Unit Upgrade Costs

[mystikx21]

@mystikx21
A good comparison is swordsmen to longswords. They both increased in cost by the same amount from VEM to GEM. What's the cost of that upgrade in VEM?

Swords were 110 in VEM and are 150 in GEM. Longswords are 170 in VEM and 230 in GEM.

VEM would be 60*3+10=190. GEM would (now) be 80*2.5+10=210. (Obviously it was 250, which I think you can imagine is a noteworthy change per unit).

Using the GK upgrade formula would put them at 170. Which is just as close to VEM but on the other side of the fence.

Most of the very large changes are in later units where unit costs have scaled upward far more so (with the exception of chariots to horses).

Most of the very large changes in the negative direction are siege units and/or units where strength changes between units were altered substantially from VEM to GK. Rifles were considerably more powerful than muskets or longswords were in VEM than they are in GEM for example. That upgrade should have become cheaper as a result.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Ahriman
Which viewpoint do you feel is more important:

• upgrade / don't upgrade
• upgrade now / upgrade later

@mystikx21
It looks like the 2.5 estimate was close; solving for the upgrade multiplier gets us 180/80 = 2.25, which I'll set it to in the next version.

What about unit maintenance?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

2.25 should be fine

 

[mystikx21]

I vote for "upgrade now / upgrade later". I still don't understand why you wouldn't want to upgrade most of your force most games. You would instead want to prioritize when you upgrade, and what units you want to upgrade first, and you could simply replace or destroy units of limited utility. I don't see a need to design the game around keeping such units around by deliberate decision making. You are not penalised for doing so, other than by encouraging some aggression.

The alternative to me is as described earlier, gamey tricks to play over the AI or disbanding units and building fresh ones. Garrisoning obsolete units are a temporary move for most players. A non-conquest tall player for instance may have taken tradition, where upkeep on garrisons is irrelevant and top-notch guards helps keeps the hordes at bay. There are still alternatives in the form of vanguards or MGs to do the same task cheaply.

Nothing and no one stops you from using older units but designing the entire system to benefit such a strategy even more than it already does seems pointless. (note: I don't think the system is designed to that end, but it rewards it by making upgrades more expensive, especially at the tail end of the game, encouraging you essentially to have units that you don't upgrade even more than upkeep does. I don't think there's any reason to encourage this behavior because there are no meaningful penalties for doing so).

 

[Ahriman]

@Ahriman
Which viewpoint do you feel is more important:
upgrade / don't upgrade
upgrade now / upgrade later

I think upgrade now/upgrade later is more important.

I think we should plan to eventually upgrade nearly every unit.

So I don't think upgrade/don't upgrade needs to be an important decision that we make, where there is a large chance that we never upgrade.

2.25 seems like it is worth testing.

 

[Thalassicus]

I think upgrade now/upgrade later is more important.

I agree, and this is basically what I'm trying to say: everything is a grey area instead of black and white.

Garrisons in my safe core cities are not going to see combat, and I don't think it's necessary to encourage players to quickly upgrade units that don't see combat. However, we have to upgrade them eventually, or the AI will declare war and invade. This is why they are "upgrade later" instead of "upgrade never."

 

[mystikx21]

1) I don't think a reasonable upgrade cost is encouraging players to upgrade units they use only for garrison duty. They would have no extra incentive to upgrade such units because they are cheaper. I worry more that they already have advantages for not upgrading such units (cheaper upkeep, goading the AI to attack).

2) Upkeep costs you lowered by about 10% in the 1.7 version? (I used /55 or /5.5, which is a rougher approximation of the change to .018/.18).. .so examples.

This would make swords/cats/horses 4 early on. Which is about where they were in VEM in believe I think they were 4.6 and now would be 4.45, rounded down to 4. Spears, archers, etc would remain the same. Legions would be more expensive?

Rifles are 9.9 now and were 11.4 in VEM. Most non-resourced infantry are cheaper in GEM than in VEM and this would be reflected in slightly lower upkeep, usually -1 or so. Mechs are 24 now and were 21 is the lone exception.

Artillery are 13.54 now, they were 16 before.
Dragoons are 11.7 now, they were 12 before I believe.
Tanks are 28 now. They were 23.

 

[Skobrin]

Just chiming in to say 2.25 sounds perfect.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree, and this is basically what I'm trying to say: everything is a grey area instead of black and white.

But the grey area is if you upgrade them now or in a little while, not if you upgrade them at all.

That means upgrade costs can't be overwhelming.

I'm fine to try 2.25 and see how it plays.

