On Pioneers and Conquered cities
one a matter of cost, the other a matter of race.
Elemental Forums
On pioneers
Personally, I am somewhat curious as to "why, exactly" Pioneers are so cheap.
I mean yes, it some ways it takes parts of the strategy "out of the equation" ... which I guess is a good thing as we can focus on the RPG elements more?
What about just making pioneers EXTREMELY expensive (say, about as expensive as a building), and make them immortal/unable to use in battle.
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Having them spammable seems, to me, to be "not limiting the player enough" --> an example of too little consequence for one's actions.
Pioneer spam is Low risk/ High reward, in other words.
On conquering enemy cities.
While I think that conquered cities should "eventually" be returned to their former glory ... I think that city capture shouldn't be the immediate boon that it currently is.
Currently when I capture a city ... all I have to do is delete all the buildings that require maintenance, and I have a perfectly happy city.
Upon capture, I think that national wonders should be destroyed. I think that regular improvements should have a chance to be destroyed. I think that Wonders should never be destroyed (a la Civ and FFH formula)
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However, what about the rest of the situation? Clearly we do not have a culture system like in Civ, nor do we have a "de jure" system as in Crusader Kings 2 ... or any of the other "ownership" mechanics from any other 4X game.
So how do we determine ownership?
I think we should have the various races graphically represented in the city.
We should have assimilation rates, and penalties for multi-race cities.
Schools, Town Halls, and Markets increase the assimilation rate and have no affect on multi-race penalties.
Prisons, Dungeons, and other "Punishment" buildings reduce the assimilation rate but decrease the multi-race penalty (see Unrest)
SlavePens, meanwhile, absolutely bring assimilation to a standstill ... while there is absolutely no multi-race penalty.
The downside however, is that its effect (production rates not affected by taxes) only apply to other races ...
meaning, that the Race in power is not affected by a Slave Pen ... so Slave Pens are only good for cities with large numbers of 'other races'.
In this way, the Quendar could gain a highly varied population (graphically). Shown on some interface or another.
As Slavelords however, They would have no multi-race penalty. -> But, their Slave Pens would still give a bonus of some sort.
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So under normal circumstances, conquering a city of a different race would give an addition BASE unrest of Population%/2 (lets use this as a starting point)
So if you had 100% other races, you get 60% unrest at no taxes, instead of 10% unrest.
I think a nice and even Assimilation rate should be 2% per turn. So regardless of the amount of new Younglings ... each Season, if more than 2% of the population is NON-Youngling, then 2% of the city's population becomes Youngling race.
This means, assuming 0 growth for the city, it would take 50 seasons to fully assimilate a city.
However with an influx of new Younglings into the city, it would take in practice somewhat less than 50 seasons of assimilation.
The only reason we would keep track of all 10 races, as opposed to Owner vs non-Owner, is in case of Multiple Successive Ownership and/or Reconquista by those that originally lost the city.
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For the Magnar however, there is no Assimilation. Instead, the "Unrest factor" is what decreases. The original unrest factor is determined in the same way ... however perhaps with less penalty (say Pop%/ 4 instead of Pop%/2).
For the Altar, since they are "mutts" or whatnot, they should perhaps have a higher (base) assimilation rate (either 3% or 4%).
