Thoughts on the economy

from Elemental Forums

Let's talk economy (ver 1.05).

I've now played two games each of which are currently over 400 turns and I have some observations on some of things in the economy that are a bit arwy.

1. I mentioned this in this post: https://forums.elementalgame.com/392907the shop value for common equipment for champions is way out of whack. For what it costs to outfit a champion, you can usually outfit 16 or so soldiers in similar equipment. The shop costs should be no higher or only marginally higher to outfit a single champion with common equipment than it does to equip a single soldier. Shops should also carry rare items that only champions can use. It would be great if these items changed every 10 or so turns. Common equipment costs (i.e. soldier equipment cost) is probably a bit too cheap.

2. In all my games, the AI as well as my faction had extreme excesses of metals and materials which means that either things need to use more of them or they need to be produced in much smaller quantities. Crystals and Horses seem to be about right. Food seems too rare and for some reason isn't tradable. Later in both games, the AI is so full of metals and materials they have no interest in trading for them.

3. Building costs are too cheap and their maintenance is also too inexpensive. If it wasn't for the gildar that I spent equipping my champions I would have had an extreme excess of gildar. In both games, I was able to build every building in every city without regards to cost, materials or maintenance. By turn 400, I would hope to have a war chest of gildar, but I would still expect to be making more intelligent decisions about which buildings I build where. As it is, you might as well automate the building process once you determine where the city location is because it's really not a factor in the game.

4. Gold mines do not produce enough gold to make them as special as they should be. Gold mines should be extremely valuable resources and currently they are only marginally more valuable than other materials and certainly not as valuable as crystal mines are. Since gold is turned directly into Gildar, they should probably produce twice as much gold as they do and the AI should lust for control of them.

5. Taxes should be a much earlier technology IMO. People have been taxing others since the stone age. Making it a later game technology is worthless IMO.

6. Wages for the military units is too small and doesn't scale well enough. Standing armies should cost a lot more than they currently do especially since you can have armies of 16 soldiers becoming very powerful in the game. I have a army of 16 knights in legendary platemail that has a combat rating close to 400 that costs a couple of gildar per turn. That's crazy.

Most of these issues can be corrected by changing their values in the ElementalDefs.xml file and would go a long way to making the economy more robust. I think for the most part the ecomomy model works, in a very simplistic way, but the costs need to be rebalanced better.

Summation:

Shop costs need to be massively decreased for common equipment. More 'rare' equipment needs to be available even at the start of the game, but shouldn't be extremely expensive. I.E. a ring that increases attack by 1 should be 4-5 gildar, while one that increases attack by 3 should be 50-60 gildar because it might be extremely rare.

Materials and Metal costs should be adjusted. Either make them produce less or make things that use them use 3-4 times that amount.

Maintenance costs on all things is too inexpensive. I would selectively increase it, especially on later improvements and with soldiers depending on the gear that they are outfitted with as well as their experience.

Have taxes come much earlier in the game.

Those are my thoughts.
 

elemental
11,069 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Agree on the equipment cost. Early game you make around 5 gildar a turn. Why is a wooden club costing me 60 G ? A full set of paded armor, will cost 150 G +. Lots of money for very little gain imo. And a dagger costs almost as much as a warg?

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Agreed with both of you. I'd also like to be able to build a few more trade routes (roads). Also, I'm working on a mod that will implement taxes a little better but it's a ways off.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Bashemgud, reply 1
Agree on the equipment cost. Early game you make around 5 gildar a turn. Why is a wooden club costing me 60 G ? A full set of paded armor, will cost 150 G +. Lots of money for very little gain imo. And a dagger costs almost as much as a warg?
End of Bashemgud's quote

 

no imo its fine

the point is still the randomness of armor so having 6 7 armor is nearly nothing

 

but in general its ok

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

5. Taxes should be a much earlier technology IMO. People have been taxing others since the stone age. Making it a later game technology is worthless IMO.

End of quote

But you are trying to convince people to come to your city and settle there. If you start taxing them as soon as they arrive, they will leave again.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Also, keep in mind, soldiers work for you no matter what equipment you give them, they don't demand higher wages because you give them better gear, in real life, they are just bloody thankful. And in the days when gold was currency, a couple of gold was a ton of money.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting ddd888, reply 3

Quoting Bashemgud, reply 1Agree on the equipment cost. Early game you make around 5 gildar a turn. Why is a wooden club costing me 60 G ? A full set of paded armor, will cost 150 G +. Lots of money for very little gain imo. And a dagger costs almost as much as a warg?
 

no imo its fine

the point is still the randomness of armor so having 6 7 armor is nearly nothing

 

but in general its ok
End of ddd888's quote

^ This.

 

If you're having gold issues, build a town at a mine and grow it a few ranks. At every rank pick the gildar production bonus. Those stack multiplicatively, so a level 4 settlement with some of the gold production improvements and the growth bonuses and a mine is producing a LOT of gildar.

You can also find gildar while adventuring.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Funny that you think goldmines are over powered. I was thinking they almost need to be nerfed. Granted controlling 1 gold mine without any bonuses won't result in something amazing. But if you have a level 3 city that controls a gold mine, that chose the money related bonus as both upgrades and has a market as well - the city will be producing tons of gold.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

/signed

I agree with your suggestions, nitey47. Altough I'm a bit clueless about taxes. Never played late-game, as I always run into some game-breaking bug like insanely stacking research bonuses or level 5 monster raids around turn 90 ... but that's another story.

As to James009D's remark ...

I'd also like to be able to build a few more trade routes (roads).
End of quote

 

What do caravans do right now? Basic roads? I have seen that, but do they upgrade? And is something different traded except food? I only see trade routes in the food production breakdown of my cities, not in the breakdowns of any other resource.

Rabenhoff

 

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

There are taxes in the game???? Which tech is that? I'm rolling in money just from gold mines combined with cities with gold multiplier buildings. Gold mines definitely don't need to give more than they already do.

As for material or metal being too abundant, that's true until you get a start where you can't find them, and then you have to ration them. Certainly some resource balancing is needed.

Something is off though about the economy, I can't quite put my finger on it. I think maybe it's the way the whole thing just boils down to getting a few multipliers in place. It's too simplistic, needs more complexity, more options, more reasons to specialize cities.

 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Actually, I think the economy is pretty well balanced. Except maybe the per-turn cost of units needs to be cut in half to be realistic. You just need to build more units. They will eat through all those resources much more quickly. If you jack up the cost to support units you will end up with more free metal and more free resources because you don't have enough gold to make enough units to use them. When you start fighting Ogres with 150+ attack with real units and when the AI gets off it's butt and starts building more units so you need units to counter with, you will find you don't have excess resources anymore. The problem is not too much gold, it's not enough compared to the cost of troops and the quantity of resources and metal. More gold will drop the available supply of metal and resources. The same would happen by cutting the cost to support troops. This will be even more the case once the AI starts doing well and you actually *need* to build those troops.

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top

I seem to be experiencing a bug where it says I have +50 gildar per turn, but I am losing about 15 gildar per turn instead. Also, do champions cost gildar per turn? I thought they were a one time cost initial cost, but as to my experience, I had a growing stable economy until I started recruiting champions on a fairly large scale (plus all of my offspring champions as well). Now the gildar is as I mentioned in the first sentence. It is like the game isn't showing me what it's spending money on per turn. Is there a way to see a list of all expenses and incomes? GalCiv2 had a nice one as does Civ4.