Does not seem to be that straight forward. But is more in line with taking the Total Commerce made for that Empire and then multiplying it by 1.02. Which would seem to work somewhat similar to your example.
In the Screenshot of SO's game were I pointed out this NW and it's staggering addition there are 24 banks that only give a total of 640+ gold vs this 1 NW. And yes it is a cumulative effect we are seeing.
Hmm... so the banks and other local modifiers are taking place then whatever other playerwide adjustments THEN this global modifier applying to the total. Starts to make sense how it makes that much a difference. It's 2% of end total, not an additional 2% modifier in all cities.
One more thing I'm also noting, later game we have buildings (all kinds but especially these NW and WWs) that give -50 and -100 MaintModifiers. Effectively wiping out maint. Costs. Did you notice that SO's Maint costs were paltry compared to his income, barely 42K. And that was after I had made enough changes to Civics Maint Modifier to increase City Maint by 15% in the build up to get into the Information Era.
Yeah those need to be brought under control as well!
So what would you deem a reasonable income and Maint cost to be in the late eras? Should the Gold/turn at 100% Research for even the Industrial era be a +1000 gold/turn? Too little or too much? Should it not rather be 1000 gold/turn at 50% Research slider? Or 30% research slider?
That's very difficult to answer. Obviously, making it possible to go 100% research the whole time is not what we want and the more buildings and such we have with the more cities that are in play, the harder this gets. Cutting off all ability to upgrade your units isn't good either, nor is it good to put us into nearly unavoidable strike scenarios. So it's not something you can easily answer with numeric examples because it's hard to say how much a 5% shift on the slider is going to ultimately represent. It's all relative. I think we agree on this (and most things really.)
And should not the player need to be putting some capital into Culture and Esp as well? These have become non factors after only a short time game wise into the game play. How do we keep them relevant longer? Should they ever Not be relevant? Only time they are really of only a small consequence, from not using them, should only be in the Preh era.
Obviously the motivation to let off the research slider for gold is easily enough to motivate by making gold more useful and harder to be able to meet it's needs.
The motivation for espionage is a tough one. I don't think we will be able to effectively motivate this until we can make the espionage side of the game more powerful than ever, and find ways to make it easier for the AI to get lots of espionage than it is for the player (one method I'm trying for that is my latest building selections that many players would probably prefer not to use if they can avoid it.)
As for culture, when I get my traits in, it may well be a lot more important to drive culture for trait selection purposes. However, one thing we abandoned in this mod that we should NEVER have let go of and that we really need to bring back is the use of the tag that gives happiness per x% on the slider. This was always necessary to address huge happiness deficits that come from extended wars and over-spreading your empire on city limits and crimes and other reasons for big national happiness problems. It was classically used on theaters and such and still, imo, should be used on any 'potential' receivers of state subsidies for the purpose of plugging out propaganda and mind-numbing entertainment. The classic theater is only one example.
This would give us back the strategy of shifting to culture on the slider when you have major unhappiness crises across the nation.
I know you don't like +/- gold or commerce or anything usage, but the % usage for modifiers is out of control. And really needs some serious restrictions on when and where it should be used.
Don't get me wrong. I don't stand against normal base +/- commerces and yields. I just believe that if you think about the REASON the building is helping society, what it's bringing to the table is sometimes best represented as a % and sometimes best represented as a base and sometimes still best represented as a base per population.
THAT SAID, I completely agree that we currently are not balanced in our approach to modifiers (+%/-%). However, a building, like a Bank, for example, or a University, or a Library, these kinds of buildings are buildings that would introduce a modifier to the overall result of the local economy. Why? Let's take a look at the Bank for a moment. The Bank enables businesses to take debt so as to hit the accelerator on projects where the owners have found a way to make $ but an investment is needed to get it going, and to even get the funding to get started as a business at all. AKA, it 'facilitates' the economy to become so much more than it would otherwise have been. Banks, conversely, never actually CREATE new wealth in the economy (well... maybe that's arguable these days with the complex investment banking methods we now have.) So as a 'facilitator' for the community, it generates a % modifier... the stronger the local economy, the stronger the bank will make it. The weaker the local economy, the less the bank will have an effect.
So I would stand against saying the Bank should instead give a +/- flat amount (change), which I would relegate to all the buildings that represent trading in progress, like shops and such.
