Upkeep costs and taxes change

[Kailric]

I am wanting to add a new play style. To do away with the KingsPopes continuing rise of your tax we need to replace it with something. In Civ 4 we gained money through taxes but in Col we gain money though trading and I do not want to change this as that is what make it fun and unique. My idea is an Upkeep cost. The bigger your empire grows, the larger your upkeep, maintenance, and over all cost of administration. This will balance out not having a high and ever increasing tax.

The popes can still be there to add character and either an adversarie or ally and perhaps a smaller tithe.

The player will have options to have gold per turn income but most of his income will be from trading still. The player will have a finacial worksheet that tracks the player's finances.

Some up keeps could be...

Roads- they will degrade over time if not kept up
Buildings- their output will degrade
Military- there abilities degrade
Promotion- some could require an upkeep cost

Anymore ideas on this or upkeep not them down here. This will be be next thing I work on after civics.

 

[Trade Winds]

Vehicles - they could take rusting damage
(Even Units?) Statesmen and Noblemen must be paid; Preachers and Monks under certain civics
Storage - storing meat need freezers running or storing sheep needs fresh grass, storing silver and muskets can be costly.
Teaching - somebody must be paid if not learning by doing
Improvements- watch towers and mines must be taken care of.

 

[Kailric]

Those are excellent ideas!

Professions- only allowed if required funds are met
Vehicles - become in disrepare and can not function
Improvements- no longer function or are destroyed
Yields in Storage- yields will decay each turn

These all have a Upkeep cost and add to the Empires per turn cost.
Education has tuition so it has it's own costs.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I would think with storage would it not be easier to have the warehouse and expansions cost upkeep, and if you can't pay then you only get the basic storage limit.

I would say things 'not working' are better than being destroyed, as destroyed is a pretty big thing to fix.
Especially if you experience a 'hiccup' in your finances, but simply losing the bonus makes more sense, it is annoying but not head explodingly annoying..

also if we attach the cost to buildings, it allows for all kinds of 'sophisticated' buildings to take upkeep, like in Civ 4

 

[Kailric]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking on storage. Destroyed or disabled this will be configurable in the XML.

I was thinking this could be a good system for the WHM. Talk about miss guiding your empire... Saracen capture your critical shipment of trade goods, marauding barbarians are terrorizing your country side, burning crops, and pillaging your stores. Your army is ill equipped and under paid. Your finances are in the red and your empire is crumbling. You have over extended yourself and an age of darkness is looming! How will you survive?

 

[Lib.Spi't]

hehe yep exactly! I was excited when I saw you were planning this too!

In my version I would plan to keep the 'rising tax' system, it only rises when your 'representative' is unhappy, low diplo-relation, and the relationship and tax rate can be reset with a successful 'revolution' you kick the butt of all the whingers and restore your place as the ultimate badass who does whatever the hell he wants!

 

[Trade Winds]

I would say things 'not working' are better than being destroyed, as destroyed is a pretty big thing to fix.

I wasn't thinking about being destroyed, but taking damage, as naval units in Civ2, as units in Civ cities while revolting.

So if temporarily these units are not paid, you still have a while for reorganising (getting unnecesary military units to work and buy from markekplaces or selling a galeonful to somebody) until your units actually get destroyed.

 

[Nightinggale]

I'm not sure I like all these new ideas. Maybe it would be a good idea to set up yield demands first and once we have experience playing with those, we can figure out if the economy can take an extra expense like this. I fear that you need money to make money, which mean unless you find a treasure early on, you will get stuck as a poor country without the ability to make money.

Speaking of warehouses. RaR has new warehouse capacity where the warehouse can take a fixed amount of yields nomatter type. This mean if you have a capacity of 300, you can either store 300 ore, 300 tools or 300 horses, but not all of them together as that makes 900. This code is unusually well documented and I wonder if we should copy it to M:C. It has an on/off switch in XML meaning it would become an optional addition.

How will you survive?

Cheat

 

[Trade Winds]

I do like the idea. In my experience, I only sell on demand, to have a low profile not to be asked much from my king; And I ended up with lots of money, especially when I reached the Trading Leage. I could just stop selling things.