 

[Calavente]

"pocking" pocking" "pocking" forum !!

it's the 3rd time in 3 days that I lose a post draft worth 20 min of writing ...
"bla bla : you are disconnected.... bla bla" it never happened before.

well take patience. (or prepare yourselves... depending on how you hate my writing )
I'll rewrite all I wanted to say later today by editing this post....grrrr.

 

[Thalassicus]

I write long posts in notepad or word, then copy-paste to forums. It reduces the chance of losing stuff.

 

[Calavente]

okay, lets go.

It seems normal to me that upgrading is less efficient in gold per hammer than buying directly.

indeed, there is too much advantages of upgrading compared with direct buying.
-keep a lot of low upkeep units... keep the gold, upgrade only when needed
-need only 1city able to do the high-tech unit to upgrade all units.
-keep the xp gained
-can upgrade multiples units per turn with one city instead of only 1 building per turn.
-can reduce the time the unit occupies the city building list
-build high xp (lvl3) low tech, low upkeep units in far away developped city, have them move to front, upgrade to high tech units when front is joined, gaining gold on the upkeep difference during the moving time.

upgrading is already a very rewarding system. increasing the efficiency of gold/hammer for upgrading increases the rewards for upgrading.


first I wanted to note that it seems you are focusing on gold cost for upgrade instead of "gold efficiency" for upgrade.
Indeed, it seems you are forgetting that between VEM and GK (ergo then GEM), unit cost increased ... so it seems normal that upgrade costs increase.

your reasonning is akin to the following one (which I know you are not making) :
-in VEM, longsword is 170 hammers and it costs 170*2 (to simplify the calculus) 340 gold to buy it with gold.
-in GEM, longswords are 230 h, costing 460gold to buy...

"this difference of 120gold is HUGE .... please reduce it because it becomes harded to rush build units when attacked...bla bla."

however, the 120gold difference is normal ; hammers cost increased so gold cost too.

strangely, you don't react like that;

why ?

is it that when buying you are not comparing GEM vs VEM as you are comparing gold vs hammers : ie : efficiency of gold ?

but then, when upgrading, you are comparing cost between GEM and VEM ? why that ?

why ?

further, upgrading is less costly then building anew.
you need only 250g (80*3 +10) to upgrade a highly promoted sword to a high promoted longsword
instead of spending 460g (230*2) to buy a low xp longsword from scratch.
this is almost a factor of 2.
clearly upgrading is more interesting.


further, using :

Swords were 110 in VEM and are 150 in GEM. Longswords are 170 in VEM and 230 in GEM.

VEM would be 60*3+10=190. GEM would (now) be 80*2.5+10=210. (Obviously it was 250, which I think you can imagine is a noteworthy change per unit).

Using the GK upgrade formula would put them at 170. Which is just as close to VEM but on the other side of the fence.

the difference in hammers between the sword-longsword upgrade is 20hammers (80 instead of 60)

When advocating the 2.5 (or smaller effect), you say you want a reduced upgrade cost but still with same effect than in VEM.

in reality what happens instead that you will obtain this :
same units, costs increased for building each, but the cost for upgrade doesn't move.) which seems highly unlogical and increases the efficiency of gold for upgrades in GEM compared to VEM.

with 2.5 :

Do you really want that an upgrade costing +20 hammers compared to VEM to cost only 20 more gold than in VEM. (210GEM vs 190VEM)
well, it seems a very high profitability of gold for upgrading units from VEM to GEM
(1 more hammer bought with 1 more gold)

thus, you want GEM to favor upgrading compared to VEM ?


If that is the case :
When focusing on apparent costs you are forgetting that you might go into a direction where it becomes more interesting to buy low-tech units in many cities and upgrade them into high tech units instead buying directly high tech units.

and if it doesn't become "more interesting" on a per-unit transaction, at least it might become more interesting as a global empire strategy as you will have less specialization needed, less military building needed...etc

And it is not realist : swordmen trying to convert to rifles need to forget all their hard-won reflex and rewrite new ones. it is harder than training new units from scratch.

 

[Ahriman]

It seems normal to me that upgrading is less efficient in gold per hammer than buying directly.

This seems backwards to me.
If you build the units, then they are sitting around generating maintenance costs, and there is the opportunity cost you incurred from actually building them, and locking in resources.

Whereas buying units can happen instantly, so you don't wear the maintenance costs, and you have the flexibility of using that gold for something else.

So I am just the opposite; buying units is already a very rewarding system, hence it should arguably be less efficient than upgrading existing units.

