Tasunke

Join Date 10/2009

+45

Conclaves do Jack

all percentage bonus buildings are worthless

First off ... under the current mechanics, Enclaves are too big and too worthless. Increasing a conclave's percentage to 100% science would make it a worthwhile build over a school or library.

Same with all percentage buildings, too big and too little gain. I would advise for conclaves to be 25% science and only 1 tile large. Slums are also "not good enough" yet.

Slums right now are a fourth the cost (in gold) yet are equal cost in Housing/Squares ratio. This would be FINE if the food cost was significantly lower. AKA, Slums should cost only 10 food, 4 squares, 50 gold, and -1 (or -2) prestige. That would even things out a little more (and make it a worthwhile build for the NON-renewable resource of city space).

I mean ... all of these problems could potentially be alleviated by increasing the number of squares available for a city.

I propose a "Civil Engineering Office". This would be a 1 tile building, costing 100 gold and 20 wood, available at (probably) refined administration OR refined civics OR civics. Building this building increases available "space" of a city by 4. This gains you a net of 3 extra squares for each Civil Engineering Office built. (building the office takes 5 turns.

In addition, I think that the building that reduces building times (warehouse) should either reduce times by 20%, or refined administration should allow for an Expanded Warehouse that reduces build times by 20% (1 tile building). Of course, only 1 expanded warehouse can be built per city. Those 10% additions can be built, but only a max of three regular 10% warehouses. So, you can use 4 tiles of warehouses (one expanded warehouse and three small warehouses) to reduce building times by 50%. This seems like a fair gain compared to other high-end 4-tile buildings.

and Finally, I know they are planning on this last feature, however I wasn't convinced (I'll check a few more times) that it was fully implemented. Any city that produces a Numeric value should have that value multiplied by city-size. (unless its a material?)

So a Market(4 gold) in a size 3 city should produce 12 gold per turn. A Town Hall(2 prestige) should produce 6 prestige per turn.

Also ... now that I have been playing with the system some ... and considering that output should be multiplied by City Size ... I no longer see a need for buildings to be restricted to city size. I am currently of the opinion that any size of city should be able to build any building. The two main factors that influenced this change of heart was (unique research/long research) and (restricted city size)

Meaning, that due to long research times, an investment in research could lead to some odd results that are asymmetric to your empire in terms of population/ect. Also, the limit of buildings due to city size is a good limiter of this function. What I mean, is that investment in technology is ENOUGH to allow the building of said structure immediately.

A latter building that serves the same function as the prevoius building should either give more profit, or cost less. Houses give more profit than huts ... however monastaries should either cost less, or give more bonus than a Conclave. And of course reduce the size (or vastly increase the profit, OR increase amount of squares you can build upon).

Meaning ... that if I want a Science city, I can build 3 schools (24 science) or build 2 schools and 1 conclave (20 science). Conclaves only become equal to schools or Libraries (schools and libraries are equal in size/output ratio) once you have 4 schools or more. This is always true, even if School output is determined by city size, it will always be better to build a school until you have 4 or more schools ... and the odds of having 4 schools is next to none unless you have a city that is extremely specialized.

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I would have to agree here. I have noticed quite a few building just don't seem to match their value to opportunity costs. Granted I am assuming most of these will be ironed out tweaked as the beta goes on.

On the topic of long research times I did run into an interesting problem the other game, Housing tech upgrades. While most of my games this was no problem this particular game I just couldn't get advanced housing to pop up everytime Civ research completed. endud up wasting 40 or 50 turns with no pop growth chasing it to get it to show. In a single player game this would be vexxing but shouldn't be fatal unless playing at at insane difficulty level. But in a MP game that kind of thing would and should be irrevocably fatal.

Think the tech tree needs a little tightening up or a little more control over what possible breakthroughs you get. Also mabey a part on the tech discription where it shows what techs the currently selected tech opens up. I know as the programmers it is obvious to you guys what leads into what. But I think a good portion of my problem was I didn't have the prereq techs researched and I didn't know what they were.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

I find many "high level" buildings to be not so worthy as they are. I suppose placeholders.

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exactly. Tax Office, Bank, Slums, Estate, and Mansion are all equally worthless buildings. (tax office might have some hidden use). Pubs and Theaters are also underpowered, and the monastery is pretty weak too.

I have found that on a Size 5 capital completely devoted to science, Conclave and Gallery can come quite handy ... but only in this situation. You need at least 4 Schools or Universities to make building a Conclave worthwhile. Considering this, its pretty silly how early conclaves can be built. Although I guess having 16 libraries or 16 Studies might also have some good Conclave effects ... its probably impossible to have that many libraries/Studies while still not having the School tech.