To truly control the whole picture, we can't let the Changes get any further out of hand than we can let the Modifiers get out of hand. One works with the other to make the overload.
Some attempts to model a building's ability to scale its impact are currently being shown as a % modifier when it should instead be a very moderate use of the x per population tag. These tags can go as low as 1 which would be a .1 per population (1 per 10 population). This may seem like it can get to a lot if you're talking a 300 population lategame city, but compare that to even 1% modifier when you have a 6000 base gold output in the city (comes up as twice as much.)
The point being that all have their time and place and when we work with % modifiers, we should be very careful because if that's part of an upgrade chain, the next ones are going to want to be higher and that gets into creating a runaway quite easily. AKA, an improved Bank maybe shouldn't improve ALL that much on the % gold modifier or it's quickly going to be an issue.
Not sure I can agree with the "need for more buldings" though. A selective pruning is needed much more desperately imho. ( The complaint over the sheer number of Factories is an example). The mod will not survive "pixel" sized granularity.
I find the needs reveal themselves. You may see what I mean. After a while, a hut building should probably be more modernized, for example. Perhaps one way we can help with balancing the lategame is to think about how global the impact of a given business starts getting, beyond local, in fact, then obsoleting the local ones. I might try to reprogram that global tag so that it adds the global modifier in as one of the many local modifiers in each city rather than an end modifier as it is now, making it too powerful. If we WANT an end modifier, it should be measured in decimals of % points rather than full % pts obviously.
Anyhow, some buildings may become obvious as redundant as well.
There must be a pulling back as we get into the later eras. And actually the pulling back needs to start by the Med and no later than the Ren Eras. This would give more credence to a "useful granularity of progression". Making each building more important and not just another exercise in making multiple choices for the way to having too much of everything. Having want is a good thing. Moreso for this mod's health, again imho.
In THIS case, how do you define 'pulling back'? Is this just to the number of buildings? I'm sure we can start seeing more consolidation of buildings, yes. And that's what I mean... we'll see the need for new buildings and new approaches if we chart things out. It's not just about adding more, particularly not just for the hell of it.
One thing I can say we need more of late-game, is training buildings. For specific unit types. Anyhow, like I said, it all makes itself obvious what the needs are so there's no need to quibble about that side of things atm.
From what I've seen (if I've looked at the right document) it's too hard for me to read. And I do not own a version of Exel that is newer than a 2001 version updated by windows to a 2007 limited version. Nor can I afford to get a newer version either. My S.S. check each month was reduced by $130 just for Medicaid this year after a $4 raise!
But I'll try to look at it again If I can get a readable copy.
Hell... use 2001 then. Exell 2001 isn't that bad a program. I can share some of my documents with you through Exell and if 2001 is what you can use, I can save it in a compatible format. As for documents online, I sometimes have to grow the document to see it properly. Hold down CTRL and hit + or - (or hold down CTRL and roll the middle mouse button) to adjust the zoom level... I've gotta do that alot now that my eyes aren't what they used to be.
You can always add new columns where you need them too.
The document we're currently using as a core doc is:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1blJHi8tOxd51JomARwPWBo3PyfOEOyeI0xDjvv-J75c/edit#gid=0
That's one side of what I'm working on with BIB. The other side of the document that is going to give me a view on the progression of buildings throughout the tech tree, is in the zipped document, which is also a test to see if your version of Excell can open it - should be able to.
If you would be willing to work on this together (not necessarily on the same costing project but on using the document to chart out other stats as well) then we can always put it on the SVN and update and commit so as to keep both sides of our work from interrupting the other while keeping the evals all in one place. Alternatively, you can just use this as a template of how to start breaking things down into a useful evaluation.
As an aside, I'm sorry that medical expenses is part of what's getting in the way of having a better quality of life. That's a real problem we have here in this country.
Oh... also, the thinking behind the use of that tag is pretty obvious imo. It's obsoleting all those individual local colloseums and such and giving everyone everywhere access to basically 'being there' through VR space. So where the building is is basically irrelevant... the economic stimulus from sports activities is being spread out everywhere equally. I'll have to look at how we can best reprogram the tag so it doesn't overwhelm as it currently does.
EDIT: Actually, the file format I saved that in doesn't work... it can't handle the document size. We'd have to work with .csv or something. Well that just messed up 2 nights of work since I saved it in that format and didn't save it in the more modern one and it wiped out half the document to do it... ugh... ooops.