As for the rest, I don't really understand what you are saying.

 

[mystikx21]

@Thal Upkeep is now pretty close.

General rule is that modern units are more expensive on land and air, and cheaper at sea. The reverse is true earlier in the game.

Units with noticeable upkeep changes from VEM

Unit|VEM|GEM|Rounded
Knights|7.8|7.3|-1|
Crossbow|6|5.48|-1|
Chariot|3|1.9|-1|
Conscript|8.6|7.1|-2|
Artillery|15.4|13.4|-2|
Rifle/Musket|11.4|9.8|-1|
Airborne|11.6|10.4|-2|
AA/AT Gun|11.4|15.2|+4|
SAM|18.2|20.6|+3|
Tank|21.6|27.8|+6|
Mech Inf|20.6|24.2|+3|
Armor|28|38.6|+11|
Rockets|21.2|27.8|+7|
GDR|42|45.8|+4|
Jet/Stealth|18|20.5|+3|
Frigate|6.2|7.1|+1|
Battleship|20|15.2|-5|
Carrier|18.5|13.6|-5|

 

[Calavente]

Whereas buying units can happen instantly, so you don't wear the maintenance costs, and you have the flexibility of using that gold for something else.

upgrading happens instantly and costs less (at the time), you can upgrade 10 units simultaneously while building/buying 10 units simulatneously needs 10 cities that have the building requirements.

further when buying a sword first and upgrading it to a longsword latter, you increase flexibility :
I commit on the first turn only 220gold (sword) instead of 340. (I'm splitting my costs in two parts).
on the next turn I can decide if I want to complete my swordman (190gold) or if I suddenly need my gold for another thing.
if I complete the longsword, I spent 60 more gold.
however, if I have an urgency that need much gold gold, I have 130 more gold in cash than if I bought the longsword directly on the first turn.

It is true that by using 2 turns to buy instead of 1, my cost for longsword is increased by 60... well, that's the price of installements.



for the rest, it is simple :

asking for same upgrade costs in GEM than in VEM negates the fact that hammers costs increased (eg, you now need to upgrade the worth of 80h instead of 60h : +33%): it unbalances the gold/hammer worth between those two versions.

you want that a +33% increase in hammers (between version) leads to no difference in gold costs.

this means that :
it is proportionaly less expensive in your version to build low tech and upgrade than in VEM.
exemple :
(here I'm not speaking of upgrading former swords, but chosing between on this turn, buying a sword then upgrading it OR buying a longsword :
in VEM, building/buying sword then upgrading to longsword costs : 220+190 = 410gold to be compared to a 340 cost for buying directly the longsword (buying directly is 70 less ; gold/hammer ratio is 2 for buying, 2.41 for buying sword and upgrade


in GEM building/buying sword then upgrading to longsword costs : 300+190 = 490gold to be compared to a 460 cost for buying directly the longsword (buying directly is 30 less ; gold/hammer ratio is 2 for buying, 2.13 for buying sword and upgrading it.

you see, by asking for same upgrade costs, it is much more efficient in GEM to build swords and upgrade them as compared to VEM.
the price of installement (flexibility) is reduced in your GEM than in VEM.

it is still less efficient than building the unit directly (2.13 instead of 2), however the cost of using this technic is drastically reduced : efficiency of 2.13 instead of lousy 2.41 for VEM.


if the gold cost is a 1.8 factor, in this exemple the difference VEM-GEM is 2.3 in VEM, 2.2 in GEM.
these values, while closer between VEM and GEM are limited to sword-longsword, where there is an increase of hammer cost of 53% (150-230). for latter units / upgrade, the hammer difference si generally lower with regard to the cost of earlier unit. then the difference in gold efficiency increases with latter units.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

can you not buy 10 units all in the same city? I can't remember right now.

anyway, the base is the vanilla game for VEM and G&K for GEM

in VEM the upgrade cost formula was changed compared to vanilla becuase this made upgrade costs better when coupled with vanilla unit costs.

in GEM, the unit costs changed. we don't blindly use the old VEM fomula just because. instead, we evaluate what result we want to reach ( VEM upgrade costs ) and we change the formula so that it creates the wanted result with the new unit costs.

and now we end up with 2.25 which should be just fine until testing shows otherwise.

 

[mystikx21]

There's several points I'm not sure what you're saying. A couple I disagree with.

-keep a lot of low upkeep units... keep the gold, upgrade only when needed
-build high xp (lvl3) low tech, low upkeep units in far away developped city, have them move to front, upgrade to high tech units when front is joined, gaining gold on the upkeep difference during the moving time.