Maybe it would be a good idea to set up yield demands first and once we have experience playing with those, we can figure out if the economy can take an extra expense like this.

But this sounds reasonable though.

RaR has new warehouse capacity where the warehouse can take a fixed amount of yields nomatter type.

And I like it from RaR. I doesn't sound realist to found a city and struggle to have your first Carpentry but on the other hand you have a luxuriously big storage cappacity of minimum 100 units times the number of yields.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

YEah my comments on destroying, was more in the context of buildings and improvements, rather than unts.

I like the idea of stuff like unit promos like 'unpaid' that give a negative of some form or another, then if they are unpaid for too long they drop kit and convert back to a basic colonist (peasant or whatever)

Yes I did quite like the RaR system of a total storage capacity, as it makes sense, and in some circumstances it makes small towns with single yields much more effective.

I disagree about the getting stuck poor. There are plenty of ways to generate money in the M:C system, from people raising taxes at the court, taxation of vassals, trade, domestic sales, etc. this just adds a concept where you have to be aware of growth and sophistication, a basic village will more or less cost nothing as it just runs for the sake of survival, but a bustling city full of the best minds available, will incur costs, but also provide the means to pay those costs (high yields, etc.).

The one thing I do want to see gone is the 'scaled money requests' it kind of makes sense in the vanilla setting as you are under the thumb of an oppressive king who takes the mickey constantly and forces you to go to war, but in an 'empire management' context it forces you to spend to avoid the rainy day, rather than save for it... I much prefer the idea of fixed amount events, so then if you have saved plenty of money you can cope with these events and make a decision as to whether or not you care, rather than being a turn away from saving for an important strategic step, and then having all of your money taken away in a scaled demand... where as if the request came 2 turns later he would asked for 60 gold instead of 6000. Just annoying....

 

[Nightinggale]

I just had another idea. We could make routes, improvements and whatever cost yields. They can then gather in plotgroups and be paid for when the plotgroup handles domestic sales. This mean a stone covered road could require 0.4 stone/turn for maintenance and together with all the other stone covered roads in the plotgroup, it could become quite a number each turn, which the cities have to deliver. Remember that gold is also a yield in this context.

We could then impose that demands for yield, which is paid for could be covered by auto buying the yield in Europe at an extra price. Either that or the improvement/route type will have a risk of switching to downgrade type, like a stone road becomes a path or whatever.

I much prefer the idea of fixed amount events, so then if you have saved plenty of money you can cope with these events and make a decision as to whether or not you care, rather than being a turn away from saving for an important strategic step, and then having all of your money taken away in a scaled demand... where as if the request came 2 turns later he would asked for 60 gold instead of 6000. Just annoying....

I fully agree on this one. I once in RaR bought a ship of the line (or something else really expensive) and had virtually no money left. The next turn the king asked for 3 gold

 

[Kailric]

Some good thoughts on this. On iPhone so can't reply well. I have to agree that it is not difficult to make money in M:C, even at the start with local trade. I've had several comments about having lots of extra cash. But regardless my vision is for a Medieval Empire building simulation and at the moment we still have the vanilla trading, arms gathering to prepare for war simulation.

The one thing about running an Empire is it cost tons of cash and atm it's mostly free and unrealistic. Everything can be balanced to make a more strategic, more realistic, without losing any of the fun.

I agree with everyone on the king's demand. It completely ruins any strategy to maintain a large treasury, this will be changed for sure. It should be made an XML value, maybe set in world size.

I have looked into the buildings and unit demands and just didn't see a clear way to set it all up, which buildings or units demand what and how much. I am wanting to get all the economic, empire building aspect in place and then set XML values, play test , and adjust. Demands and plot groups are in, civics are on the way, then add upkeep and the system will be near complete .

Upkeep will be fully moddable, if you don't set an upkeep there want be any.

