industrial some tech allows you to ignore this requirement in Administered cities. Then in Contemporary some tech allows you to ignore this requirement entirely, perhaps with some resolution in the UN restricting this sprawl once again.

Rules like these change the entire play of the game from era to era, which is important for the feel of advancing through history. Just getting more/less of some yields (or increasing/decreasing costs) makes for a straightforward game, which feels more abstract and less dynamic.

From an observer's perspective, that's a really interesting angle. On the one side, you get a sense of progression as gradually more options become available. On the other hand it mitigates exponential growth of resource accumulation which seems to be a problem in this build. Some related ideas along that avenue:

While you can place extractors on strategic or luxury resources early on, they only act as hubs for attaching quarters later on. Question mark whether those extractors should immediately exploit all resources around it (as it is now) or just the tile they are built on (as was the case in EL). The latter might be confusing, in particular if it's not consistent with how other external expansions are handled, e.g. harbors. The former may be overly powerful.

And then as you suggest, differentiate when things like hamlets are introduced and when you can start building next to them. Until then, you can only add to your main city centre, maybe to outposts (though some limits there too?).

The other question will be the cost and yield of quarters and any hard or soft caps on their raw number. People also mentioned adjacency and especially self-adjacency bonuses. While stacking multiplicative bonuses is great fun, it's also very hard to balance. It's a tough one, because much of the fun and challenge will come from planning how to best use the terrain available. A too simple system would trivialise these decisions. Maybe instead of +1 self-adjacency, something akin to Civ VI's farms bonus? Say "+1 if adjacent to 2 (or 3?) quarters of x type"? A bit harder to achieve and less prone to rampant exploitation while still rewarding careful planning.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I‘m not sure about the 1 turn-minimum build time. There are so many things to build in Humankind that you never get around to do and your build list would just prolong into eternity. Also, it makes it more difficult to get New World Cities up to speed.

What is definitely needed though for me personally is a rework of the City Building List User Interface. On my laptop screen, I can only ever see one row and have to scroll all the time. Annoying. Also that the window shifts downwards when you add a new line in the building queue. But also Colour-Codes or filters or I don‘t know. But I would like something to change there.

Also, the built infrastructure doesn‘t show up on the map, right? Or did I just not notice them? That would be neat.

There are a bunch of changes needed to the UI of the game. The most basic is a Mini-Map so you don't have to keep wandering the game map trying to keep track of everything, but easy access to Build Lists, total already-placed infrastructure in each city/region, making Trade Routes easily visible, simplified total factor modifications on units - over in G2G they have already started making lists, and I suspect if there is another OpenDev between now and April, it will concentrate on Improved Information Flow through UI Improvements/changes and Late Game balancing.

 

[Atlas627]

While you can place extractors on strategic or luxury resources early on, they only act as hubs for attaching quarters later on. Question mark whether those extractors should immediately exploit all resources around it (as it is now) or just the tile they are built on (as was the case in EL). The latter might be confusing, in particular if it's not consistent with how other external expansions are handled, e.g. harbors. The former may be overly powerful.

I believe the Artisan's Quarters are only exploiting their own tile, just like in EL. Unlike in EL though, a normal Quarter will not extract the resource, which seems like a missed opportunity to me. Right now I always want to put my cities away from the resources because I can just expand from the Artisan Quarter and now have 2 hubs, but in EL sometimes I would want to put the city near the resource, and then have to choose between getting it immediately with an extractor, or efficiently via normal expansion.

So I think expanding from Artisan's Quarters would fall under the Early Modern part of the progression, as they would functionally be plantation colonies.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think a better approach would be to increase the stability penalty/effect. maybe add money costs. (and shift some of the output to specialists enabled by the districts)

 

[Atlas627]

Why do you think it would be better to increase the stability cost per Quarter, and maybe add upkeep?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Why do you think it would be better to increase the stability cost per Quarter, and maybe add upkeep?

Because then it wouldn’t be a placement limitation but a number limitation, it would be more flexible in letting people shape their city. And it would help it to become more of a trade off than a hard limit.