I am in love with Forges, Barracks, and Armories. I think something needs to be said about the awesomeness of exponential Iron mining with the use of Forges. I'd say its pretty accurate, that at first you might get one or two Iron troops ... and then eventually you could wield a whole company of Iron users.

I think there should be 3 iron levels. Dull Iron, Pressed Iron, and Re-Folded Iron.

Dull Iron could only cost a little bit of Iron (5?) and be only slightly better than copper or leather. Pressed Iron could be significantly stronger than Dull Iron and cost more (10 or 15?) a piece. Meanwhile Refolded Iron would cost twice as much Iron as Pressed Iron and be twice as strong.

Wooden Spear, 3 attack, 5 wood

Oak spear, 4 attack, 10 wood

Ancient Oak spear, 5 attack, 20 wood

Copper Sword, 5 attack. 10 copper??

Dull Iron Sword 6 attack, 5 iron.

Pressed Iron Sword 9 attack, 15 iron.

Refolded Iron Sword 18 attack, 30 iron.

Alternatively, a Refolded Iron Sword could have 12 attack and 6 defense, since Refolded Iron was MUCH more reliable for blade-to-blade parrying ... refolded iron would shred through non refolded iron ... or essentially refolded iron would last and the other blade would get dinged, chipped, and bent. Most parrying was done with either the hand-guard or the lower shaft of the blade, but still.

A Smithy could be a building available around the time of the forge (or later?), and could allow for units to be built with 20% less metal. Only one can be built per city, it uses 1 Space, and it allows for Refolded Iron weapons/armor to be used for Unit Training. As in, if you don't have a Smith you can't train that unit designed to use Refolded Iron.

Alternative usages to refolded Iron (other than double the Attk/Def) is to increase combat speed, dexterity, or dodge/flexibility. Only increase the metal cost as much as you increase the Attk/Def however. For instance, a suit of Refolded Iron could use 50% more metal, and only weigh half as much ... so the Iron increase would only be 50% (or from 15 iron to 23 iron). However then speed/dexterity penalties of the Iron would be half. So lets say a full suit of Pressed Iron (or Dull Iron) gave -4 mobility + dodge penalty. A full suit of refolded iron would only give a -2 mobility and dodge penalty. (while Chainmail would give -2 and leather would give no penalty). However, assuming that we won't have mobility/dodge penalties, doubling effectiveness and doubling iron requirements seems like the right direction.

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Quoting Tasunke,

reply 3

Yeah, completely agree. Perhaps making the conclave provide 4 research AND its current 25% research bonus, would make it worthwhile in a smaller city. Opportunity cost for the conclave is 8 research. Benefit of JUST the conclave would then be 5 research. Therefore you would only need to have reasearch buildings generating 12 research or in library terms (2 research per square), 6 libraries. This is doable ina size 2 (highly specialised) or very easily in a size 3 city. After you have your 6 libraries, anything producing research over that will make the conclave a better investment. (currently break even is at 16 libraries/squares of research producing 32 research points).

I think that schools shuold stay the same..... really they are there so that if you want to specialise the city for research, when you run out of cap for libraries, you can build schools which produce the same research per square. It seems that only modifier buildings like the conclave are vastly underpowered using the above reasoning.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2420

This is an interesting milestone. We're discussing balance now in this thread.

The real question isn't whether conclaves need to be buffed or not. The question is whether they formatted your hard drive and infected your network. In beta 3, we'll talk a lot about balance. Feel free though to weigh in on any place holder improvement so that we can get multiple opniions.

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Um ... I am highly interested to know of this "Conclaves formatting your hard drive and infecting your network."

I mean, as a joke I copied all my files to an external hard-drive ... and well, currently my (lap-top) is acting so crappy that I think either I'll need a new hard-drive or a new internal system/computer altogether.

Now, there could be many reasons, including short falls, and potential over-heating ... but should I be prepared to encounter these problems simply from playing the beta?

If so ... then I would like to know now ... I had thought that Harddrive/Network destroying components of the beta were removed a few builds ago. Honestly I have no scientific proof one way or another, although drawing a cheap corollary would be tempting ... I would need a proper Diag first.

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Well after doing a post on building I noticed alot of the 4 space building just really equaled the same amount as four 1 space building. It just seems to me the best option is to build all basic building and let them auto upgrade as your city levels. great example is the Lumber Yard. Takes 4 squares, requires a special tile and only produces 4 Mats. Where 4 Workshops will do the same thing, don't require special tiles and can fit anywhere.

The only variation to this theme I saw was a Farm vs Garden. Four squares of garden = 12 food while a single 4 square farm = 15. Seems to me thats how all the four square higher tech buildings should work.

This way you come down to two choices. Do you A. rip out your 1 square improvements for the superior 4 square one. even though you will have an upfornt cost of materials, gold and lost production. Or B. do you stay pat at the cost of long term production.