 

[orlanth]

Originally Posted by Lib.Spi't View Post
The one thing I do want to see gone is the 'scaled money requests' it kind of makes sense in the vanilla setting as you are under the thumb of an oppressive king who takes the mickey constantly and forces you to go to war, but in an 'empire management' context it forces you to spend to avoid the rainy day, rather than save for it...I much prefer the idea of fixed amount events, so then if you have saved plenty of money you can cope with these events and make a decision as to whether or not you care, rather than being a turn away from saving for an important strategic step, and then having all of your money taken away in a scaled demand... where as if the request came 2 turns later he would asked for 60 gold instead of 6000. Just annoying....
I fully agree on this one. I once in RaR bought a ship of the line (or something else really expensive) and had virtually no money left. The next turn the king asked for 3 gold

Yeah I agree too. The worst part of random vanilla kings is agreeing to their random requests doesn't really benefit you much. I think their DLL-based demands should be instead replaced with moddable Events that can be modded with EventTriggerInfos and EventInfos.xml. In RaR I implemented a few Quest events where they could demand yields like Wood or Furs to be paid in tribute; these were slow to make using python callbacks but with a few more xml tags would be very easy to mod quite flexibly. The King/Pope system would be way more interesting if they could intermittently issue difference requests or Crusades you need to fulfill which would change your relationship depending on success; then they could issue a Boon or other benefit when you get your relationship really high or a Censure if it gets too low.

I just had another idea. We could make routes, improvements and whatever cost yields. They can then gather in plotgroups and be paid for when the plotgroup handles domestic sales. This mean a stone covered road could require 0.4 stone/turn for maintenance and together with all the other stone covered roads in the plotgroup, it could become quite a number each turn, which the cities have to deliver. Remember that gold is also a yield in this context.

We could then impose that demands for yield, which is paid for could be covered by auto buying the yield in Europe at an extra price. Either that or the improvement/route type will have a risk of switching to downgrade type, like a stone road becomes a path or whatever.

Hmm, I'm hesitant for too much micromanagement but I do like that idea of having some local maintenance yields drawn from Plotgroups. The Civ4 civics system also has plenty of upkeep features, which I think can include:

* advanced civics choices having a high base upkeep per turn for maintaining that civic (ie some can only be supported by a large advanced empire)
* charges for upkeep per city (to offset immediate early-game land grabs using big grids of crappy cities, and offset runaway acceleration of income from things that give income-per-city) and/or upkeep per citizen (to offset the easy money generated by many big cities)
* upkeep that increases for distance from the Capitol (in Civ4 there was also Forbidden Palace that could act as a second capitol for nearby upkeep reduction)
* civics can give a discount to cost for certain upkeep types like military upkeep, or let you maintain x number of units free from upkeep (appropriate for Feudal or Peasant Levy allowing to field an army for free, or Corvee Labor allowing you a discount on Improvement/Route upkeep)

Be very wary of making a too complicated system for upkeeps and supply needs for units/professions etc, this is something that could really cripple the AI as it will totally not know how to cope with this. To some extent this could be compensated if you add settings in Civ4HandicapInfos.xml allowing AI discounts or exemptions on upkeeps at certain difficulty levels, then this could be adjusted as desired for difficulty. But at some level no one wants too complex rules needing constant monitoring which make you have to play on a totally different playing field from your opponent.

While removing the random King payment demands, it is still good to have a rising Tax/Tithe rate in place which rises during the game; this makes you want to become less dependent on foreign trade and grow your own economy through domestically fulfilled Demands and consumption.

Regardless of upkeeps, it's going to stay very necessary for balancing in Col to have rising taxes and have overall declining market prices as you increase sales of your goods; since it's already easy to make money and new buildings/specialists/techs/improvements add rapidly to production. Even if these new things cost upkeep, they must always produce more than their upkeep to be worth having, so your income will grow uncontrollably up and up if not counterbalanced by lower prices and higher taxes pushing you to produce more to compensate.

 

[Thonnas]

Please please PLEASE, do NOT add road maintenance. It's one of the most obnoxious aspects of Civ5. If anything, add random events that destroy a road plot, like:
"heavy rains washed out the road, road was destroyed by a mudslide, high traffic has severely damaged the road," etc.