- This correctly sounds like the problem we have if upgrading is discouraged by having high costs. It is not an advantage of upgrading. We may choose to disband the units too, and keep that gold entirely rather than worry about upgrading them. It's more to do with the system of unit-based upkeep to encourage having low upkeep units doing less-essential tasks (vanguards or MGs as honor-based garrisons for example) than with the system of upgrades. In effect, the problem here is that higher upkeep is already a (modest) disincentive against upgrading and we see a need to compensate for that in order to discourage players from not upgrading when they could/should naturally in order to extract advantages like this instead.

-can reduce the time the unit occupies the city building list

- This has little to do with upgrading as an advantage either. You can also rush buy fresh units without building them and occupying the queue. It is cheaper at the time of upgrading to improve existing units than to build fresh ones. But that's the only advantage inherent to upgrades here.

-need only 1city able to do the high-tech unit to upgrade all units.
-can upgrade multiples units per turn with one city instead of only 1 building per turn.

- What does this mean? We only need one city to build (new) units? Why is this any more or less likely from upgrade costs being slightly lower?

We also can only buy/build 1 per turn in a city, but we likely will have more than one city. The only limitation on either point is the amount of gold we have available. But. If we already have a unit stationed out there which we expended gold or production on before. We should be able to improve it at some cost. Is the alternative is that we would have to produce fresh units? If we couldn't improve those units, we would have to expend gold and/or production on new units instead of doing other things on top of the fact that we've already spent gold and/or production on an existing unit. This is sounding like saying we would have to burn down or at least sell our libraries in order to build universities in a city. There's a prerequisite cost of building a unit, which then can be improved much as city infrastructure can be.

And it is not realist : swordmen trying to convert to rifles need to forget all their hard-won reflex and rewrite new ones. it is harder than training new units from scratch.

- This isn't that far off from reality actually. Military discipline should allow the adoption of advanced tactics and weapons through training at a higher rate than taking conscripts and giving them the same weapons. It also is easier to demonstrate to military-trained people in armies that a new weapon/armor/etc is superior. Assuming it actually is, as the gaps between weapons in Civ5 generally is, spears<swords/crossbows<primitive muskets< better gunpowder< rifled barrels< semi-automatic weapons< machine guns. I can see some arguments against this, like the tendency of some generals and politicians to re-fight the last war(s). But a lot of things are idealised throughout the game as it is. Successful generals and politicians observe these trends and prepare for them. We could very easily assume we fired the morons who wanted us to dig trenches and concrete nests of fixed forts (Maginot line style) instead of use new coordinated airplane and tank tactics (von Manstein or Patton, etc).

When focusing on apparent costs you are forgetting that you might go into a direction where it becomes more interesting to buy low-tech units in many cities and upgrade them into high tech units instead buying directly high tech units.

- What does this mean? It would cost more money to build them, and then to upgrade them. It costs less money to buy them straight out than to do this. I'm not sure what the incentive is here to buy up/build low-tech units rather than to buy up/build higher tech units. There's no possible math to support that idea unless upgrading is completely free, which it isn't. It's always more expensive to buy a unit and then upgrade it than to buy a unit as there's a sunk cost of the initial unit. Your longsword/swords example neglects this. Including the initial buy cost of the swordsman to be upgraded is an additional 300 gold. Making it 550 to upgrade, and 460 to buy anew. Upgrading offers other advantages yes, but it isn't cheaper than buying fresh units.

An issue with the overall point seems to be the comparison between gold on upgrading, something you are likely to do with at least a chunk of your armies in all games, and gold on buying units, something you may or may not do. We should have incentives and costs to do both, but one is an essential function for our military and the other is merely a convenience or an emergency value. Balancing the costs of an essential function is different than balancing the costs of a convenience. We are also talking about lump sums of gold here where the max efficiency of building units is likely enough to be: just use regular production per turn to build many of your units. Rush-buying them costs more than rush-buying a building per production costs. There's a 1.2x gold multiplier that you've left out there for non-civilian units for simplicity. It's possible this could be reduced if that's the problem you're identifying. But it probably should cost more to rush units and military structures than civilian ones for the same relative cost.

