Yields

[Thalassicus]

I believe games should be intuitive to learn. There are thousands of numbers in the game, which can easily overwhelm people, so I strive for an easy to remember yield pattern. This makes learning the game and comparing choices more intuitive.

Things changed since I estimated ways to do this a year ago. I used to think of it as the sentence below. This was a decent estimate, but yields raise over time, we have faith, and faith loses value.

1 citizen costs 1 2 , and can create 3 or or or .


I'm thinking of matching this pattern now:

In the early game, 1 citizen costs 1 2 , and can create 3 , equal to 3 .
In the late game,[COLOR=#ecececec]_ [/COLOR]1 citizen costs 1 2 , and can create 5 , equal to 10 .

 

[albie_123]

Absolutely agree.

But, why don't we try and pin down the time - or at least, the approximate time - this shift happens? This will allow for greater balancing of buildings and improvement bonuses.

 

[Drakir89]

Are you including buildings (mint/library etc) and trade routes in that estimate?

 

[rhammer640]

If you are going to have a variable scale I would assume you would have a point in between there as well where 1 pop = 2 food 1 happiness = 4 of each yield and 6 faith

 

[Thalassicus]

@albie_123
The first bonuses to improvements basically happen at the Medieval era, with the second major round on the Renaissance-Industrial boundary.

@Drakir89
I don't go into that kind of detail because the game is too complex. I just think to myself 1:2:3:3... and use that information whenever I directly compare numbers for yields like Pantheons, improvements, opportunities, natural wonders, and so on. Whenever head-to-head comparisons do not match, I change things to fit the 1:2:3 ratio.

The main exception is specialists. Instant-building a wonder with an engineer is just plain good because it blocks other players from getting the wonder. Policies, techs, and gold don't work the same way. The value of these great person missions ends up changing the relative value of the specialists. It's too complicated to fit the simpler ratio I normally use.

 

[Drakir89]

Ah, I understand. That's an useful tool to have, but in my experience 3 culture is not equal to 3 production for most games, I usually consider culture to be of half value compared to other yields.

 

[Riot_Starter]

I would also like to add that just basing these numbers off improvements isn't correct. Population give bonuses just for existing: the initial 1 science and all the yield/pop effects on buildings.

 

[Dunkah]

What makes you think that this is the correct formula to use? I would agree that I would much rather have 3 science, gold or production to 3 Faith or Culture. Does that formula mean that those are all supposed to be equal? I guess they all could be but just giving it the eyeball test it doesn't seem to me they are equal. Does 3 Culture put you equally closer towards a culture victory as 3 science does to a science victory? or am I simply looking at it incorrectly?

BTW: Yields don't seem to be displaying correctly on the map. If I turn on the Display Yields option, they only appear randomly on the map. When I hover over a city only some of the tiles worked display actual yields. Sorry for posting here but I have not checked the bugs thread in a while.

 

[Thalassicus]

I change things to match the formula if we are in agreement 1 culture is half as valuable as 1 science. This is done by scaling income and costs. I can do the same with faith. I estimate it would take about ten minutes.

 

[Drakir89]

Rough estimate of how useful I find the different yields:

Production: 10/10

Food: 10/10 (value varies a lot depending on happiness, available expansion space, hills/specialists available to same city)

Gold: 8/10

Science: 8/10

Culture: 5/10

Faith: 6/10

 

[mystikx21]

I would put gold and science on par with food and production, but 8/10 isn't bad. I think culture is a little more valuable than faith because there's a victory condition based on it and because culture can keep popping out policies when beliefs stop. Both are more valuable early, but faith loses more value over time.

 

[Thalassicus]

It sounds like we should scale culture and faith numbers. There are at least two areas of the game where we had to change culture to balance it with the other yields: citystate bonuses, and artist specialists. Combining that info with the feedback here tells me the yield doesn't match the formula.

We can halve income and costs to bring up the value per-point. It's the difference between 20/turn income for a 200 cost policy, compared to 10/turn for a 100 cost policy. The income-to-cost balance remains the same (10 turns for a policy), but each point of culture becomes more important.

 

[Drakir89]

It sounds like we should scale culture and faith numbers. There are at least two areas of the game where we had to change culture to balance it with the other yields: citystate bonuses, and artist specialists. Combining that info with the feedback here tells me the yield doesn't match the formula.

We can halve income and costs to bring up the value per-point. It's the difference between 20/turn income for a 200 cost policy, compared to 10/turn for a 100 cost policy. The income-to-cost balance remains the same (10 turns for a policy), but each point of culture becomes more important.

I like this, most culture yields are even numbered anyway. But we need to decide what will happen to the +3 pantheons.

 

[Thalassicus]

If most people consider a point of culture half as good as a point of other yields, then the pantheons are currently half the strength they should be. By keeping pantheons at 3 culture, and scaling all other numbers down, we effectively buff the pantheons.

 

[Ahriman]

I find some of the +3 culture pantheons quite powerful in the right circumstances. In my current game, I had a horse and 2 sheep near my capital, and so getting this +9 culture early on let me really race through policies.

The impact is modest beyond the early game, but I think it's a good thing to have pantheons that can super-charge your early game and decline over time with others that are very weak early on but provide a solid bonus later (like the +1 happy for 6+ cities).

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you for reminding me we tend to have multiple improvements of the culture pantheon varieties around each city. I aim to balance the pantheons based on the expected per-city value, so I'll scale the pantheons too.

I also remembered something else today. 2 pay for a citizen to work a 3 mine. This would indicate each point of food is more valuable than each point of production, but I neglected to account for the fact food dramatically drops in value when our empire has negative happiness. This lowers the average value of a point of food, likely bringing it in line with the other yields. This is important when comparing mutually exclusive choices like getting 2 or 3 from an opportunity.

 

[mitsho]

This pantheon balance is also skewed since we delibaretly chose those pantheons that we have enough ressources of. So we tend to have more pastures, fishing boats, etc. anyways for those pantheons.

Btw. I think we could use a few more pantheons (have you deleted some?) since there's often quite a clear cut choice to make there. Take your changed God of the Sea c5production: -> ), many people didn't like the change but why not have both options available?

I'd also think there's a place for a Pantheon that buffs or buildings.

 

[Stalker0]

I also remembered something else today. 2 pay for a citizen to work a 3 mine.

Another thing to remember is that food has a time and happiness requirement before it can convert into anything.

 

[Thalassicus]

@mitsho
It's very easy to create small variations of existing pantheons so I'd be okay with that. We have the same pantheons available in the unmodded game.

@Stalker0
That's the way all yields work - we accumulate them over time, then it gives us something.

 

[Stalker0]

@Stalker0
That's the way all yields work - we accumulate them over time, then it gives us something.

While true...but food has to effectively accumulate twice.

Food accumulates -> turns into a citizen -> turns into a new yield.

Now the new yield accumulates -> provides a benefit.


Basically, food does nothing on its own, its only a gateway to other yields. The only direct thing I can think of that growth does is provide a bit more strength to the city its in