While we are on the subject of Balance why are there so many buildings that increase Research or percentage of Research and yet only one building to generate spell points and one to increase SP percentage?

I am assuming now since alot of techs are in and very few spells at this point that it is a beta phase thing and changes are coming there. But I do hate to make assumptions.

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All the buildings that you need to place on a resource, eg lumber mill, should give you more than the same squares in workshops.My suggestion is that:

1) any building that takes more than one tile, should provide the benefit of the one tile alternates + one tile worth. for example, schools shuold produce 5 libraries worth of research (10 not 8).

2) any building that produces a resource bonus based on percentage should use my idea above, have half the number of tiles it uses as a base production, and then have 25% modifier to total of that production. see my example above about the conclve.

3) any building that requires a resource to build, shuold get 1.5x - 2x the production of that resource per tile. for example, a lumber mill would produce between 6 and 8 wood, which is 1.5x 4 workshops or 2x respectively. I believe this will add strategy to where you place your cities, and make certain areas hotly contested for the resource bonus.

At the moment, mentioned in another thread I believe, there are lots of different research bonus buildings. If there are going to be lots of different percentage bonus buildings for everything, or even just one production area, you could add a fourth point to the above: Second type of percentage bonus structures should provide a 50% bonus. This means that you'd only build the purely percentage bonus building if you had mostly specialised a city.

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Quoting StillSingle,

reply 8

All the buildings that you need to place on a resource, eg lumber mill, should give you more than the same squares in workshops.My suggestion is that:

Agreed. Example: If 4 gardens will produce 12 food, a farm -which occupies 4 tiles- should produce 15-20. The same applies to all other "special/rare" resources. They are limited in numbers / map afterall...

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I think the main reason the % buildings are considered to be bad investments are because you can build so many of the other building types. In a lot of games you can only build 1 of each building so buildings that give % increases are nice for those looking to really specialize the city.

As someone else has already pointed out with enough of the proper buildings the % increase buildings are actually worth it. I often try to specialize me cities in the games I play. So far in the beta I like setting up a city near 2-3 food sources so it can get the most of that +25% from the granary. While I have another city build 5 Schools thus the concolves actuallly add more then building another school would. The same goes for a money making city with tax office and lots of markets.

Though I do think the + building speed building is kinda worthless as the majority of the time I barely can afford to keep all my cities building something. I don't need them completing things any faster. And once they are maxed out I need that space for something else so I would demo it in favor of a new building. So the quesiton of if it was worth the time and resoruce to build it in the first place.

As for some of the other balance issues which buildings the thing is it's a matter of what you have access to. Like the lumber mill only giving you as much as 4 workshops. Well yea late game that seems like a waste but when you plop down your first city and can only build ONE workshop the addition of a lumbermill is HUGE. Suddenly your getting 5 materials a turn from your starting city which really helps get it off the ground on fund your growning empire. In my first game I didn't know about the lumbermill and was cringing at how long it was taking to get anything done by earning enough materials. Now every game it's the first tech I get and it makes things a whole lot easier starting out.

The lumbermill though I'd say is the one possible exception to the resource buildings should give more. And that is because forest look to be fairly common as it's not unreasonable to expect to find 3-4 or more of them clustered together. And even with 1-2 lumbermills going it's often gold that I end up running low on long before materials. But a lot of this is stuff that needs to be ironed out in the balance phase which is a ways off.

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yea, warehouses currently are rather useless, however Armories are epicly awesome :3

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AS for the advantage of a Workshop and LM in your first city at level 1. While yes that 5 mats early on would be a huge boon. The opportunity cost of the 4 space it takes makes it way to expensive.

Since 1 have found my basic setip before hitting level 2 is

3x huts, 2x Garden, Farm, Workshop, Study, Merchant, Watch Tower, Command Post, and the SP building. And while I could probably get away with sacrificing the two gardens till level 2. All the rest of the building are kinda the basic framework you need in your first city. so the cost of losing the merchant or the study is just too high to still make a lumber yard worth it.

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Like the lumber mill only giving you as much as 4 workshops. Well yea late game that seems like a waste but when you plop down your first city and can only build ONE workshop the addition of a lumbermill is HUGE. Suddenly your getting 5 materials a turn from your starting city which really helps get it off the ground

I build 2 cities imidiately, and each of them gets a hut. first research is farming. Both cities easily get to lvl 2, which means total of 4 workshops. This coupled with not many early buildings require large amounts of wood, means, that I don't worry about ersearching the lumber mill for ages. My preference is to get housing up and going. lvl 3 cities have room for 4 workshops (4 wood). and by that time, wood is only being used to build units to go kill trolls

I fully agree with Tasunke, armories are wicked. But it seems to me these shuold really be just the upgraded baracks, rather than having both in a city. Therefore they will act like the huts, when yuo research houses, they auto upgrade to houses.

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