I absolutely agree that there needs to be more money sink that isn't the pope simply asking for 40-80% of your money. Just don't do road maintenance. Please.

Building maintenance seems like an obvious choice, and I'm not quit sure why vanilla doesn't have it.

Military units also seem like a good fit, where perhaps criminals and of course slaves would be free foot soldiers, while free men cost a small amount, veterans a little more. Nobles could go either way, costing a lot because they're nobles, or perhaps not costing anything as they would serve out of their oath of fealty.

On the flip side, I think you all might be over thinking the negative impact of not having money. Since money is a global resource, it's kind of difficult to say that this town couldnt pay for its warehouse or that town couldnt pay for its winery. Sure, you could make it random, which could get kind of silly, where your main production buildings get hit and then you REALLY can't get out of debt, or you could make it global, which also could be kind of silly, where EVERYTHING goes crazy because you went 2 coins into debt. I think simply having the negative coins go into reducing fealty, either directly (-2 coins = -2 fealty/turn), or a percentage of production (-2 coins = -2% fealty production), or even a combination of fealty and other non-good yields like religion and culture would be an adequate penalty. Going into a little debt never hurt a ruler too much. It's easy enough to get a loan to cover a little operating costs. It's when you get into a LOT of protracted debt that things get messy.

 

[Nightinggale]

I'm against disabling buildings just because you are out of money because it will hit fairly random. The cities are handled one by one and the code can't "go back" into what it has already handled. This mean the last city is likely to take the beating for the other cities spending too much. Also it leaves little choice regarding what to disable as the human logical choices are likely already processed. Alternatively they are in the next city, which it can't see either.

When you have negative money, you can't build improvements and stuff like that. Maybe that is enough for minor negative money.

If we are going to have a production modifier based on money, then it would not be wise to make it -1%*number of coins. If the map is big enough, you could easily end up with -100 without that being major for your economy. The production modifier should be scaled based on cities or citizens. The fealty loss would be kind of like modern credit ratings where the question is likelihood of recovery rather than actual amount.

We could also consider something like unhappy citizens if you lack money. Perhaps civics can be used to control what will happen.

 

[DARCK-PHOENIX]

I find annoying that u can have 1000 soldiers and not paing an upkeep .. please do something about

 

[Nightinggale]

I have been thinking. Maybe part of the issue is that it is too easy to produce loads of cargo, which can be sold at a too high profit. When players stockpile gold, it's a desync between income and spending, not just a problem of spending.

Also I still think that money is too hard in very early game and suddenly too easy to get. In other words there is a serious balance issue here.

 

[Kailric]

I find annoying that u can have 1000 soldiers and not paing an upkeep .. please do something about

I do aim to address this and the changes will be xml moddable.

I have been thinking. Maybe part of the issue is that it is too easy to produce loads of cargo, which can be sold at a too high profit. When players stockpile gold, it's a desync between income and spending, not just a problem of spending.

Also I still think that money is too hard in very early game and suddenly too easy to get. In other words there is a serious balance issue here.

I have been swamped lately, but things are starting to ease up so I plan to do some extensive play testing for a while with this subject and other hot topics in mind. If someone else has the time please down load the development version and lend a hand.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I have to disagree with Night's assessment.

Again I don't think it is too hard to make money early on, you are a tribe engaging in a barter economy, so money isn't really the main goal in that equation.

The problem is that a larger empire means a larger productive capacity, which means more trade which means more gold. There is currently no 'cost' to owning a large empire, so income increases with empire size, but there is no cost increase to empire size. (other than perhaps the need to buy more 'statesman' to be able to call the end game.)

Maintenance is, I still believe, the biggest need to check empire expansion, because a larger empire needs more troops to defend it, more troops need more wages, more troops need more leaders, more leaders need more money, a bigger army needs a bigger logistics system, a bigger logistics system needs more admin, more admin needs more money...

That is what is needed in the late game, where money is much more free flowing, money should be free flowing at this point, because the 'world' is starting to become more connected once again, trade is flourishing and great empires are rising.

The problem is none of these empires are costing their emperors anything.