 

[Calavente]

I disagree with you.

i'm not talking about upgrading your former units but about a way to build new units.

upgrading is less efficient but more convenient than building directly the unit.

further you can have only 1 city able to build your new unit in less than 5turns. BUT 9 more cities able to build the earlier tech unit in less than 4.
with upgrading you can have 10 high-tech units in 5turns : 1 from the big cities, and 9 upgraded from the other cities.
and by rush-buying the units from the big city you'll only get 5 units, not 10.


what I'm saying is making upgrade costs be the same as VEM means that upgrading in GEM would become a more productive placement than in VEM.

taking into account the upkeep, the smaller the cost for upgrade, the more advantageous it is to "cheat the upkeep". (eg, you'll need 10 turns of being low tech to pay (by saving the upkeep) for the upgrade, while if it was costlier you'll need 20 turns, and maybe you can afford 10 turns of being sub-par but not 20turns.

IIRC, the 3x multiplier does not apply on top of the 1.2 multiplier..
so as I showed in the second post :
a 1.8 multiplier + 1.2 = x2 multiplier (well : +80% +20%)
so my swordman-longsword exemple is true.

VEM buy then upgrade has an efficiency of 2.41 in gold instead of 2 for direct buy (410 instead of 340)

GEM with x3 factor has the same efficiency of 2.41 (550 gold instead of 460)

GEM with VEM upgrade costs has an efficiency of 2.13 in gold for buy sword then upgrade instead of 2 for direct buy of longsword. (490 instead of 460)
(as a side note, I'm not flaming against the current x3 factor in GEM, but about the "I want the same upgrade cost in GEM than in VEM")

IMO, in that third case the 0.13 loss in efficiency is perhaps an impressive sum in absolute numbers (30gold in this exemple), but it is a too cheap cost for the flexibility opened by buying sword now, upgrade latter....

(you know, when you open a lease to buy a TV or a car it is supposed to cost you a lot much than 7%) (buying a house can make you pay TWICE the initial cost.. or even more)

 

[mystikx21]

I'm not sure what the lease example means. Is the implication that we would start leasing units in order to upgrade them later?

Most units obsolete tech-wise upon being able to build their replacements. I'm still not sure how the comparison matters for which cities can build effectively one versus the other, but I at least know what that statement was trying to say now. Are you positing that we would/should build a wave of soon-to-be obsolete units in order to upgrade them immediately upon a tech? Because otherwise that example makes little sense (with the one exception of UU units that last longer).

Rush-buying units can be done in any city. It isn't limited to just the one big city and isn't made any more efficient in that one city. That argument is invalid. That is the flexibility and advantage of using gold to produce things. The only advantage of one city over another would be the starting XP, an argument which doesn't apply to your proposed example of building more units elsewhere.

The "cheat the upkeep" example has no effect on whether upgrade costs are small or large. Indeed, many (or what seems like many) feel that if upgrade costs are set too high, there are already strong incentives to do this without concerning yourself with whether or not you may need to upgrade later. The upkeep cost itself is the issue there as the disincentive to upgrade, not the relative cost of upgrading itself.

The 1.2x multiplier occurs on buying the unit (essentially rushbuy=(costx2)x1.2). It has nothing to do with upgrade costs themselves, only the calculation for total cost. I think you misunderstood its uses. The 3x or 2.25 or 2.5 or whatever multiplier occurs on the upgrade cost still while the 1.2x only occurs on rushing units and military buildings.

Here's the formula for rush buying units in GEM/VEM
GoldCost = int( (3.5 * Cost * GameSpeedPercent)^0.9 * (1 + 1.2*HurryCostModifier/100) / 10 ) * 10.
This means
a) that more expensive units are more efficient to buy than cheaper ones (because of the low exponent). Which is counter to the "buy swordsmen and upgrade them" idea.
b) It's not as simple as 2xCost for the buy cost for all units. Swordsmen are 2.7x, longswords are 2.1x. This means the simplified swords to longswords calculation is incorrect. Swords cost 405 to rush-buy + 190 to upgrade. Longswords are 485. In VEM, it would be 300+190 vs 360. For late game units, the modifier can be <2. For most of the mid-game units it's 2.2-2.1, and it's more expensive early (2.4-2.7). For this particular upgrade, it's still a ~22.5% loss in efficiency where it was a ~36% loss. The 3x example would stay at a 35% loss, yes. But I'm not convinced that 22% is nothing or imbalanced.

 

[Stalker0]

It seems normal to me that upgrading is less efficient in gold per hammer than buying directly.

I think this varies depending on the era.

Early on, I would rather build more troops than upgrade generally. Mainly because I am still investing in barracks/armories and can get equal or even better trained troops, and more troops tends to be better than greater ones.

Later in the game, when I have highly experienced troops and a larger army, I would rather upgrade than buy a new.