 

[Atlas627]

A placement limitation is inherently a flexible number limitation that creates trade-offs. Spots near borders have fewer usable spaces, spots with low yields have an earlier point of diminishing returns than the placement limitation even allows, regions with coast or resources could expand more easily and earlier, and most cities will have different amounts of placed quarters because Stability (a mostly global yield) is not the only thing affecting them.

Also, there currently is very little "shaping" of a city, because carpeting with quarters works just fine. It wouldn't even matter what the point of diminishing returns is or what the stability threshold happens to be, because you still should carpet until that point. That kind of threshold-based decision making is already present in the Infrastructures, since they are all one-and-done builds, so Quarters should have a different type of decision. Namely, which ones go where and when. By linking the locations to the timings you can build them (more strongly than our current adjacency system, which almost forces carpet because it is the only thing that matters), this actually becomes a hard decision in *every* region, and it is a different puzzle every time. Since Stability is global, if you link Quarters more to Stability, you end up with the same problem in every region, no matter how much you tweak that threshold.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Except stability is local, not global. And carpet v non carpet has to do with value of terrain v the quarters self adjacency (and the value of production v. everything else)

 

[Atlas627]

Stability is functionally global, because most significant sources of Stability are empire-wide. If you're talking about changing *those* numbers, that's a different story.

Nevertheless, a numbers game is not as interesting as a positioning game, and this isn't just a personal opinion. Humans have a better appreciation for spatial issues than mathematical ones. Look at most games throughout history, and you will see games that have spatial puzzles are more accessible, more beloved, and widely regarded as less like work. Very few people will enjoy the puzzle of the game if the puzzle is about finding numerical thresholds of diminishing returns. Give the player strict limitations and a spatial problem, and they will enjoy themselves far more.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Except the strict limits means that it’s not a spatial problem because the restrictions are too much.
The only choice then is initial city placement....or if using garrisons (which don’t have a limit) then it’s just a slight cost increase.

 

[Atlas627]

Absolutely not. You are choosing initial city placement, and every single district adjacent to that, very carefully. And if you really feel that is too strict, then you adjust the restriction. That is far more interesting than adjusting the values and costs.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Absolutely not. You are choosing initial city placement, and every single district adjacent to that, very carefully. And if you really feel that is too strict, then you adjust the restriction. That is far more interesting than adjusting the values and costs.

Should also note that you have two types of choices in Initial City Placement. On the one hand, is a Region worth settling for Economic or Political reasons? Then, Where in that Region is the best place to start a City/Outpost? I found in the Lucy OpenDev that almost every Region had enough variety of biome and terrain that there were real differences in output from various Initial Sites, and so it was almost never a "slam dunk" single possibility. There are also what I call Secondary Considerations, such as needing to connect two Regions that are economically important (like, they have Horse/Copper Resources) by settling a Region in between that doesn't really have much going for it intrinsically. Or planning to exploit coastal resources or do ocean exploration later and so starting an Outpost/City on the coast when that region has a much better starting site inland.

 

[Atlas627]

Should also note that you have two types of choices in Initial City Placement. On the one hand, is a Region worth settling for Economic or Political reasons? Then, Where in that Region is the best place to start a City/Outpost? I found in the Lucy OpenDev that almost every Region had enough variety of biome and terrain that there were real differences in output from various Initial Sites, and so it was almost never a "slam dunk" single possibility. There are also what I call Secondary Considerations, such as needing to connect two Regions that are economically important (like, they have Horse/Copper Resources) by settling a Region in between that doesn't really have much going for it intrinsically. Or planning to exploit coastal resources or do ocean exploration later and so starting an Outpost/City on the coast when that region has a much better starting site inland.

Absolutely, though I think right now with the ease of placing exclaves that your last example is inverted. Since you can expand off of the Harbor, you'll want to build your starting outpost inland. So your example would be a tough decision if the best land was right next to the coast.

If there are placement restrictions, then you might actually want to put both the Outpost and the Harbor near each other, since it would allow you to exploit more tiles in that concentrated area (via placing more quarters).